Review of Ready Player One (2018) by Daniel S — 12 Apr 2018

Sometimes I wish I wasn't as wise as I clearly am. When I watched the trailer for this earlier this year, I thought 'that looks spectacular and unsubstantial, like an ornately carved cucumber'.

And damn it if I didn't call it perfectly. The film looks incredible, with an absurd spectrum of characters, vehicles and worlds being realised spectacularly. The pop culture obsession can get a little grating at times, but it can also lead to lovely moments of 'oh, look who it is!' With the vast majority of the action being set in a fictional, digital world, Spielberg embraces the otherworldly feel, by using the camera in ways that no real camera could achieve, much in the way he did with Tintin a few years ago.

Although like Tintin, that crazy camera zooming in and out of the action created more headaches for me than wonder. There is such a thing as too much. What I was hoping to get from Spielberg was that trademark heart, for him to imbue the sense of unlimited possibility of this 3D internet playground (which is brilliantly realised) with some kind of emotion.

Unfortunately, it didn't really come to pass. It all looked great, but it never did a good job at convincing me that the things that were happening really mattered. Also, don't you dare give me a character that lives through their avatar because they feel embarrassment and shame about how they actually look, and then have their 'deformity' be a light birthmark on an otherwise clearly attractive face attached to a clearly un-monstrous body.

Don't you dare.