‘Ready Player One’ Film Review: Spielberg’s Weaponized Nostalgia is a thoughtful, but not truthful d

Adaptations, adaptations, adaptations can go either two ways…

1: give me a shovel, and I’ll bury that movie in an unmarked grave.

2: that film was absolutely awesome, and I will never leave the cinema (literally hide underneath my cinema seat and see the film over, and over again).

Thankfully Ready, Player, One fits into the second category.

The director of Close Encounters and ET takes a trip to a new kind of space – the virtual worlds inside computers. Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” might mark the beginning of a new era in filmmaking or the end of an old one, but either way it feels like an experiment for the film-maker that he grasped with both hands.

The screenplay’s by Zak Penn (who has a number of superhero movies to his name, including The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk and X Men: The Last Stand) and Ernest Cline (based on Cline’s novel) seems to be weaponizing a certain age group’s grapple-grapes(you know who you are!) and personal nostalgia for John Hughes, Monty Python, “Buckaroo Banzai” and other past projects from yesteryears. And with endless nostalgic references to 70s and 80s pop culture, the film is a treasure-trove for any self-respecting nerd-herder.

“Ready Player One” takes a fairly recognizable — eccentric creator/character, and uses a contest to search for the heir to ‘his’ kingdom — and buries it in virtual reality simulations and pop-culture nostalgia. The results are… amishmash that reminds us that, for all of Spielberg’s many appreciable strengths as a filmmaker, comedy and animation aren’t necessarily at the top of the list.

A Steve Jobs-esque Halliday (Mark Rylance), who created a vast and intricate virtual world known as Oasis with his pal, Ogden Morrow, the adorable (Simon Pegg), which has become a respite for residents of the grimy post-apocalyptic 2045. Where overpopulation and a long standing drought has turned the real world into a barren wasteland, and former cities into poverty stricken shanty towns.

(The Oasis is supposed to be a global phenomenon; where ‘you’ can do whatever they want, (be it mountain-climbing with Batman or fisticuffs with Freddie Krueger), and we’re apparently not meant to notice that, in the non-virtual world, all of the characters in the film live in or near Columbus, Ohio, (and not in the book!)

Just before his death ‘Halliday’ vowed to leave his vast fortune and control of the OASIS to the winner of a contest he designed using some of his favourite pop culture references. .

From the beginning we’re thrown straightaway with exposition (not a bad thing, but not necessarily needed), and lots, and lots, and lots of it.

So we learn through supers and voiceover the year is 2045 and teen, our hero, Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan)), who is known in the virtual world as a “=Final Fantasy “Parzival,” or “Z” for short, is living in the city with the world’s fastest-growing population (yes, you’re guessed it?) Columbus, Ohio.

We quickly establish Wade’s backstory. Parents died, leaving him in the care of a harried aunt and her string of loser boyfriends. Wade and Aunt Alice live in “The Stacks,” a kind of industrial favela comprised of trailer-cars stacked one on top of the other between rickety iron poles down which Wade makes sliding look awfully fun.

The world is bleak, its problems large, and rather than fight for change, people spend their time playing in a virtual-reality world called “The OASIS,” where they can make avatars that look and act however they want.

Like Wade, the Oasis is full of independent treasure hunters like young Z. Pals like his best friend Aech, a mechanical genius whose avatar is a giant black man with robot parts in his midsection. (The spoiler-averse should avoid looking at the credits to see whose voice is delivering Aech’s lines, the incredible, Lena Waithe).

From afar, the two have been admiring the egg-hunting work of Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), an anime-styled woman whose online motorcycle has Tron flair, and their paths cross in the movie’s first really thrilling set piece.

We also have Sho (Philip Zhao) and Daito (Win Morisaki), they’re all playing Halliday’s games — including a virtual road race through Manhattan where the obstacles include dinosaurs and King Kong — they’re studying Halliday’s memories and his cultural obsessions for hints and guideposts.

It’s been five years, however, and no one has been able to earn the first key. Not even the wealthy bad guys, a corporation named IOI that is headed by a largely, forgettable, villain, Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn, but, chilling as always in ‘his’ performance) has built a massive army of mercenaries to scour the Oasis for the keys so that he can exploit this realm for commercial gain.

But hardcore geeks (the egg hunters, or “gunters”) have the advantage, since the clues draw on every comic book, movie and video game the inventor consumed in his life — not to mention the biographical trivia housed in a vast archive of digitally reassembled memories. (That archive was just a published memoir in the novel; here, it’s an entrancing living museum overseen by a stuffy butler-like robot.)

Sorrento and Co. want to win the Easter egg because The OASIS is the world’s “most important economic resource,” and because, if they own The OASIS, they can finally dismantle the barriers Halliday placed against advertising there. Subtlety is not Ready Player One’s strong suit. (The evil IOI corporation enslaves workers in an elaborate attempt to solve the clues and find the keys.)

So much of “Ready Player One” consists of following these characters around as they jump from one challenge to the next, solving one problem before moving on to the next problem, with clues from the movies, music and video games Halliday loved.

The second act has Parzival behind the wheel of the DeLorean from ‘Back to the Future’, lining up against The A-Team’s van, Mad Max’s Interceptor and the bike from ‘Akira’, among many others.

Director Steven Spielberg does what he does best, and that’s is in set-pieces. He is at his best when he’s dazzling you. (And razzle-dazzle ’em, he does), often succeeding in making you feel as if you are inside a videogame, or on some insane ride at a theme park.

Before Wade wins the first key, he and the others engage in a car race that’s just terrific. You’re up, you’re down, you’re at stomach-churning angles. The famous Jurassic Park’s, T-Rex makes appearance Say ‘hello’ to King Kong, watch out, you’re going to crash…!

The concluding battle has a few moments of breathlessness, too, and an entertaining interlude in which our heroes enter the world of The Shining is fun and visually impressive.

The attention to details of design is wonderful.

Spielberg would seem to be the ideal director for such a thorough (and overlong) trip down memory lane. This is, after all, the decade he helped define, asserting himself as one of our greatest and most influential filmmakers. “Ready Player One” may have sprung from someone else’s brain originally, but it’s a Spielbergian hero’s journey at its core.

And we have frequent nods to John Hughes’ Bratpack movies such as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, to a fantastically well observed homage to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Ready Player One does a great job in remaining faithful to the original source material (but not how the book unfolds).

Shame really…

because that’s how the film loses its way by ‘ripping out’ the book’s beloved heart for a re-imaginative on-screen sequence. But, otherwise by cramming too many references into the film… it is highly engaging.

Another question?

Would the same focus had been given to character development.

And that’s where another problem lays…

Unusually for Spielberg, the emotional grace-notes that elevate his best work in the genre – Elliott’s friendship with ‘ET’, the emotional toll of the kids and Dr Grant in ‘Jurassic Park’ when they’re being hunted by flesh, eating dinosaurs.

This flatness of character fatally detracts from the spectacle Spielberg has created. When Wade gives a speech calling the nation to rebellion, when he professes his love and speaks about morals and duty and things, his words fall flat.

Because love and morality are human characteristics.

“Ready Player One” is at once familiar in its fabric and forward-thinking in its technology, with a combination of gritty live action and glossy CGI.

Wade has a swagger that’s hugely compelling, and in real world Tye Sheriden excels in his role, yet, tonely, his character falls flat, nothing like the book.

On the other-hand, Cooke doesn’t get nearly as much of a character to work with here as she did in the gripping dark comedy “Thoroughbreds,” but at least Art3mis is Parzival’s equal in terms of her smarts and abilities, and she and isn’t simply relegated to being “the girl.”

It was a shame that Ben Mendelsohn’s character is not faithful to the source material. And a major character death is not fully envisioned (but hey, the film is a friendly, family film in the end!) But T.J. Miller’s character I-Rok has a much bigger role in the adaptation than he did in the original novel, and the actors charisma and wit shines through on screen — a side-dish of wacky, insane humour.

In the end, none of these changes should really matter either, so long as Spielberg and co. manage to recapture the same feeling and joy that was found in Ernest Cline’s original novel.

And so…

Gamers are far from the only ones who will respond to this virtual-world-set picture, which strikes an ideal balance between live action and CGI.

It’s a  deeply enjoyable, charming and knowing film from a tireless director who shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. A family, fun film that will appeal to all ages.

Oh, and the answer to that John Hughes question?

It’s Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062.

4/5 STARS