Directed by:
Steven SpielbergCinematography:
Janusz KaminskiComposer:
Alan SilvestriCast:
Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, T.J. Miller, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, Hannah John-Kamen, Ralph Ineson (more)VOD (5)
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Director Steven Spielberg's science-fiction action advernture reveals a chaotic, collpasing world in the year 2045. Salvation lies in the OASIS, a fantastical virutal-reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday. When Halliday dies, his immense fortune is left to the first person who can find a digital Easter egg hidden in the OASIS. Joining the hunt is unlikely young hero Wade Watts, who is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending quest filled with mystery, discovery and danger. (Warner Bros. Home Entertainment)
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Reviews (18)
A very free adaptation of the book by Ernest Cline, updated both for the modern generation and for movie fans. It’s been a long time since Spielberg filmed something so playful and purely for entertainment and his classic trademarks are to be seen throughout. Even if the tasks relating to the keys are totaling different, the core of the story remains the same and it is Mark Rylance’s acting that carries the movie on his shoulders. His Halliday has the perfect parameters of endearing madness and so his classic truths about life don’t sound banal. The message that the Internet isn’t everything isn’t as important as the unbelievable serving of entertainment that a mass of fans enjoy during re-screening and looking for “their" thing. The action is awesome and packed to bursting with references. There is something for everyone (in my case the Godzilla theme), what worked for you?
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Why is everyone so astonished that Spielberg is a master of his craft? It’s no miracle that one of the best craftsmen and storytellers around is still able to do what he has always done. Ready Player One rather makes it clear how miserable other blockbusters in recent years have been. Even though RPO runs like clockwork, a rotten heart beats in its core. Behind the exalted adoration of 1980s pop culture, there is a tremendously depressing vision of the future. How else can we interpret a world that is unbelievably technologically advanced, yet culturally fixated on the artifacts of the eighties and nineties or, said more precisely, that voluntarily devours the pop culture of the 1980s and memorialises it in the smallest detail. Peculiarly, behind everything stands a forlorn, egocentric and megalomaniacal nerd who draws to himself and his favourite titles the absolute attention of the whole world with the siren song of mammon and power. The narrative of the film actually brings forth a terrifying vision of the futility of the lives of fans who hope that someone will remember them after they die, but then come to the horrifying realisation that the only thing that they have left behind is the large number of video games, movies and comics that they consumed. Though the author of the novel on which the film is based probably intended something different, Ready Player One shows an aging nerd’s wishful thinking that the titles he adores and that mean so much to him should have some sort of relevance in the mid-21st century. If we go even deeper, the whole film-adaptation project is a perverse myth which, when taking off the rose-coloured glasses, shows how pop culture devours itself while also shaping its followers and their idols thanks to the illusion that a fan can become a star. The film’s narrative only serves to reinforce the sad idea that obsessive knowledge of pop culture makes some sort of sense and could even be the key to success and wealth. Of course, there must also be the idealisation of pop culture as a work of inner creativity and not of industry, not to mention the illusion that its creations belong to fans and users rather than to corporations and license holders. Ready Player One combines all of these myths at the level of storytelling and in the project itself. It is impossible to view with anything other than amazement the ingenuity with which the corporate monster disseminates its gospel when it broadcasts to the world legends about how difficult it must have been to obtain licenses for individual cited artifacts and how the only one who could manage to pull it off is the universally adored Spielberg. But if we persist in our search, then one of us, the one who ties together all of the references in RPO, will be a star of the internet and, if it suits the corporate hydra, will shoot a film according to his or her own list. And the worst part of all of this is that it will actually be worth watching.
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I'm not fifteen anymore, so I can’t bitch about the fact that someone can stretch a game intro to over two hours. Yes, Spielberg has his egg firmly in his hand and coddles it with the grace of a pimply nerd with a gamepad in his hand, but the exuberant visual treat sticks to your palate after just a few minutes because it can universally high-five Cline's book on the price/performance ratio. On the one hand, it wants to please everyone, but in key passages, it misses the proprieties of the mainstream, i.e., interesting characters and functional interactions. Here, the film loses out quite substantially to the (already rather futile) book, and my yawns were at times more theatrical than the actor's declamations present herein. Refined visuals and fancy special effects are a standard nowadays, but unfortunately, Ready Player One doesn't offer much more than that.
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The necessary trimming of a million specific '80s references in film language (even under the guidance of the original author, Ernest Cline) transforms into a million fleeting enchantments, for which everyone must reach out and inevitably contemplate how many of them they couldn't even catch. And it's good, because blindly following a cult template would be a path to hell. Therefore, the challenges are more action-packed, straightforward, inevitably easier, and, first and foremost, easier to find. The entrances to the paths to individual keys are more about luck and intuition than encyclopedic knowledge, but after watching it for a few days, even that doesn't bother me anymore, despite such a change taking away some of Parzival's nerdiness. Similarly, the casting of Olivia Cooke takes away from Art3mis that desirable curviness (the dreamy hottie from the original remains far from the gates of adaptation) and replaces it with a girl named Samantha, but given her talent, which surpasses the rest of the youth by a bit, I almost understand this decision. And the cherry on top? Mark Rylance. Every smile, solemnity, and wink creates an immensely touching combination of life disappointments and boyish efforts. Steven Spielberg becomes the king at least once again. Nobody could have expected the transformation of a cult geekgasm into a loving celebration of human relationships.
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Better than the original that is too broad and targeted both at young people as a genre movie and at nostalgic viewer in their thirties. The film adaptation addresses most of the shortcomings, adjusts the tasks for the screen, understands pop culture and commercial video games, withstands a deliberate and stylized digital mess, does not overuse allusions, but the final footage is to excessive. You never start to care for the characters, and it keeps being silly (especially the solutions of the first and third task, there is no need to dedicate your whole life to that, the racing "glitch" would discover even a troll during the first race and the solution of the last task would be obvious to most players 30+ at first glance). In any case, after a long time, Spielberg is back as an “adult with a soul of a child", so he plays with the format, pace of narration (OASIS versus the real world) and often even in a surprisingly imaginative way work with pop culture (especially setting of the second task, it will make you smile. Generally speaking, these horror allusion are one of the most successful ones ever). The resulting megamix of pop-cultural easter eggs, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matrix, traditionally filmed Amblin movies, Sucker Punch and The Last Action Hero is significantly better than what the trailers made us expect. It's even so good that these few annoying weak moments will be even more disappointing.
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