Ready Player One
Ready Player One
Ready Player One
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 (4)
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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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Steven Spielberg took all of this experience from previous movies and put it into this sci-fi novelty Ready Player One. In addition to that, he’s also used all the talent that’s made his career and created a perfect blockbuster movie that anyone must love.Furthermore, he had the audacity to divide the blockbuster into two parts, real-action and an animated one that takes the cake. And then if that wasn’t enough, the animated part turns into reality to prove what kind of genius he is. Hats off! Ready Player One is simply amazing. It beautifully uses 1980s and 1990s themes and Steven’s nailed so many pop-culture references that it’s made me a little melancholic. For example, when he toys around with Kubrick’s The Shining, I was wondering whether he wasn’t overdoing it with his genius. But then again, there isn’t that many genius moments, which made me wonder whether he couldn’t have squeezed a little more out of the 1980s and 1990s. Especially music-wise, this could have been brilliant. Anyways, I get it, he simply filmed it the way he wanted to. For example, the ending had the perfect punch. Mark Rylance might have stolen a good chunk of the movie all for himself, but I didn’t really mind, I’m actually glad that Steven discovered him and even more glad that he cast him. In the Bridge of Spies, he proved to me how great an actor he is. And here he repeated it again without any problems. Splendor. And I hope this is not the last splendor as far as the Spielberg-Rylance collaboration goes. However, it’s not that the other actors don’t deserve any praise – I’ll simply say that they are on the same level as the entire movie.
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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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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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The best Easter movie. You won't find more Easter eggs anywhere else. In comparison with the book on which it is based, Ready Player One has more levels of meaning and a more concise narrative, and it makes more sense. The real and digital worlds are intertwined much more organically in the film than in the original work, which we become aware of thanks to the cuts from OASIS to Ohio at key moments of the narrative, and which Wade experiences with extraordinary intensity (astonishment, fear, love). The fluidity of the story is also aided by the smooth transitions between the two sub-worlds using sound bridges and compositionally similar shots. ___ Compared to the book, the film’s exposition is highly condensed, but we learn from Wade’s voiceover everything we need to know in order to understand the story (the message that people stopped solving problems and began pretending that they don’t exist is especially telling). We may not necessarily be interested in how OASIS works (or doesn’t work) in the rest of the world, because Wade, whose perspective the narrative adheres to at first, isn’t interested himself. We later set Wade aside a few times in favour of other characters, who are more multi-dimensional than in the book. ___ In order for the protagonist to stop seeing the search for the keys as entertainment and to start understanding its real consequences, a girl who has unsettled accounts with IOI is needed. Wade’s awakening occurs during a dance sequence, which may otherwise seem like a pointless diversion from the main story (however, i-R0k also reveals the true identity of Parzival). ___ Art3mis is not just a manic pixie dream girl and a prize to be won. The protagonist’s awakening depends on her. She is also the one who drags Parzival into reality, thanks to which we realise, much earlier than in the book (which moralises in an awkwardly appended epilogue), the conflict between the real and virtual worlds. The central idea better permeates the entire narrative and is excellently connected to the story of Halliday, who is also a much livelier character than in the original (for which, among other things, the phenomenal Mark Rylanek deserves credit). ___ The relationship with Halliday is even more important to the protagonist than his bond with Samantha. He accepted the genius inventor as his surrogate father, from whom he learns what is right and what is wrong in life. Like Spielberg’s other young protagonists (Elliot, Jim from Empire of the Sun, Frank Abagnale), he finds, thanks to someone else, a replacement for his dysfunctional/non-existent home, to which he cannot completely dedicate himself, because it simply isn’t real. ___ For many viewers, Spielberg himself is a similar father figure who creates worlds to which we can safely escape from incomprehensible reality. In Ready Player One, he offers us another such world, while warning us of the risk that it could completely (i.e. irreversibly) absorb us. At the same time, we should believe that one of the huge companies (Gregarious Simulation Systems), which is on Wade’s side, thinks about consumers, while the other (IOI) pursues only its own enrichment, in which lies one of the story’s main paradoxes. ___ For me, Ready Player One is primarily a movie about returns. Returning in time, returning home, returning from the virtual world to reality. In the first challenge, Parzival must shift into reverse; the second takes place within the space of a film about a man trapped in a time loop; to complete the third challenge, it is necessary to uncover the very first video-game Easter egg, thus revealing the creator’s name. The realisation that real people are behind the virtual world is the point of Halliday’s game. Only the person who knows the details of the creator’s life relating in a certain way to how he thinks (breaking the rules) or what he most regrets (the girl he didn't kiss, the friend he lost) can win. ___ Pop-culture references serve the narrative much better than in the book. This is not an autotelic service for nerds, though it is sometimes a bit unnecessarily pointed out to us that the motorcycle over there is from Akira. For example, as Wade’s race car in OASIS has a design similar to the DeLorean in Back to the Future (with accessories from Knight Rider’s KITT), we understand that he's a fan of Zemeckis’s sci-fi comedy and it thus makes sense when he purchases from a video-game store a “Zemeckis Cube”, which later helps him to escape from a difficult situation. Many of the songs refer to specific scenes from particular films (“In Your Eyes” from Say Anything…, “Also sprach Zarathustra” from 2001: A Space Odyssey), and if you’re in the picture, you will fully appreciate the extra layer that they add to the given moment of the film. Also, other products of the (predominantly) American entertainment industry not only serve as rewards for attentive viewers, but also convey the motifs that the film presents and help bring clarity to the story. ___ From a geek’s perspective, Ready Player One is visually, intertextually and technically so sophisticated that it touched me a few times and in the end I - at the same moment as Wade – even shed a tear (and I think that not being ashamed to admit something like that is the essence of geekdom). Even from a film critic’s perspective, I did not find any fundamental shortcomings in the film. Narratively, it is a brilliant affair without dead spots, the action scenes are extremely uncluttered (even in 3D), the story has many more layers than it may seem to a naive viewer... (though you don’t have to agree with its message like I do). In short, I don’t think that my almost uncritical enthusiasm derives only from the feeling that this is a film just for me (which is a feeling that millions of other viewers probably have). 90%
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After a long time, I found myself in the cinema almost not breathing. Spielberg, on the other hand, ventilates like a young man. What could have ended up as a storehouse of nostalgia and a pile of fan references turns, in his hands, into a frenetic, yet completely clear and systematically arranged blockbuster, which does not lack steam, emotion, pop culture, but mainly something through and through the present. The way in which Spielberg is able to naturally wedge digital avatars into the monument to his filmmaking generation (The Shining bike ride) is the best evidence that he has not lost any of his relevance over the decades. He is able to look back whilst standing firmly in the present. RPO is not a whimsical dream about the golden age of Easter eggs - it is a radiant rocket which, through its penetration, leaves behind filmmakers who are a generation younger. Yeah, I'd maybe trim it a little bit, but otherwise it is a clean and crystal-fun ride. Reality may be the best, but I always like to be fed stuff like this.
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