Ready Player One

Year: 2018
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, Hannah John-Kamen, Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, T.J. Miller


Plot: A virtual reality world known as the OASIS is an escape for nearly everyone on the planet in the future. When its creator, James Halliday, dies, he leaves behind hidden easter eggs in the OASIS, which if discovered by any player, will win them a large fortune and control over the OASIS. Wade Watts aka Parzifal, a young man from Columbus and a huge fan of Halliday's, is determined to win the contest, but he will have to go through IOI, a powerful corporation headed by the power hungry Sorrento, who wants the OASIS for himself.


Review: It's perfectly fine if you haven't read Ernest Cline's novel of which this film is based on, you won't need to. Ready Player One is basically a video game like adventure featuring tons of pop culture references over the last several decades. If you're a film nerd or ever been one (and who hasn't, really?), this movie will be a very fun ride.

There are basically two worlds here, the real world and the OASIS. Director Steven Spielberg and writer Zak Penn, co-writing with Cline, deftly balance the movie's time between both worlds. The real world is reminiscent of Robocop's future, filled with slums and lorded upon by a big corporation. The OASIS on the other hand is a limitless universe filled with anything and everything you can think of from the worlds of film, TV, music and video games. You'll get nerdgasms from start to finish.

Without spoiling too much, allow me to name a handful of things you'll see: the Delorean from Back To the Future, King Kong, The Iron Giant, Akira and a certain Kubrick film which is central to one of the quests for the eggs. If you don't blink, you'll catch Freddy, Jason and Robocop in that world too.

Spielberg said that this is one of the hardest films he's ever done, and I can totally understand that. To create the OASIS so believably must have been an enormous task, and to make everyone's avatars look awesome and yet capable of emoting must have been even harder. On top of that, the action sequences are incredibly complex. The opening vehicle race was a superb sequence, which was only topped by the final battle sequence. It's an amazing CGI filled spectacle whenever viewers are taken into the OASIS.

The actors here are basically an ensemble cast, all working in unison to tell the story, and none truly stand out that much more than the other, though Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke do make a good team as Parzifal and Art3mis, while Ben Mendelsohn is a solid villain as Sorrento, even though he's channeling Orson Krennic most of the time. Mark Rylance shines as James Halliday while Simon Pegg does well as Halliday's former partner Morrow, though he doesn't get much screen time.

I'll admit that this film will not appeal to viewers who either don't brush up on pop culture or never played video games at all. If they don't understand what the film's about within the first five minutes after Wade's narration, chances are they won't enjoy it. But I say, give this film a chance. It's so much fun it's irresistible.

To sum it up, Ready Player One is the dream movie of anyone who's ever been a film nerd. (8/10)