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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The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger. (Warner Bros. US)
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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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Steven Spielberg is back in form after a very long time and he made a very nice Nerdgasm, which will take you back not only to the 80s and 90s, but also to your childhood, when you played the first game on Nintendo or Playstation. The movie already has potential cult status and we may be in for a new video game movie heyday. Tye Sheridan, the main character, and Olivia Cooke are very likable in both the real world and in Oasis, and the villain bearing the name Nolan is solid as well, which doesn't seem like a coincidence. Graphically it's very good, the action is varied and entertaining (though there could have been a lot more of it). The best of it comes right at the beginning in the form of a race where we're treated to King Kong and a Tyrannosaurus Rex, then there’s really just the grand finale, unless you count some minor action digressions. The references and Easter Eggs are very good, there are plenty of them and it's almost impossible to spot them all on first viewing. This is an enjoyable original film that is fun, brisk and nicely colored, but I would have liked more humor and more crazy action to complete satisfaction. Still, I look forward to a second viewing. 80%
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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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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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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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