Film Review: Ready Player One

As someone whose bedroom walls are adorned with Back to the Future and Jurassic Park posters, with Stranger Things figures dotted on my shelves and an unopened special edition of The Goonies propped up on the desk next to a PlayStation VR, the mostly 80s-driven nerdgasm that is Ready Player One sounds like it should be utterly captivating.

The trailers have promised just as many pop culture references as the successful but maligned source novel by Ernest Cline, all cropping up within a virtual world in which people are able to create their own avatars and inhabit a space far beyond the mundanity of real life.

That world is known as the Oasis, created by tech entrepreneur and total nerd James Halliday, played by Mark Rylance. Here you can make yourself look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle or an Overwatch hero, and take part in Mario Kart-style races featuring the DeLorean and the van from The A-Team. Think of a successful film or video game from the past three decades and chances are they’re owed a nod or a wink in Ready Player One.

Unsurprisingly, multitude of properties makes for a visual spectacle like no other. With some remarkable special effects work at play, the Oasis is dense, rich and boasts action that moves at an utterly frenetic pace. Very rarely does it slow down, and it can make the pit-stops in the real world – in this case Columbus, Ohio – feel like a welcome opportunity to catch your breath.

But there’s only so far such splendour can take even the most ardent of geeks, especially with a run-time that pushes well past two hours. The hope was that Steven Spielberg – who cut the majority of references Cline had made to his own work – would be able to inject proceedings with the heart, wit and warmth that has made all of most beloved pictures soar. Unfortunately, with characters that are never able to effectively emerge from the maelstrom of computer wizardry, Ready Player One struggles to keep you engaged by the time the much-advertised climactic battle between all manner of famous characters finally arrives.

The protagonist, Wade Watts, is a social outcast whose only friends are ones he’s made through the Oasis and never met in real life. Columbus in 2045 has become a slum of trailers stacked on top of one another, so it’s no surprise he finds the wonders of Halliday’s world far more appealing. Tye Sheridan struggles to lend much in the way of charisma to the role, even when acting through his avatar Parzival, and a burgeoning romance with Olivia Cooke is impossible to buy in to.

On the other side is Ben Mendelsohn’s Nolan Sorrento, the CEO of Innovative Online Industries (IOI), who seeks full control over the Oasis. To do this, he needs to find an Easter egg left inside the game by Halliday upon his death, which requires three keys hidden in the Oasis’ various sub-worlds to be collected. Watts and his band of misfits – which also includes Lena Waithe and Win Morisaki – are also after the egg to keep the Oasis out of the control of IOI. It bids to be honest good versus corporate evil struggle, but many will find it difficult to become invested in a tussle that requires the backing of a clan that inadvertently fuels the worst of fan culture.

Millions of people around the world log thousands of hours every years playing video games, watching films and indulging in nostalgia for their youth, but anyone who has spent time in online forums and YouTube comment threads will know that those unable to recount thousands of cheat codes or reams of trivia are often viewed as some form of second-class citizen by those who pride themselves on such ultimately worthless knowledge. Getting behind Wade Watts requires you to get behind the fact that he knows all there is to know about the Atari 2600, and probably thinks less of those who don’t.

To simply enjoy pop culture is not enough, with Ready Player One there’s a sense you have to be totally enveloped in it. Ready Player One certainly boasts split-second moments of awe, but they all rely on knowledge and affection for things it cannot call its own. The only elements it can are its characters and story, neither of which are improved from the novel by the screenplay co-written by Cline and Zak Penn, which is a combination of dull info-dumps and cool distractions.

In Ready Player One, one hoped Spielberg would be able to take the basis of Cline’s story and improve upon it for a wider audience. As the master of spectacle the whole family can enjoy, it felt feasible. But despite ditching many of the nods towards his own work for fear of self-indulgence, Spielberg mostly commits to the existing prose. No doubt the pop culture references make for greater visual spectacle than literature, but you will likely leave the cinema feeling as though the best of Ready Player One could more easily have been consumed in the form of a YouTube compilation.