Ready Player One

Steven Spielberg has been often cited as one of the kings at crafting big screen worthy experiences. For over 40 years of his career, the relationship of his successes with their respective time of release is pretty fascinating. Many consider more of his groundbreaking classics in the pre-2000s rather than finding anything post-2000s worth of that same praise, which isn't surprising since as time moves forward, so does the challenge of bringing something new or unique to the table to label as a classic. His Spielberg recipes tend to include well crafted worlds that are great to look at, whimsical childlike wonder (despite any PG-13 ratings), main characters that are stereotypical or just underdogs to root for, over-the-top villains, heartfelt messages hammered in a lot, nice story narratives, and great action sequences. This brings us to his recent project, Ready Player One, that's gathered such hype and anticipation. The marketing campaign was wild in pop culture and special effects with some story pieces included while the reviews have been relatively positive. While I wasn't very excited about the movie, it was on my radar and thankfully an advance screening came to my attention so I can see if it's worth the praise. I went to it predicting it would fall into Speilberg's cliches (for better or worse) and left it not only confirming that but still glad I watched it for its visual spectacle.

Note: Just a heads up about this critique, I haven't read the book this is based on but from what I understand they changed things about it and the author is one of the writers. Below the non-spoiler section will be my spoiler pros and cons about Ready Player One for those of you who have already watched it and are curious about which specific parts I liked and didn't like.

Plot: Taking place in 2045 where humanity suffers from desolate conditions and regularly uses virtual reality software The Oasis. A group of players must discover clues to completing challenges set by the games deceased co-creator in order to win control of it against an evil corporation. It does a good job in the exposition department in letting audiences know about the status of their future in the first 10 minutes. Since the story revolves around mixing the stakes of the real life with the activity inside The Oasis, the ratio of screen time in terms of the former and the latter is 30:70. The Quest our protagonists go through relies on the knowledge and understanding of the deceased co-creator, managing a good job in teaching a lesson along the way. The strengths of this venture surrounds itself around the action set pieces of the three challenges and the well-intended yet obvious moral message.

However, there are some noticeable issues that hold it back in terms of substance. For starters, the adventure's long runtime is felt around the third act where it just keeps going and going with an overlong climax. The impact of the conflict at hand lessened since our main leads don't have any meaningful development worth rooting for (or any at all). Speilberg's weakness in character shows itself here since the focus is more on the adventure rather than letting the heroes feel more natural instead of stock attachments. Despite those problems, the charm the director is known for is present throughout and is entertainingly watchable. It should also be noted that the soundtrack accompanying this nostalgia reference filled flick is very suitable and cool to listen.

The Oasis: The main highlight most audiences have been waiting for might make or break some enjoyment of the film. If you're hoping to see skits where other video game characters interact with one another, then go watch Wreck-it Ralph since the focus on this revolves around the people playing as their avatars. The visuals are very imaginative to look at in terms of the possibilities they were able to accomplish. The effects on those inside the Oasis might look a little wonky but that's the point since they are inside a virtual reality software where the graphics could appear that way. Most of the entertaining parts surrounding Ready Player One all take place within this area (which is 70% of the movie). Most of the pacing is pretty smooth whenever it's inside the virtual reality.

Real Life: Reality, on the other hand, is where the heart of matters could have been felt but instead feels rather hollow and stock. The attempts to build up the dread here aren't solidified due to the lack of screen time. Whenever it comes back here, it's mostly spending time at Innovative Online Industries (IOI aka the evil corporation) figuring out ways to solve the Quest in their own malevolent rich ways. It slows down and drags more so in the second half when it has to move from point A to point B to where you want to return to the better plot pacing within the Oasis segments.  

Characters: The people to focus on are Wade Watts/Parzival (Tye Sheridan), Samantha "Sam" Cooke/Artemis (Olivia Cooke), James Halliday/Anaroke (Mark Rylance), and Nolan Sorrento/Sorrento (Ben Mendelson). Wade and Sam are Gunters (slang word for egg hunter) who work together to find Halliday's three keys to win the Quest in order to achieve their goals (getting out of the stacks and making sure the evil corporation doesn't win it, respectively). Both of their voice performances for their avatars in the Oasis are pretty solid but in the real life portion, Tye and Olivia suffer from poor character development in terms of being equally bland cliched stock protagonists. In addition to that, there's a forced romance angle that feels off putting (one of my pet peeves), though it doesn't overstay it's welcome much and the Olivia fares better than the Tye overall in terms of acting.

Halliday is the deceased co-creators of The Oasis who hid an Easter Egg within that rewards the winner of the three challenges with control of the software and riches. Mark is one of the better highlights in terms of acting (at least for my taste) who does overact a little with his character but feels better directed. Nolan is the CEO of IOI seeking full control of The Oasis for financial gain and lacks any morals in his venture to accomplish this. Ben does the most overacting out of the cast in his exaggerations of his malice and obvious slime you would expect out of this stereotype. An honorable mentions go to i-Rok (T.J. Miller) for being a nice dose of weird distraction in that  A dishonorable mention goes to F'Nale Zandor (Hannah John-Kamen) for being badly directed into being too much (something that's occasionally found with Spielberg at times).

Overall Consensus: Ready Player One is an entertaining action adventure filled with Spielberg's talent for action spectacle, visually fascinating environments, and a nice soundtrack, but suffers from lack of character development and story issues. ⭑⭑⭑1/2🎟 Runtime: 2 hours 20 minutes PG-13

Reasons to watch it: You like any of the aforementioned actors. You love Speilberg whenever he does blockbuster adaptations. You want to find as many 80s and 90s references as you possibly can (good luck with that). You enjoy very cliched action adventure extravaganzas. You don't mind bland stock main leads that have a forced romance. You don't mind movies with a long runtime. You don't mind moral messages being repeatedly hammered down.

Reasons to avoid it: You dislike any of the aforementioned actors. You hate Speilberg whenever he does blockbuster adaptations. You are annoyed with very cliched action adventure extravaganzas. You dislike bland stock main leads that have a forced romance. You mind movies with a long runtime. You can get annoyed with moral messages being repeatedly hammered down.

Coming up next: Ready Player One has concluded March Madness on a positive entertaining note. It has been a wild mad month with a lot of good movies (and one terrible one) covered and experienced. Keep an eye out on the Facebook page of Screening Spectacles for the next update of which upcoming films will be covered next month when April Anticipations arrive (though some of you will have an idea of what will be watched and reviewed on this blog)!

SPOILERS BELOW!!!

SPOILERS!!!

• Pros:
• The First Challenge (that big race): The spectacle around this event was broadcasted in the marketing and it doesn't disappoint here. Spielberg turns it into a Dark Souls level of difficulty and inserted something fresh the get that key. Seeing the carnage in the brute force approach on the other players was cool to see in terms of up close shots and underground behind the scenes type of view.
• The Second Challenge (The Shining): By far the most amazing part of Ready Player One, Wade and his crew figure out that the next step in the Quest is conquering that fearful hell scape known as "The Shining"! It takes so many insane turns from referring to the blood scene, 
• The Third Challenge: This isn't referring to the climatic battle going outside of it but rather something small and unique in how it relates to Halliday. The approach to it was pretty fascinating and did help appreciate the details in exploring the history of the past in order to learn how to embrace the future.
• Awesome moments during the climax: Some of the fights during the main battlefield contained visual eye candy of pop culture. The biggest of them was the struggle getting past Mecha Godzilla, which was being piloted by Nolan. It took one hell of an effort between a Gundam, the Iron Giant, and Parzival's crew to take him down. The scope of it was great to see on the big screen. 
• Cons:
• The climax dragging during the third act: For as nice as it was looking at the climax, it was padded a bit much nearing the end of it. Notably around where Wade and his crew are driving away from Zandor and Sorrento's attack against their vehicle. This causes Parzival to swerve back and forth in the Oasis and it just drags quite a bit. It wouldn't have been too bad it this didn't happen twice but it did. In addition to that, the moral message being hammered down does also pads out the story as well. 
• Wade stock character treatment: Outside of seeing one or two scenes of his family life, the only thing to know about Wade is his knowledge about Halliday, which is a vital plot point toward the film. Having him look more Hollywood pretty instead of how he apparently was in the book also lessens the romance angle even more. He feels like one of the only people with the least personality among everyone else. It's not Tye Sheridan's fault but rather the writing around him. Plus the speech he gave felt very generic and kind of boring a bit.
• Sam's stock character treatment: As mentioned before, she's just as bland as Wade but they also did something here where the mystery of how she looked in reality was all for naught since she's also Hollywood pretty. As Artemis, she claimed she's ugly and when we meet her, all she has is a scar (more life a slob of paint or something over a side of her face). Again for all of the issues with her characters, Olivia Cooke's portrayal was serviceable and solid.