Review of Ready Player One (2018) by Cinemanut911 — 29 Mar 2018

In the year 2045, due to the world being overrun with chaos and poverty, most of the population have chosen to reject the harsh environments and live, work and play in the OASIS, a massive virtual reality universe where anyone can interact with icons in popular culture from Batman to Hello Kitty, can travel to every fictional world in existence and participate in the most incredible activities such as racing against King Kong, fighting in huge fantasy wars and can even take part in reenacting their favourite movies, just to name a few. When James Halliday (Mark Rylance), the creator of the OASIS dies, he offers the players around the world the chance to inherit his massive fortune and his company only if they can find a hidden "Easter Egg" along with three keys needed to unlock it. Now, a young "gunter" (someone that's dedicated to finding the keys and the egg) named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) and his brave companions consisting of the beautiful Arti3mis (Olivia Cooke), his best friend Aech (Lena Waithe), and the brothers Daito (Win Morisaki) and Sho (Philip Zao) must find these items before the ruthless IOI corporation led by the sinister Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), can use the egg to privatize Halliday's virtual paradise...

Taking direct influence from the likes of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, The Matrix and Wreck-it Ralph, Steven Spielberg's loose adaptation of the 2011 80's pop culture love letter novel Ready Player One, is a wonderful throwback to the veteran director's Golden Age throughout the 1980's where he both produced and directed some of the most iconic fantasy/sci-fi films in the history of cinema such as Back to the Future, E.T and the Indiana Jones films.

Going into it's problems in which aside from some questionable overuse of dark blue tones in the color grading which makes it impossible to see the numerous cameos from the heavily advertised pop culture icons such as The Iron Giant, Gandalf and numerous others, The story takes huge liberties with the book's more intense tone and the pacing especially during the first act. goes by far too quickly for the world of the OASIS to be properly set-up for anyone new to this material or towards 80's to 90's pop culture as well.

However, Spielberg's first fantasy film since 2011's The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, does have it's heart in the right place in conveying the joy of escapism and creativity and unlike The Matrix's insistence that living in a fictional world is bad,no matter how bad the real world is, Ready Player One on the othe hand, in a similar method in how Hook told audiences that imagination and fun is important even if you're an adult, tells us that maybe spending time in a better world is not so bad after all.

Overall, Ready Player One while not rising to the levels of Spielberg's other films, much like Who Framed Roger Rabbit? before it, is a wonderful love letter to geek culture and the fantasy genre of the last few decades that proves that one of the longest surviving "Hollywood" brats can still provide solid family entertainment after all these years.