Ready Player one

Ready Player one

(Spoiler review)

Before I start this review, I feel that I should lay down some credentials. I was born in 1979 and grew up on 80s cartoons reruns of stuff from the 60s and 70s, I've owned a nintendo, super nintendo, N64 and every Playstation released excluding the hand helds. I've continued my love of sci-fi and cult cinema well through into adulthood. I get nostalgia in fact I'm two seasons into a rewatch of Deep Space Nine. I have however never read the book Ready Player One. As much as I love nostolgia and have a stormtrooper helmet next to my TV and a fiberglass Iron Man suit in my living room, I went into this film with the expectation that Nostolgia needed to be the dressing on top of a solid script.

Directed by Steven Spielberg Ready player one tells the story of Wade plauyed by Tye Sheridan, he's your generic point of view guy. He's geeky but not too geeky in the real world he lives in the slums like eveyrone else. He also escapes by reality by strapping on a VR headset and escaping into the Oasis a virtual world filled with nostolgia. When the creator of the Oasis died, he hid away three keys that would grant the first person to find them millions of dollars and control over the virtual world. After teaming up with his fellow guild members, love interest Art3mis, best friend Aech and a couple of others, Wade or Parzival as he's also known go in search of the hidden keys whilst competing against an evil corporation. Along the way they learn how the clues relate to the personal life of Oasis creator Halliday played by Mark Rylance.

So first I'm going to point out the stuff that I loved about the film. Try and deny it as much as you like this film is visually stunning the effects work is very solid though I do have a concern that with the rate at which video games tech advances, this film is probably going to look very dated in the near future. Among the best sequences in the movie is a homage to the Shinning with some impressive recreations albeit with some careful editing to cover up some nudity. Its hard to resist grinning when you see a character like Mecha Godzilla show up or the 1960s batmobile. The pacing of the film is also pretty impressive and you're not likely to feel bored. The big question becomes what do we have here beyond nostalgia. Is there substance underneath or is this a strange experiment in brand marketing?

As I've said before I've never read the book but by all accounts there is a lot more characterisation contained within including a character death, and the reveal that Aech who is depicted as a tough guy, is actually a lesbian in real life. Aech on her own feels like a character who was short changed so that the focus could be placed squarely on the two leads. I'm not sure if there's a love triangle situation in the book but I imagine that would have been interesting. The film plays with the idea that the people online might not be what you expect in the real world but it never does much with the concept . Art3mis in real life has a birthmark that has led to her feeling insecure about her appearance, This is regrettably resolved when Wade tells her that he loves her anyway and doesn't care about the mark as opposed to her accepting herself.

The other aspect which I had difficulty with was that by the halfway mark it seemed like the Oasis was more than just escapism, it was an obstacle preventing people from fixing the real world. Nobody wanted to get the Earth back on track, the Oasis needed to go and at a certain point it felt like maybe just maybe that would happen, sadly though this was not the ending we got.

In my view Spielberg typically has two type of movies, his family fun genre films with aliens, Indiana Jones etc and his more serious character focused films like War Horse. What I would love to see is for him to blend the best of both. For me the best sci-fi stories have characters that are well developed, interesting and multi layered. This one's not quite at that level, its well worth watching and it is enjoyable but it lacks the substance to make it a genuine classic. A special mention goes out to Simon Pegg whom I didn't recognise until the credits. 7/10