Ready Player One

I still remember the cold, rainy night in Winter Park, Colorado when my sister Emily, my cousin Nathan, and I were all looking for something to do. We were staying in Nathan’s grandfather’s (and my uncle) best friend’s cabin. Nathan suggested we watched “Jurassic Park.” I was never keen on trying new things when I was a kid (and that’s being generous). Fortunately, Nathan was very persuasive and we all sat down to watch it. Then my life changed… again. The first time I fell in love with movies, as everyone probably knows now, was when I saw “Star Wars” six years prior. Seeing Spielberg’s masterpiece from the ’90s was the second time, and this passion for wanting to learn how films are made stuck with me. Steven Spielberg is one of the biggest reasons why I’m so passionate about filmmaking. “Jurassic Park” is a technical and storytelling marvel, and essentially, some of the most fun you can have while watching a movie. I tell this story, because I felt reminiscent of this magical feeling while watching Spielberg’s latest film, “Ready Player One.”

“Ready Player One” is an adaptation of the book under the same title. From what I’ve heard, the film derives away from the plot of the book, which I have yet to read. The film takes places in Columbus, Ohio, in the year 2045 where the world is dependant on technology for any and all happiness/escape after several natural catastrophes have left all major cities as slums. Their biggest escape is the product of technological genius, James Halliday, called the Oasis. The Oasis is a virtual reality world filled with endless possibilities. After all, one of the first lines is “…the only limit is your imagination.” After he dies, his estate releases a video announcing a contest taking place in the Oasis. The first to find three hidden keys is given $500,000,000,000 (Halliday’s fortune) and total control of the Oasis. Millions scramble to find the keys, including the main antagonist and CEO of Innovative Online Industries, Nolan Sorrento. So Wade Watts, a kid living in Columbus, and his group of friends who all met online and named themselves the “High Five,” (comprised of Wade, Art3mis, Aech, Daito, and Shoto) must overcome the challenges of facing off against Sorrento, to win freedom for the Oasis forever.

The CGI is magnificent. For a film that would require copious amounts of computer generated images, I feel like my fears for “Ready Player One” were warranted. The Oasis has no sets, it’s all 3D renderings. So as you can imagine, I didn’t want to get tired of constantly looking at something that was filmed in front of a green screen. Fortunately, those worries did eventually get put to rest. I felt like the Oasis wasn’t real, but a technology that could potentially exist, which is the entire point. Most importantly, it felt full. It was full of life, references, and all those things that make up a video game. It was spacious, sometimes beautiful, and always fun to look at.

The only complaint I have is the cinematography in the beginning of the film. The movie leads us through the Oasis with a long tracking shot. It got really hard to look at from all of the really fast movements and 360 degree turns, and it left me feeling nauseous. There was a scene in a dance club with a great throwback to “Saturday Night Fever” with Wade and Art3mis dancing to “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees. My problem is that the camera would not stop circling around them. Which would be okay, if it was a lot slower. It gets hard to study the characters and the environment when it’s mostly motion blur. It happens briefly once more with two characters talking later in the film. Besides that, the cinematography is great. The scenes in the real world were shot on film and the Oasis was digital, which might’ve seen like an obvious decision to make once you’ve seen it, but it was a very smart one. Both environments were color corrected very differently as well. The color pallet for the real world was very gray, and gave it a depressing and drab tone. The pallet for the Oasis is vibrant, and appropriate to the world the characters are in. Most of the editing and camera work was very well thought out, and those things worked out wonderfully.

The acting is really good. It’s not amazing; the movie is really fun, so it’s not like they had to dive deep into the most sophisticated and extreme characters in cinema. Spielberg knows how to direct actors in fun movies. He knows who to cast too. “Ready Player One” features Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance, T.J. Miller, and Simon Pegg, so I wasn’t real worried about them to begin with. There are plenty of newer actors in this one too, and it’s very nice of Spielberg (or any director, for that matter) to give these guys a chance to have a good project under their belt, and being in a Spielberg movie is terrific exposure. Almost all of the lesser known actors delivered just as well as the more well known ones, and I was very pleased to see them do that well. The kid who played Shoto was a little wooden, but as far as child actors go he was pretty good.

One of the two issues that Chris Stuckmann (a very popular and excellent YouTube film critic) had with this movie was that there were too many popular culture references, and sometimes it got too “packed.” Doesn’t he mean that there are never enough? Any movie where you get to see the DeLorean time machine from “Back to the Future,” the Tyrannosaurus rex from “Jurassic Park,” the Batmobile from the 1966 television show “Batman,” and King Kong in the same intense, high speed, racing sequence is enough to make me feel like I got my money’s worth out of my ticket. The race itself was phenomenal, by the way. Whoever won got the first key, so the tension was high, and it didn’t slow down much from then on. Anyway, I had so much fun with the nods to other classic movies. There is an entire chapter of this movie where the High Five merges with a classic film that is in my top 10 all time favorites. I was shaking with joy. If you see this movie and you haven’t seen the referenced movie they go into, you should be ashamed of yourself, but then go watch it, because it’ll make everything way more exciting and better. In fact, watch any movie they reference. I know there’s a few I need to catch myself up on.

Lastly, the film shares an important and heartfelt lesson on reality. It’s important, simply because it’s real. Everyone in this dystopian future lives in a place that doesn’t actually exist. Nothing will ever compare to a physical relationships you share with one another. As I’ve learned the hard way, it’s important to enjoy the time you have with the people you’re with. Media is wonderful, and it has given everybody good times and good memories, but we can’t let it consume us. It can’t be our everything. Spend time with your friends; any other ones you love, and when you’re with them, put away your phones. If there’s one thing I’ve learned the hard way, it’s that it is paramount to enjoy the time you have, with the people you are around. Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

9 out of 10