READY PLAYER ONE

READY PLAYER ONE (2018)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Screenplay by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline

Based on the novel by Ernest Cline
Starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg, T.J. Miller, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki


I was going to recuse myself from writing about this one. The book it's based on was written by Ernest Cline, who I knew as BBI Rafterman years ago on the Buckaroo Banzai mailing list I maintain. Aside from having a nice Banzai site, he wrote a well-regarded fan script for the mythical BUCKAROO BANZAI: AGAINST THE WORLD CRIME LEAGUE. I think I still have some early drafts on 3.5" discs somewhere. Meanwhile, you can head to his site and read it here if you like.

But then I remembered that I'm not a pro and not getting paid to be objective and no one really cares if I might be inclined to say positive things about the movie even if it turns out I hated it just because I knew the author online years ago, so here we go...




I didn't hate it. Really, I didn't. If I did, I just wouldn't be writing about it.

It's not the book come to life on the screen. No surprise because how often has that ever happened? It veers away from the book in a lot of the particulars, but with a screenplay in part by Cline himself it manages to keep the spirit pretty well. Maybe "inspired by" the book is more accurate than "based on."

In case you haven't read the book or seen the movie and the previews haven't made it clear, READY PLAYER ONE takes place in the near future when, thanks to various issues, real life has become even more depressing than it already is. For escape, people go to the virtual world of the OASIS. The OASIS was created by reclusive genius James Halliday and it made him ridiculously wealthy. Upon his death, it is discovered that Halliday has left an 'Easter Egg' in the OASIS. The player who finds the three keys and passes the three challenges will inherit full control of the OASIS and Halliday's fortune.

Years go by and despite an initial 'gold rush' of people trying to find the keys, devoting themselves to studying everything about Halliday's life and the pop culture of his youth that he was so immersed for clues to their whereabouts, no one has even found the first key...until Wade Watts figures it out.

What follows is a war for control of the OASIS with Watts and his friends on the side of good, wanting to preserve the OASIS for what it is, and Nolan Sorrento, a corporate scum and the head of Innovative Online Industries (I.O.I.) as the bad guys. If I.O.I. gets control, they'll go from second largest company in the world - behind Halliday's Gregarious Games - to the largest and destroy Halliday's dream of keeping the OASIS available to all.

The fight spills out into the real world, as Sorrento is willing to do anything to make sure his company wins, including flat-out killing Wade and his friends to stop them.

Because the challenges all revolve around Halliday's life and he grew up in the 80s, the movie is packed to the brim with 80s pop culture. It's a movie people will be freeze-framing for a long time once it hits video trying to identify everything.

I was wondering if that would work against it. If someone wasn't old enough - or if old enough then not young enough at heart - to appreciate all the things packed into it, would it work for them? If it would depend too much on that rush of nostalgia upon seeing the 1966 Batmobile or a certain red and white 1958 Plymouth Fury on screen during a race. I know I felt that nostalgia rush all through the movie, particularly when Buckaroo Banzai got its shout-out (I knew Rafterman wouldn't let Team Banzai down).

I'm happy to say that at least in the audience I was with, age didn't seem to be an issue. I heard kids on the way out praising the film as the best one they'd seen in "a long time" and one saying that ten minutes in he felt it was his favorite film.

Give it a go, maybe it'll be your new favorite film, too.