Ready Player One 2018

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.

For the most part, I liked Ready Player One. The film is entertaining and imaginative, but it never seems to reach the potential that it has. It feels like it squanders some good material in a quest to be a parable about the dangers of virtual reality.

I finished reading the book a few days before the film's release (today) and I have the book's story fresh in my mind to compare with the film.

The film, co-written by the book's author Ernest Cline only has the very basics from the book. There were some deep structural changes made the the film's story and characters some for the better and some for the worse.

The changes to the way the keys were found and used, that was a good change. The book's version was dull and drawn out, the film's version is more dynamic, quicker to the point and in general more exciting -- a good example is the first key, in the book it was a dungeon quest that ends with Parzival playing an arcade game. In the movie, it is a race that is visually stunning. The research and Halliday journal are compressed into a museum of sorts and that helps a lot.

One of the changes that was for the worse was the way the characters met. Having Parzival meet Art3mis so early and having Art3mis be the one that initiates the meeting was a bad choice. The chemistry between the two never really works onscreen and the "love" that they feel for each other feels forced and too quick. Aech, who has a larger part and backstory in the book, is reduced to basically a driver. The Japanese kid who dies in the book lives in the movie, which takes away from the evilness of Sorento. Also, having the kids be together in the real world and working together is a bad change as it takes away from the competition. I can see why Spielberg would want this change to happen -- it follows in the same footsteps as his other films that feature kids as the protagonists.

Speaking of Spielberg, the man has two sides. There is Serious Spielberg (The Post) and there is Fun Spielberg (Ready Player One). Lately, Fun Spielberg hasn't had much fun -- his last few "fun" films being The BFG, The Adventures of Tintin and that Indiana Jones film everyone chooses not to remember. Gone are the days of Jurassic Park or Raiders of the Lost Ark "Fun" Spielberg. It almost seems like Spielberg is trying too hard with Ready Player One to try to recapture the magic of "Fun" Spielberg. For the most part, he does.

The score by Alan Silvestri is perfect for the film as he remixes some of his best themes into the film that has... well, some of the movies that he scored for.

The leads were decent. Olivia Cooke stands out in the film and is most memorable. Ben Mendelson is also memorable with his mix of the sneering Krennic with a little bit of cowardly goofball -- it sounds weird, but it works. T.J. Miller's I-R0k is a character that was not in the book, but added to the movie -- and I really liked this addition. I-R0k was very memorable and hilarious.

The movie banks on nostalgia and shoves quite a bit of it visually in every frame. It will take multiple viewings to catch everything that Spielberg and team put into the film.

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!

A few years ago, I happened upon the audiobook of an unknown author named Ernest Cline. He had this dystopian novel about how an internet game had become a way of life and the contest that became a quest for all of mankind. The kicker was that because of an obsession of the "Creator," society had re-embraced everything of the 1980s from its tv shows, video games, music and even their wacky fashions. Personally, being a child of the 80s, this was just as much a welcome walk down memory lane that playing GTA: Vice City had been the first time I powered up my PS2 with the game DVD inside. I screamed thru the book and finished it one single driving period across 3 states and then started over to listen to it again the next day. This book quickly became one of my newest favorites and jumped up to become one of my top 5 books of all time.

Fast forward to 2018 and I read on the Interweb that someone had decided to translate my newest favorite book to the silver screen. I honestly felt the same way I had back in my childhood happily unwrapping the best Christmas gift I ever received; My Atari 2600 on December 25th, 1977. Then to put a cherry on the top, I find out that Steven fricking Spielberg will be behind the project. Only George Lucas or John Hughes could even come close to matching Spielberg for his overall influence for the era and for having their finger on the pulse of a generation. No doubt about it, this movie was going to be EPIC! I couldn't wait. This might be the movie to finally get me back into a theater in almost 2 decades.

My attitude started to waver when I saw the first trailer for the film. While everyone was going ga-ga over seeing the Batmobile (even though it was the Batmobile from the 60s) and the A-Team van, along with many other well-known 80s vehicles prepping for the all-out race, I started scratching my head and questioning what I was seeing. Yes, this looked like it would be awesome with so many icons immediately seen, but what was I seeing? This wasn't in the book anywhere, so how were they going to tie this in? Well, that was the point where I decided I'd better wait for the DVD to come out and boy was I glad I did.

Almost NOTHING from this movie matched the novel. Take out the character's names and any reference to the Oasis and I doubt 99 out of 100 viewers would have associated this with RPO. The story starts out in the wrong city, has the characters meet up IRL way before they do in the book, NONE of the challenges are the same and even the fact that the keys allowed you access to a second level of challenges, instead of being a means to the end, were removed from the story completely. How Wade wins the quarter, how and where the main characters fight the final battle and even the fact that not all the main characters live up to the battle, or through it, are misconstrued or completely rewritten. Moreover, most of the epic vehicles that we saw in the preview trailer never made an appearance in the race. Obviously the movie ran into licensing issues and most of the non-Spielberg properties were cut from the film completely.

However, the biggest sin is the complete loss of the vibe of the era that the book radiated. The biggest point for the book was a walk down memory lane while you read it. Every game, song, movie and tv show that were mentioned brought back individual memories of actually sitting down with a bowl of popcorn and watching them for the first time yourself, the emotions the music gave when you danced to songs at the school dance or the victory you felt bringing the Holy Grail back to the Golden Castle with Rhindle hot on your tail. If you take out a couple of songs from RPO's soundtrack, and the Delorean from "Back to the Future," it's just another generic SF adventure, and not a very good one at that.

Honestly, Spielberg has sucked every last drop of life from this property and left its dried husk to blow away in the desert wind. I can't think of any way that he could have made this movie worse, in any possible aspect. Even the special effects are more or less blah and do nothing to get the juices flowing. None of the actors seem really invested in their parts, the dialog is weak and has nothing really to do with the "real"story, the "expert" Gunters know almost nothing about Halliday or the media of the era and even the wrong character ends up indentured by IOI for the wrong reason. Personally I think the 1.5 stars is too generous of a rating, but I can't go any lower with a clear conscious.

If you never read the book, obviously like most of the people who gave this movie gracious scores, I'm sure you'll find it at least a mind diversion from everyday life. All others need to stay away and rewatch a copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail or War Games instead.

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

[6.3/10] I walked away from Ready Player One the movie feeling the same way I did about Ready Player One the book -- that this a stellar premise wasted on a mediocre-at-best story. The idea of a worldwide, all-consuming online gaming sphere, like World of Warcraft or Second Life taken to the extreme, is fertile ground for social commentary and storytelling. Even with middling execution, you can’t get away from the power of themes about identity online, the effects of screen time, what it means to know and connect with someone, and cultural tastes in lieu of personality. You also can’t get away from the thrills of a digital world where anything is possible with the right imagination.

But Ready Player One manages to stumble over these ideas time and time again, when it’s not smacking the audience in the face with them. At base, the movie is fine as a disposable adventure, one to put on while folding laundry and glance up at when something exciting is happening. But its action is flashy yet forgettable, and it seems to think it’s making grand statements about life and friendship when it only offers the most trite, bargain basement observations about humanity and how we relate to and interact with one another.

Some of those flaws come from the source material. The hackneyed “evil corporate guys want to turn our free online playhouse into an ad-scattered cash machine” conflict is right there in the manual. The thinly sketched-characters who are more quirk and wish-fulfillment than fully-realized human beings is a fault on the page as well as on the screen. And the rudimentary, teenage boy view of awesome that colors every choice and development in the story is true of the novel as well. Original author Ernest Cline worked on the screenplay here too, and unfortunately, it shows.

But the film manages to correct a few things from the novel. While there’s still problems of insta-love and barreling through plot points, the script from Cline and superhero screenplay scribe Zak Penn changes the structure of the story for the better. In-person meetings happen earlier. There’s role reversals for certain captures and rescues which makes Parzival less of an all-consuming protagonist. And despite an exhaustingly lengthy and overstuffed third act, many of the quests and story beats are streamlined or reimagined to both make them more suitable for the medium and cut out some of the fat.

Still, even with Spielberg behind the camera, Ready Player One can’t avoid feeling like a missed opportunity. It’s a boatload of characters who are either rote or underdeveloped, of clichés and truisms played as novel and profound, and of nominally thrilling action that ends up feeling static an hour into the film. Spielberg knows how to hold the tension in a scene, and every payoff has a setup, which boosts some of the film’s weaker moments. But between villainous corporate hacks and generic good guy kids, there’s just nothing to latch onto here.

Thankfully, the movie manages to sidestep at least some of the novel’s reference-heavy bent (or relegate it to the background) and fanboy fetishism. And yet, at the end of the day, it’s probably the thing I unexpectedly wanted more of. While the book was overly awash in pop cultural shout outs that clogged the story, the movie only feels alive and different when it’s borrowing the power of seeing The Iron Giant in flight again, or transporting our heroes into a classic horror movie. The latter sequence is the highlight of the film, embracing the crossover fun that the premise promises, but using it to advance the story and the characters. Strip away cameos from Freddy Krueger and Van Halen tunes, and all you have is a standard issue adventure story without much to distinguish it.

Despite the structural changes made by Cline and Penn, Ready Player One still feels overstuffed, rushed, and contrived in several places. The movie wants the viewers to see the “High Five” (its team of heroes) as special and uniquely devoted to the cause of dethroning the evil empire. It shows them understanding the clues and life of their benefactor who set out the film’s great quest in a way that their rigid corporate antagonists don’t. But the solutions to his problems often seem overly simple or too obvious not to have been discovered before by the thousand monkeys at a thousand laptops trying to do so. Heroes succeed and villains stumble more because the plot needs them to than because of any genuine insight or hubris.

There’s also the film’s aesthetic, which is a bit cold and antiseptic, but which can at least be excused for being set in a virtual fantasyland. There’s a certain amount of prequel-itis here with the digital overload, but that’s arguably a bug, not a feature, even if none of the character or world designs are especially memorable. One expects better in a Spielberg joint, but there’s at least some high-intensity thrills to be had, even if they end up feeling fairly empty in the final tally.

That’s my biggest problem with Ready Player One. At the end of the day, it just feels empty. The romantic tension between its two leads is stock and tired. The friendship between Parzival and Aech is underfed, and our heroes’ success in the main adventure seems preordained rather than earned, without enough twists to make the inevitable interesting.

At times, Spielberg & Co. seem to know how deeply silly this whole enterprise is and wink at the audience, occasionally verging into satire in the vein of Starship Trooper. It’s these occasions where the film is its most enjoyable. But in others, it seems painfully sincere about a story, character, and theme that have all the gravity and substance of saltwater taffy. The film’s message of valuing friendship and real world interactions beyond the glow of online escapism is laudable enough, but shallow and dissonant when plastered into the movie’s cinematic theme park ride. Ready Player One is empty calories, and not even especially tasty ones, that are delivered with the message that the viewer should go on a diet. It’s not outright bad by any stretch of the imagination, but you can’t help but wonder how the great ideas bubbling around in this mishmashed bag of Halloween candy could be put to better use.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I hate when people whine about that the movie is totally different from the book, cause' it's really hard to fit everything in 2 hours, but this was so bad! I would say, the book inspired the move and not based on.

I could live with the fact that you changed the challenges, these look way more awesome in the cinemas, okay, fine. Skipping the part that Parzival is only a teenager who is poor and got no friends in the real world? Okay, it's not that relevant either.

BUT

The romantic line between Art3mis and Parzival: why?! You skip the part where Wade suffers and turns his back on the real world to forget about Samantha, and focus on the challenge, but than you add a part where Wade heroicly saves her (???) and add a cheesy ending. Cmon!

Also, what is this bullshit about "wE wAnT pEoPlE rEaLiZe tHaT tHe ReAl wOrLd Is gOoD, So wE cLoSe ThE oAsIs FoR 2 DaYs."?! Is this a move for a 5 year old to teach him something valuable? Geez...

Also had a feeling that if wouldn't read the book, I wouldn't have any clue what is happening. Everything is so fast, many question left without answers, etc. I'm disappointed, however the CGI and some references were pretty nice.

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.

Here’s my Quick and Dirty Review of Ready Player One

The movie was good, 6 out of 10 stars. Not great, not amazing, but good. Much of the "real life" parts felt phoned in, and there was so much going on in the digital parts that I'm thinking a lot of the detail is lost in the all the noise. Lots of fun and full of pop culture references, but it made me miss the book, which was better by far. It's a fun ride and dazzling--make sure you see it on the big screen. The bad guy comes off as a little goofy, and the challenges aren't as difficult as in the book, so not sure how book readers will feel about it. Almost feels like a whole different animal.

Of course, it did my heart good to see all the BTTF references--heck, the main character drives a souped up Delorean. Plus the soundtrack's by Alan Silvestri, who also did BTTF and Avengers. I told my wife Samantha she has to go see it with me so I can gauge how it plays with folks who didn't read the book and aren't completely obsessed with '80s pop culture. Best part? The Shining... 7 out of 10, mostly for the BTTF references. Darn you for not leaning more into the Rush like in the book!!!!

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.

Following the death of its architect, a reclusive mastermind with an appreciation for easter eggs and pop culture trivia, the virtual denizens of an MMO called OASIS embark upon a high-stakes scavenger hunt. To the victor go the spoils - in this case, untold riches and complete control of the game - which would make a big difference in the outside world, where society stands on the brink of collapse.

That premise does make for an interesting book, where there's plenty of time to elaborate, but in abridged form on the screen it feels more than a little shallow. There, our attention is more focused upon the background noise and blink-to-miss cameo appearances than the plot and central characters. Granted, those little tidbits and surprises are responsible for much of what made the book so unique, and I'm sure they cost a pretty penny to shoulder into the scenery. Are they really more valuable than character development? The main cast is basically a narrow series of templates, plain as can be, and neither the virtual world nor the real one are fleshed out any further than the fight locations in a typical game of Street Fighter.

A few fun ideas do not make for a nourishing film experience. In a couple weeks, the five-minute segment recreating Stanley Kubrick's The Shining will likely be all I can remember.

Ready Player One is a difficult book to make into a movie, so I was curious to see how they did it. Well... it so happens they didn't.

They based the movie in the book's backcover. You know, where you can read the synopsis in a couple of sentences. That and the character names, is all they took from the book.

That shouldn't be a problem per se, the book wasn't even that great to begin with (brilliant idea but poorly executed). No, the problem with the movie is that they removed 95% of the book, and replaced it with... nothing. There is no story. It's just a lot of CGI stuff poorly mixed together. Don't get me wrong, the CGI is as good as it gets... but they added so much of it that they forgot to include a little bit of story in between.

The major plot is there, it's roughly the same as in the book. But nothing else. There is no history progression at all, it just moves abruptly from an event to the next one. The characters don't struggle to advance in the game, or in life. Sure, bad things happen to them but they don't even react (oh, they killed my family and all my neighbors? Oh well, what can one do... I'll just flirt with Artemis). The bad guys are more moronic than evil. The good guys all happen to live in the same city? Come on. And the quests... seriously, a death race???

Having never read the novel and only seen a few reviews of Ready Player One so I went into the film with no idea what to expect.
I’ll say from the start as a slightly dull, fifty-six year old man with a grey beard I find the current trend for nostalgia-porn dull in itself. Naval gazing and eulogising about the glorious past leaves me cold. I was eighteen in 1980 and it was not fantastic nor was it ‘crap’ it was just a time. Some of the music was good, some was awful, some films were great, some were dross – do you know what? Just like now.

The acting in this film is good with Olivia Cooke once again showing why she is getting picked for roles left right and centre, and none of the vocal-fry that irritated me so much in TV’s Vanity Fair. Tyler Sheriden is believable and sympathetic and very ‘normal’ for the role of ‘hero’ likewise the supporting roles – all are believable ‘video gamers’. It would be too easy not to miss the target of the video gamers avatar and what the real person is like and this film hammers that to the hilt – like I said it was too easy a target. The baddy, played with some lovely scenery chewing, by Ben Mendelsohn, seems to exist to be bad, his motive, like so many films, is just to be corporate greedy. I understand this trope and there is some truth in it but it would be nice to see some nuance from time to time.

The film moves along at an exciting pace and certainly has some great visuals of the near future and it was fun for ten minutes, when in the OASIS, to see which ‘characters’ and pieces of nostalgia you can spot but like so many modern blockbusters we do end up with hugely confusing set-pieces of explosions, impossible derring-do escapes and confusing pyrotechnics. This type of action must be for the younger generation because in every film I ever seen featuring these ‘exciting’ battle and set pieces I usually get bored and confused. Near the end of Ready Player One I had no idea what was going on and ended seeing how many repeated place-holder creatures were popping in the scenes – they are there too.

Certainly, as film, I don’t know the book, Ready Player One seems to be a blatant nostalgia-fest with constant references both oblique and obvious but this to me is the real reason for its existence, the story is fairly simple, made to appeal to the video-game generation but nothing that you have not seen here or there. The trouble is when I see Robo Cop for a fleeting second it makes me want to the original Robo Cop and not Ready Player One. For me that is biggest problem of Ready Player One, from time-to-time it reminded me of better films I had not seen for a while.

All in all, it is a well-made film, and well-acted, with some stunning visuals and rip-roaring storyline but on the negative side it is not as original as it thinks it is, it wallows in nostalgia, loves exposition and can be confusing at times, especially near the end with the battles and set pieces.

Ready Player One is okay but I won’t be watching it again in thirty-years time.

This is definitely a Spielberg film which is probably it’s biggest strength. In the 1st act Spielberg shows fantastic understanding of makes an action sequence exiting as well as how how to successfully use the references that are scattered around the film. The 3rd act is “pure Spielberg magic” as the poster reads and it does have the unique feeling of watching Spielberg at his best. My problem however is with the 2nd act, this is a long movie and it feels it length due to some very long scenes of characters talking within the real world. These real world scenes are handled well enough but compared to the incredibly action packed and existing scenes within the OASIS they drag and are honestly quite boring at points. Much like the tone, the performances are also uneven. Stand outs would be Olivia Cooke as one of the players within the OASIS her performance being genuinely charismatic and likeable and Ben Mendelsohn as a the corporate bad guy. The weakest performance in my opinion has to be from T.J. Miller whose performance seems based solely on the fact that you are already supposed to like him and for me his whole thing is getting pretty old. Overall this is an entertaining enough popcorn flick. It’s not one to think too hard over and there are some genuinely entertaining scenes. The references are pretty fun if you like that kind of thing (some personal favourites involved nods to Child’s Play, The Iron Giant and The Shining). It’s definitely uneven but it’s still fun.

i have mixed feelings about this movie. i appreciated the memes and everything but it falls into the category of nostalgic 80s movies that is just as progressive as actual 80s movies AKA not, at all.

goods things:
- all things back to the future, counting the music cues
- the sidekicks, with some actual diversity there
- especially the female lead
- friendship

not so good things:
- the female lead is pretty quickly dismissed as a sidekick/love interest only
- like, seriously, she takes down the barrier, meaning if she didn't risk her life to do it, no one could have won, yet she gets zero credits for it
- we barely learn anything about the main characters friends despite friendship being the literal kEY. like, if that's the main theme of your movie, maybe actually show us the kids interacting and bonding?
- the main character's friends also help a lot, but somehow, its only the main character who wins / gets credit until HE decides to share it with them. its not like they earned the reward together?
- the main premise is literally worshipping some dead guy and analyzing all his vlog and blog entries
- he had a crush on a girl, so he trapped her avatar in a mini game with zombies ? ok, not creepy at all. it's funny that we don't even learn anything else about kira, than being pretty
- the main character makes a pretty big decision for the love interest, taking away all her agency, because "it's for her own good"
- the female lead is not interested in the main guy, and dismisses his advances, but once they meet he calls her birthmark beautiful she's swoon. also, like, no offense but the writing made it seem like she had something tragic going on and then, its a completely pretty girl with a birthmark? yes, every teenage girl is an insecure mess and needs a guys approval /sarcasm

When I first heard about it, it felt like it would be a Fifty shades for geeks kinda movie, but having Spielberg and the expected budget, it could probably turn out pretty good. It did.

First and obviously, it is visually stunning. CGI is now on a level where it's not disrupting the story at all, it looks beautiful. So much that the real life scenes are... I first wrote "kinda disappointing in comparison", but after finishing detailling what was wrong about them I'm gonna go for "totally botched". The intro scene is actually good, when you ses the stacks and everyone connected. Almost all the other real life scene are highly defective.

The story and action in themselves are pretty basic but entertaining. Some racing, some fighting, riddle solving (kinda). It's an ok+ adventure/action movie in its own right.

Now the big selling point is the overwhelming quantity of references everywhere all the time. The biggest and most obvious ones (developped characters or actions or symbolic) are cool when they integrate in the story. Apart from that I guess it would be interesting to watch the movie frame by frame and count every little reference you can spot, but that doesn't bring anything to the experience if you just consider watching a movie, specially the first time in a cinema.

I would have expected a lot more sound and music references though, but it's mostly visual. Also, the main quest is about Halliday references and not pop cultre knowledge which makes it harder for the viewer to be invested in it.

Acting level is basic, not much needed though as most of the story is CGI.

Lots of shortcut make several things seem weird. It takes out most of the interest of what should have been the story. Instead everything is oversimplified and way too easy, there's no actual challenges it's almost children story level.

The actual challenges did not look that difficult at all. Nobody found these out in years, even by chance, and when a corporation is spending millions working on it ?

The hero knows exactly which 5 minutes part of Halliday's life holds the clue to each challenge, we never see him searching or looking at anything else.

Also it's a race to win the first economic resource in the world and total dominion over a place most of the population spends most of its time. And there's basically no competition. It's Parzival and his friends against IOI. That's it. Most people got over it because nothing was found for a lot of time. OK. But nobody else than the people he knows is working on it ? It doesn't become a big thing again after they get the first key ? Really nobody else seems interested in it. Moreover they have spent years searching, never giving up and then everyone seems to immediately accept that it's for him. There's not even a competition between them, never. That's crazy when you think what the prize is.

Most real world scenes are lacking and are definitely not on the same level as the OASIS ones. It's like they've just been added as an afterthought.

For instance security at IOI is incredibly laughable. She gets from her cell to the CEO office just like that ? Noone and nothing to stop her. Also the CEO office is conveniently located just a few floors above their almost prisons ?
Or how Sorento goes and try to take thing in his own hands at the end when he has litteral armies (of human and drones) at his disposition, even more how he just gives up in the end for no reason.
IOI has soldiers, military drones every where, they run what is a scam/forced labor business, they basically destroy a building, and nobody seems to care.
Art3mis has him kidnapped, and.. nothing. It's just accepted. No question, no how did she find him, no wondering if there wasn't a nicer way to meet, nothing.
By the way, Parzival would have been 12 when the hunt began, and Sho 5 ?

The OASIS is supposed to connect the whole world. What are the odds that everybody he knows, and everybody interested in the egg lives in a 5km radius ? I think that's really the keypoint that shows that every real life scene was crammed there as an afterthought. It really makes no sense. Maybe just to be able to push the end moral. How would you sell the "real life is more important" crap if you never show real life in the movie.

And isn't it weird that Morrow is totally ok with the egg hunt ? Doesn't he want to participate. And how weird is it that he seems totally ok with the key to one of the challenges being that Halliday didn't score with his wife?

I get that people are addicted to the OASIS, it's better than real life, etc. It's really well shown in the beginning, but would people seriously play fighting VR games while out on the street ?? That scene during the final fight where every single person in the street is actually randomly kicking and punching around is ridiculous.

I find it really weird that nobody is hacking the OASIS. First if there's an easter egg, there's some code of it somewhere. Nobody looked for it ? Given the economic power of it, nobody is hacking or using glitches in the OASIS to exploit it. There's no character that just multiply equipment or whatever. It also would have been interesting to show people's knowledge of the OASIS by taking advantage of glitches, but no. And when IOI is looking for someone, it's only via drones and agents in real life. No hacking, IP tracing or whatever. This all would be weird but passable if it was totally ignored but seeing that they DO hack Sorento's feed at some point. And given the difficulty of that and that it apparently didn't gave them any sweat, how come simpler stuff is not omnipresent ?

The pseudo moral is stupid. It's shown in the intro how and why real life sucks for most people, including the hero. And then, now that he's a billionaire, he decides that it's more important to spend time in real life, well color me suprised! That's a shocker. And so he decides to shut down the OASIS two days a week to force people to live in real life. Well, how does that handle time zones ? What about people that could only access it on these days because of their real life work maybe ? What about people whose work is in the OASIS ? Because there certainly seem to be a huge business there.

In the end, I'm not sure how rewatchable it is, except for looking for references or fast forwarding to action scenes.