Review of Ready Player One (2018) by Chelsea Jeannett L — 26 Jun 2018

A little backstory - I hated this book. It was smarmy, it was overlong, it was poorly written, it was stuffed with self-satisfied, ultra-obvious 80s pop culture references, but worst of all...it was narrated by Wil Wheaton. Oh my GOD was his narration grating.

The movie HANDILY solves all of these problems. We start in media res, without having to go through the bullshit of the Gunters going to school and lounging about, etc, and are stuck straight into the world via a visually inventive and very fun tracking shot of the Stacks. As the poster suggests, it's a prototypical hero's journey, but one executed with the panache of one Steven Spielberg. The pop culture references are not nearly as annoying, either, because they're not overly explained and name checked to the audience like we're fucking idiots. They're just there. There's 100 Master Chiefs fighting an Iron Giant, a King Kong destroying Akira's motorcycle, etc. It's honestly never anything less than entertaining, and that is truly astonishing, given the source material. Sure, it's silly; it had to be. But somehow it fuuuucking works! I was blown away. Congratulations to the entire team on making a film that is objectively better than the book that inspired it.