Ready Player One Movie Review

Ready Player One (2018)

Watch the trailer
Written by: Zak Penn, Ernest Cline (based on the novel by)
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance
Rated: PG-13

Plot
When the creator of a virtual reality world called the OASIS dies, he releases a video in which he challenges all OASIS users to find his Easter Egg, which will grant the finder his fortune.

Verdict
It's crammed so full of movie and video game references that this feels like a gimmick. The foundations of this world are shaky at best. While it has it's moments, moments that are huge in scale and even a few touching scenes, it's a shallow look at virtual reality. It throws characters at you to cover that up while falling into a few video game tropes without trying to comment or parody. The movie is a game of how many characters can you recognize.
It depends.

Review
There are so many pop culture references, but in twenty years the world hasn't moved on. Instead it's focused on the '80s and '90s. Part of that ties back to Halliday and his fascination with his childhood pop culture, but that doesn't account for everything. Is it a commentary on how the world has stopped creating new ideas? If so the movie fails at making that point. In this world, if you don't drink Tab while listening to Duran Duran while playing your Atari, you're just not cool.

Virtual reality is better than living in the stacks.

Jame Halliday designed Oasis, a virtual world where everyone goes to escape their destitute lives. He left an easter egg in Oasis after his death. Solve the puzzles, find the keys, and you own Oasis. A company, IOI, wants to own the Oasis for pure greed. They're led by Sorrento whose avatar in Oasis is exactly what a megalomaniac villain CEO would look like in a video game.

You pull on the threads of this world and it unravels. Oasis has to be computer code. In the ten years since Halliday's death no one has dissected the code to find the secrets? There is an entire corporation devoted to finding the secrets and they've done absolutely nothing. This company is vile, and I thought the world was so destitute there were no cops or they were just few and corrupt. Towards the end we see cops come save the day which makes me wonder where were they throughout the rest of the movie?
IOI seems to have a monopoly on Oasis accessories, why do they need to own Oasis too? Who runs Oasis? Why doesn't IOI lobby the board of directors running Oasis? Somebody has to maintain Oasis, though it's implies the CEO role is vacant until someone solves the puzzles.

Wade Watts

The main character is Wade Watts, known as Parzival in Oasis. He's a diehard "gunter", a portmanteau of egg hunter. He wants to win the prize and escape his life. He makes friends throughout the movie as he strives to solve the puzzle.

Parzival, the avatar of Wade Watts

I thought this might go deeper into the gap between online avatars and people's actual appearance. It touches upon that  in a less than subtle way, but why did Wade choose his avatar? This never really uncovers the perils of online, other than a joke about what Parzival's crush Atermis may look like. In a world like this wouldn't cat fishing be heightened? Wade in effect falls in love with an avatar before meeting the person. Of course it works out perfectly for him, but it felt cheap.
We see an Iron Giant avatar towards the end. Why are all the avatars human sized? what's stopping people from being huge? The two main characters/avatars are rather human looking in a world that offers endless possibilities.

I wonder if this would work better if it was more like a video game. There is a lot of deux ex machina and Sorrento is a cartoon villain. How Parzival finds Sorrento's password is hokey. There is plenty of right place, right time outcomes.
The whole contest hinges upon people knowing everything about Halliday. He's egotistical in that regard. He's made a library that showcases his entire life complete with video of all major moments. While plenty flocked to this library to find clues upon his death, it's empty now after ten years. You have to know this guy to such a degree, poring over his entire life that he recorded. I wondered if that was some kind of clue, making people waste their time watching his life to reinforce the point they should live their own. I thought this might conclude with the termination of Oasis. People need to live instead of fantasize, and maybe the world doesn't need a pervasive virtual reality, but the movie opts for the non-commital route.

This definitely has some great scenes. One sequence has Parzival and company go into a movie. I wanted more of this creative riffing. The first race in the beginning is frenetic and fun. The battle on Planet Doom is just a huge scale, but the inclusion of Battletoads, Ninja Turtles, The Irong Giant, Mortal Kombat, etc often feels forced. You never escape the gimmick. Past the gimmick there isn't anything compelling. This is certainly entertaining. It's a huge spectacle, but I never felt like the writers had a handle on how this world really works.