This is one of the FEW movies where I’d read the book before going to see it…and I rarely recommend doing that if you want to wholly enjoy the film. In other words, the book is always better than the movie. This one is no exception.
The Blurb:
From filmmaker Steven Spielberg comes the science fiction action adventure “Ready Player One,” based on Ernest Cline’s bestseller of the same name, which has become a worldwide phenomenon. The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger.
What Worked:
I have to say, the look of the actual OASIS was fun. The challenges, for the most part, were inventive (if not AS inventive or fun as they were in the book, which we’ll get to), and the avatars were cool. You can definitely see, sitting there in the movie theater, how something like the OASIS would be huge.
I also loved all the pop-culture Easter eggs, uses, and homages. It’s fun, really, really fun to see all that stuff together on the big screen.
What Didn’t Work:
Pretty much EVERYTHING ELSE.
My biggest gripe with this movie, and I’ll just get right down to it, is the casting of the main character. And it’s not just about “I pictured him differently in the book!” No, they actively changed the make-up and background of Wade from a overweight, hopelessly geeky, lonely loser…to Tye Sheridan, who looks like he could be your high school football captain. The effect this had was to *dramatically* weaken the transformation that Wade has over the course of his journey to unraveling Halliday’s game. Ernest Cline did such an incredible job painting Wade as lonely and desperate, a mirror for this virtually-apocalyptic world, and to see him succeed in the end was truly moving. Not so in the film. At all.
I was also bummed out at how dumbed down and abbreviated the actual challenges became in the movie. So much fun in the book is how Wade figures out Halliday’s riddles using pop-culture knowledge. Ernest Cline is *literally* spinning a tale where someone’s die-hard NERDINESS saves the world. That was (almost) completely missing in this film. It was window-dressing. It never directly impacted our characters’ ability to solve the clues Halliday had laid out for them.
There was a lot more to grip about–certain character reveals, a poorly inserted bad guy, missing stakes–but that’s really the core of why this movie didn’t work for me. There was no emotional pillar for me to grab onto, no true entry point for me to care about what I was watching, and so, in the end, it was all just flashing lights and noises. I didn’t care. I wanted to, but I didn’t. Nothing felt real.
I wanted to like this movie, but I knew it was going to be a disappointment. To be honest, guys, it was actually exactly what I expected it to be. No better, no worse. It was just “there.” I haven’t enjoyed a Spielberg flick in a long, long time, and I knew he wasn’t right for this movie. Steven CREATED the pop culture that the world of Ready Player One holds so nostalgically dear…he will never understand what his creation meant to US, because he was never US. It puts him out of touch with that feeling, and it showed in this movie.
5 out of 10 – no need to see it. Not angering, but disappointing.