Ready Player One 2018

I read the book, and listened to the book, way before the movie was announced. When the movie was announced, I was very excited to see the possibilities. There was some weird tie-in with my favorite band, Rush, who only had a minor role in the released movie.

Growing up in the 80s and being a huge video game nerd, this movie hit me on so many levels. My first watch of the movie was in the theater shortly after theatrical release (in some crazy, new fangled 3D technology) and it was great! However, I left the theater thinking that the book was much better than the movie. As others have pointed out, there are significant differences between the two.

[INTERLUDE] - My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer and was ecstatic to read about is inclusion in the book. Sad to say, it didn't make it to the big screen.

However, after watching the movie several times at home, I can grow to appreciate WHY the changes were made between the book and the movie. This movie has climbed into my #3 all time movie slot - which #1 and #2 will likely explain why.....

1) The Shining
2) Raiders of the Lost Ark
3) Ready Player One
4) Ronin not applicable to this review

Anyone who lived through the 80s should watch this flick - you'll likely see something you recognize.

I would drop 0.5 points for the differences between the book and the movie, but I cannot justify giving it a 9.

10/10

#665190

I did not know what I would really think about it when I started to watch this movie. I hoped that I would like it but I was not sure what I would actually get. I used to like Steven Spielberg a lot but later in his career he’s done movies that either was not my kind of movies or that I was simply not that impressed by. However, as it turned out, this one I liked a lot as you can see from my rating.

As a computer nerd and science fiction geek this movie was of course right up my alley. I have thought other movies would be my kind of movies before but been sorely disappointed by ignorant and incompetent screen writers and directors trying to cash in on subjects that they knew absolutely nothing about. Spielberg did a good job of not screwing this one up.

The core of this movie is of course plenty of action and computer generated special effects with a somewhat apocalyptic story to bind everything together. The story works but it is not really anything special and some of the stuff, like the loyalty centers, was frankly a bit silly. But, as I wrote, it works and does not get in the way so that’s good enough for me.

As the previously mentioned nerd and geek I absolutely loved the abundant references to science fiction, fantasy and gaming history and lore. For me those were soo cool. I will probably watch the movie again just to focus on the background and see how much stuff I can spot. Stuff that I missed when watching the movie the first time.

The CGI effects and the action was also pretty awesome. The movie starts off right away with a great and absolutely insanely wild car race and continues to go strong from there. The battle at Doom castle at the end is just epic.

The only thing that made me go WTF was at the end [SPOILER AHEAD] were Mr Asswipe Sorrento finally catches up with the High Five’s van and then he just freezes and looks at Wade with a silly look on his face. What the fuck was that? Just stupid for no good reason.

Well, few are the movies where there’s nothing to gripe about. On the whole though this movie was great in my book. Also, I cannot say how pleased I am to finally watch a Hollywood movie that is not a remake or a sequel or a prequel or some other lame excuse to rehash a movie that has already been made.

I could feel a sweet taste in my mouth coming out from the cinema after Ready Player One knowing I’d be coming straight back here, my very own “Oasis”, to write this very review about a movie that I hope will be a landmark for all the other people, who like me live in a world where “pop culture” isn’t just a part of history, but it’s a part of real life… or simply IS real life.

Ready Player One isn’t a movie for everyone. It’s a gem that is only to be understood by the people who it is made for. A hymn bellowing aloud to every single person who struggles in life.

The misunderstood, the shunned… people who don’t know what place they have on this earth, people who don’t know how to start living, people who hide and those who create an invisible shell around themselves separating them from everyone else… people like me… the internet people.

Those of us that live in a world where comic books aren’t just “books with figures for kids”, where videogames aren’t just brainwashing violence, where movies matter and they have to be talked about, where the line between fantasy and what is real and tangible is so thin, that it enables us to expand our minds and so deeply changing every single one of us: the way we talk, the way we look, the way we think, how we interact, how we live!

Those are the people Ready Player One was made for. Me and you reading this.
This is for US.

I feel sorry for those who cannot possibly feel the relevance this movie has. Who did not understand any of the references, the little things this movie was brought up upon, the lingo the characters use, the way they are portraited the way in which it takes them a blink of an eye to feel like family, to trust one another completely and depend on each other, the need they have to feel included and not eclipsed by society.

There is only sadness in that, at least for me writing this, I could not live a life without this, it would be colorless.

Ready Player One is an amalgamation of pop culture concentrated in 2 hours and 20 minutes in the form of a videogame where everything your imagination wants is right in front of you.

The characters will fight against an “EvilCorp” to take control of “Oasis” the virtual reality that is the pinnacle of society’s future by racing to find the ultimate “Easter egg” and ensure the community is safe from exploitation by greedy goblins that do not want you to install “AdBlock” as a mod.

The movie struggles to have a very clear line between real and virtual because of the consistent switches between CGI and “regular” film, this up until the very end where it finds balance and leaves the viewer, who understands what is going on, with a message that to me is most important in all that happens: take a break from the internet.

I shouldn’t need to say this – but render unto Caesar the quality of CGI is out the roof, everything is super-detailed and the animations are PHENOMENAL, which is on-par with the few real-life choreographies that are featured in some of the switches between real and virtual that I mentioned earlier. The colors are so vivid and perfectly placed some of the scenes are dreamy and give a sense of everlasting life to what is happening which further thins the line between you – the viewer and it – the picture.

Steven Spielberg is a master at giving life to what could very well look bland and lifeless and for that, I shall thank him till the day I die.
It’s always a pleasure to see Easter eggs and references inside movies, like we’re used to with the MCU, but I daresay this one is an entire different level.

Let me explain to you why: Everything you see, from the WIRED magazine, to the “Twitch” streaming mention, to the DeLorean to the Iron Giant, Tracer, Halo, Gears of War and also all the Back to the Future tingling sounds that warm my heart, these aren’t just references or Easter eggs, and this is why this movie it SO GOOD, they ARE the movie!

It’s just a facet of our life that is there to remind ourselves that, however sci-fi the movie might look like, if you think deep enough it’s actually a mirror of everyday life (if you’re a nerd, like me).

The story itself isn’t too shallow or a Denis Villeneuve mindfuck, it’s a simple low and high climax with a big reveal and a moral story, so it’s a textbook good story… but it is the way it was shaped to enclose everything that just fucking shoots at your brain so seamlessly that makes it even better.

Besides my personal opinion, I think the cast overall was just spot on. I don’t think I can contribute objectively on this subject, for this particular work.

I rarely enjoy Ben Mendelsohn, especially as a bad guy.

What I can say is that I loved the perpetuating and profusing synergy between Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke. I LOVED how bad-ass Lena Waithe looked OOC and how massive her character looked in-game which also showed some soft spots which gave it more depth.

Win Morisaki did one thing near the end of the movie that I won’t spoil but I screamed the name of that thing in the room and everybody was both pissed and annoyed by me (Don’t regret it)

In general, I just loved the crew altogether, bit of a weak villain but honestly, it’s not that bad, it’s really hard giving dignity to someone who you know is going to lose anyway, unless you are Andrew Kevin Walker and like fucking up everyone’s mind.

To end this review I would like to say I almost cried in 10 scenes purely by nerd-gasm, I definitely cried when Win Morisaki did that thing that I cannot speak of without spoiling, with the big purple sword and that bang-bang-bang-bang and those tin-tin-tin from Back to the Future and also all the brum-brum-brum, also cried on the dance swooshy-swoosh scene where they – and so I kept crying and I had to hold my breath when she did that thing with the bike that they mentioned and that was my big “whoa” and then the movie ended and they said that thing and I was like “fuck that I don’t take days off I gotta learn RS6 Siege”.

Peace.

You can find my reviews on real life @WiseMMO on Twitter.

An absolute nerdfest, especially for those of us who were teens in the 80's. The pop culture references come thick and fast in a film that threatens (though never does) to overload the senses. There are loads of articles and videos online going into depth, with checklists of 'every' Easter Egg in the film (am sure they missed a few, as did I), but many have overlooked the biggest cultural reference of them all. By this, I mean Spielberg himself. Here, he returns to his childlike sense of wonder and glee that has been missing from many of his films over this last few years. Yes, Bridge of Spies was great, and I enjoyed War Horse, but I missed the Spielberg of ET, Close Encounters, and the original Indiana Jones movie trilogy. Yet here he is, blasting us with pure nostalgia with filmmaking that only he is truly capable of, and it's that, in amongst every other reference in the film (one scene towards the middle will blow your mind) that made me truly enjoy this film.

Sadly, of course, there are critics who have come down hard on the film. Yet the film isn't made for them. If it had been packed with references to Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman, with 3D subtitles and film noir subtexts, they would have been in seventh heaven. Unfortunately, many of them don't know one end of a joypad from another, and the only type of Spielberg film in their blu-ray collections are Lincoln (yawn) and Schindler's List. THIS IS A FILM FOR EVERYBODY ELSE, those who enjoy childlike escapism, who played Dungeons and Dragons, and who still miss the much lamented sci-fi series Firefly. Ready Player One isn't a perfect film, there are times when it drags, but give it a chance (overlook it's occasional shortcoming) and enjoy it for the pure escapist fare it is. And don't forget the message at the end of the film.

It's doubtful there will be a sequel, but if Ernest Cline ever wants to write Ready Player Two, I hope Spielberg gets to make the movie. Game on!

Reviewing Ready Player One is rather easy. If you have grown up with 70/80s video games, movies and music you will love it. If you don’t know you this era very very well you will likely not even notice how good the movie is and will find it mediocre or as millennials say „meh“. The movie is not just about an easteregg hunt, RPO is itself one giant easteregg. Now the whole thing about eastereggs is that you must know they exist in order to find them. If you don‘t know (or care) what the original Batmobile, A-Team van or Akira bike looked like you will not even see them. And there are literally a thousand of those hidden references and cameos packed into RPO. As for gender gap I won‘t deny that there are women who know about all this stuff but they are in the minority. Especially for the video game part which coincidentally makes the biggest part of the movie. I would give this 5 out of 5 stars if not for two things. I thought the third key puzzle was rather weak compared to the first two (especially the second one). And secondly I could have done with out the “morale” at the end about enjoying real life rather than virtuality. That was a bit on the nose and unnecessary.

Once I started to find out a little bit about “Ready Player One” the book, and how a good chunk of its appeal was based on all the pop culture references it contained, I wondered how they could make a movie that would appeal to a broad audience of people and not just people my age (35+) who love this kind of nostalgic stuff and would be familiar with it. When I saw the trailers, they just didn’t seem to connect with me. But I’m pleased to say that Steven Spielberg has done a pretty good job of balancing nostalgia with enough current references to video games and virtual reality to appeal to kids of today as well as adults.

“READY PLAYER ONE” follows Wade (played by Tye Sheridan), a guy who escapes his poverty-and-problem-filled life by entering THE OASIS, a virtual reality video game world where you can be pretty much anything you want, and look however you want. The reclusive creator of the OASIS, described as kind of a mix of Steve Jobs & Willy Wonka (and played by Oscar-winner Mark Rylance) has died. But his final act is to declare that whatever player can find three keys he hid inside the virtual world, will inherit the trillion-dollar company. Nobody has had any luck for years, until Wade finally breaks through and finds the first key. From there it’s a race through the OASIS (and the real world) for Wade and several others who are also hoping to win the game, including the head of a mega-corporation that wants to own the OASIS so they can make even MORE money.

I really enjoyed how this movie played out. Of course, I was looking forward to the pop culture references and seeing how many I could spot, and I was not disappointed. I spotted A LOT, and I didn’t even scratch the surface of all the stuff they had hidden in there. I looked through some photos after the movie and it was like those “Where’s Waldo” books. Just SO MUCH stuff crammed in almost every shot in the movie. The more you know about 80’s movies and games, the more fun you’ll have watching this.

It also had a very likeable cast, led by Tye Sheridan and Mark Rylance. But we also get Ben Mendelsohn (from Rogue One), Olivia Cooke, T.J. Miller (from Deadpool & Big Hero 6) and Hannah John-Kamen (from Game of Thrones). Spielberg plays to their strengths, and it's interesting if you remember they only are live-acting for half the movie. The other half, they’re voice acting their OASIS avatars. So it’s doubly impressive, in my opinion.

No surprise that the visuals in the movie are amazing, but I also liked the message the movie (eventually) tells about why even though we often want to get away from real life hardships by disappearing into a virtual world where we can be whatever we want, it’s so important to try and improve our real world and not just escape from it.

A couple of warnings though… it is rated PG-13 and has some fairly intense moments. There’s a scene literally ripped out of the movie “The Shining” where it could be pretty freaky for young viewers. It also has a lot of references to video games (no surprise) and uses a lot of video game slang that might seem like a foreign language to those not familiar with how those online worlds work. So you might think twice before taking a kid under age 10 or 11, but on the other hand you might also need them to explain the video game slang to you!

Overall, however, I really enjoyed “READY PLAYER ONE” and can’t wait to see it again. I found it to be a fun mixture of action and mystery, puzzles and peril, touchstones to the past and touches of the future. Sometimes watching the movie was like playing a game of Pop Culture “I Spy” and (I am just the target audience for that!) but I didn't feel like the movie relied too heavily on the pop culture references alone for you to understand the story, but instead those images/references played just enhanced what was happening and/or acted as bonus fun for those who were familiar with them. Personally, I couldn't believe that 1) there was a reference to the movie "Krull" (the "ninja star" that cuts off I-Rok's arm) and 2) that I easily and completely got the reference while I'm sure everyone else in the theater was wondering what this weirdo was laughing about.

Worth pointing out that I have only read the first 15 pages of the book so I’m speaking as someone who only knew the basics about the story before watching it. And fitting that on Easter weekend, a movie full of “Easter Eggs” comes to theaters!

I encourage you to give this one a try!

Like a rebooted retro video game, the music is lame (the 80's were the worst decade for pop in the history of music), the action is sick and the replay value is high.

While the film feels a little long for what it is, the story is solid and the pacing is fine but the real draw of Ready Player One is the visuals. The cinematography is often startling and the special effects were well done which is important because this film is nothing but special effects. I saw it in 3D and was glad I did, so if you're wondering if you should splurge on 4K for this, I'd say definitely yes.

There's an abundance of Easter eggs, though some of them might go over the heads of younger viewers (how many tweens have seen John Boorman's glam opus Excalibur?), and there are so many eggs crammed in here that you may find yourself becoming a tad sick of them by the end. It's fun to spot the references, but they do sometimes get in the way of the storytelling.

Spielberg delivers a fun film, though a bit too over the top at moments and there's one giant WTF people will be joking about as much as room for one more on Rose's raft. Still, Ready Player One is a pure popcorn movie and lives up to the hype, which is a difficult enough chore in these demanding times.

The biggest relief I can say about Ready Player One is it works, even without the never-ending barrage of pop culture nostalgia. Upset across all social media platforms, a concern I took part in, was the movie had no identity to show for itself, that it relied heavily on better films from the 80's to sell itself. I do not think the comments I made were bad or outdated now, as it is important to criticize art, but I can happily say I did enjoy this movie's core, even without the aid of the surface eye candy. This is the most Spielberg movie that man has made in quite awhile, after such masterpieces like The BFG. It follows the standard hero's journey he's used a number of times, this closely paralleling E.T., which was a welcome return. This is the director I fell in love with, and it seems he knew how to take the disaster of a book this is adapted from, and create an entertaining blockbuster. My bigger hiccups about the picture, are one or two tasteless scenes, specially the haunted house rendition of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. It's a crowd-pleaser moment, understandably, but something about it's total disregard for the meanings from the original film almost come off as disrespectful. It's the closest the movie touched the "Hey, remember this thing you recognize?!" predicament I was fearing before watching. I think a more shallow movie, hell Grease would've worked much better, could fix this. Any other issues I had could be pointed at it's predictability, and over-reliance on filling the run-time with references, some of which don't advance the story much. I could see what they were doing, showing Wade being smarter than everyone else in the game, but having him list off stuff like it's a references checklist is where it can get half-assed. But most of the callbacks are respectful and work, they did their research, thankfully. No cringe shit like Marvel Studios' Black Panther's, "What're those?!" Just end me. Happy to just say I've seen another blockbuster in four months that I didn't hate. I'm going to remember that opening race, good shit. And, I geeked out like hell when MechaGodzilla was fighting The Iron Giant. It makes no sense, but I understand that's the point.

Entertaining, though lacklustre in telling an original story.
The highlight for me personally was definitely when the main characters enter The Shining. The way this is created looks to true to the source material and is full of recognisable moments from Kubrick's movie. Also, the way the added scenes tie into the original is really well done and the way the characters interact with the scenes we all know is good for a chuckle or two (like the scene with Aech and the twins).

The story itself is nothing special; poor guy gets a chance to make the world a better place for himself and everybody else by stopping an evil corporation from getting absolute power and in the end succeeds in doing so against all odds.
But that is not why you watch this movie. You watch it to be entertained and on that front it delivers. There is no point in the movie where you are bored as there is so much visual spectacle to behold throughout the entire movie. The effects are always great and the most fun thing in this movie is spotting the references to pop-culture both past and present. And trust me, there are a lot.

So even though the plot is nothing special, if you're looking for a movie to just have a good time with this one won't disappoint.

In Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg adapts the pop-culture-packed novel by Ernest Cline. Set in the year 2045, the world is plagued by climate change and overpopulation, causing people to seek refuge in the virtual reality world of the OASIS. After its creator, James Halliday, passed away, he hid three Easter eggs within the virtual world, with the prize for finding them being control over the OASIS and a vast fortune. Wade Watts, an 18-year-old "Gunter" (egg hunter) and his allies, as well as the nefarious Innovative Online Industries, led by Nolan Sorrento, compete to find the eggs. The film is filled with pop culture references and CGI, but the story and characters are thin and not particularly engaging. The actors, including Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, and Ben Mendelsohn, give solid performances, but the romance is forced and the villain is cartoonish. The visuals are spectacular at times, but the final battle becomes tedious. The references and nods to pop culture are fun, but ultimately the movie is just an average, CGI-filled adventure with a thin story.

En Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg adapta la novela repleta de cultura pop de Ernest Cline. Ambientada en el año 2045, el mundo está plagado de cambios climáticos y superpoblación, lo que hace que las personas busquen refugio en el mundo de realidad virtual de OASIS. Después de que su creador, James Halliday, falleciera, escondió tres huevos de Pascua dentro del mundo virtual, y el premio por encontrarlos fue el control de OASIS y una gran fortuna. Wade Watts, un "Gunter" (cazador de huevos) de 18 años y sus aliados, así como las infames Innovative Online Industries, dirigidas por Nolan Sorrento, compiten para encontrar los huevos. La película está llena de referencias a la cultura pop y CGI, pero la historia y los personajes son débiles y no particularmente atractivos. Los actores, incluidos Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke y Ben Mendelsohn, brindan actuaciones sólidas, pero el romance es forzado y el villano es caricaturesco. Las imágenes son espectaculares por momentos, pero la batalla final se vuelve tediosa. Las referencias y los guiños a la cultura pop son divertidos, pero en última instancia, la película es solo una aventura promedio llena de CGI con una historia delgada.