In a dystopic future, most of the world's population escapes into a sprawling VR game for entertainment and comfort. But the sanctity of the game is threatened now that its creator has died. He's left behind an Easter Egg that, if found, will transfer sole control of the game to one lucky winner. A wealthy corporation is bringing all its resources to bear so that it can monetize the game. Meanwhile, a clever teenager strives to get there first.
For many readers, the book was a beloved geeky joy. Who better to put that on film than Spielberg, the director of so much of the material being name-checked? But as it turns out, he's wasn't very interested in self-congratulations. In making the film, he instructed his team not to include references to his past movies. In many cases, he didn't even want to allude to movies he'd produced, until book author (and screenplay co-author) Ernest Cline reportedly pleaded with him to relent at least on important details like the Delorean car from Back to the Future.
Spielberg's humility is one way in which the movie departs from the book, but there are many others. In some cases, rights to show certain things couldn't be secured, and substitutions were made. In other cases, ideas from the book that weren't exactly cinematic were wisely replaced with something else. (For example: the book's "first key" is found amid a solo Dungeons & Dragons adventure, where the movie's is placed in an enormous full-contact rally race.)
Many of these changes actually improve upon the book -- even the already good parts. A section of the book that brought a smile to my face was when the hero has to assume the role of Matthew Broderick's character inside the movie WarGames. The film opts for an homage to an entirely different movie -- and an entirely different director -- and gets enormous mileage out of the change. I'd hate to spoil it for anyone, but suffice to say that a film with far more notorious visuals becomes the focus, and everyone involved in the movie does their utmost to render it faithfully. The set design is a dead ringer, Spielberg and his cinematographer place and move the camera with slavish fidelity to the original, and even the musical score lifts directly from the source material. It's giddy fun.
Also great fun is the presentation of the VR game, the Oasis, in general. It's an entirely CG environment, but a stylized and compelling one -- sort of Pixar meets Avatar. Very early on, I wasn't sure if I was going to stop thinking about whether it looked "real enough" to me or not, but I very quickly forgot about it.
On the other hand, I'm reminded in some ways of another book that spread like geek wildfire and was later adapted into a movie -- The Martian. The book was entertaining, but flawed in having shallow and ill-defined side characters. The movie actually shored up this shortcoming of the book, doing a better job fleshing out the characters as real people. Not so with Ready Player One. The main characters of Parzival (Wade) and Artemis are the only ones with any texture at all (not much), and everyone else is completely nuance free. Some of the more veteran actors are able to sneak a hint of personality into their roles -- Ben Mendelsohn as villain Nolan Sorrento, and Mark Rylance as Oasis creator James Halliday. Everyone is having fun, it's clear, but it's only surface deep.
There is a lot of fun to be had on that surface, though. The movie is stacked so high with references that you'll never find them all. There are deep cuts from movies that today's target demographic will never remember. There are references to things from other countries. There are obvious movies everyone will know... but then also subtle background references to them that might slip by most. (Back to the Future is all over this movie, for example. Most people will know the Delorean. Few, I think, will spot the poster to re-elect Mayor Goldie Wilson.)
Before closing, I should shout out to the person whose work I think is strongest in this film: composer Alan Silvestri. This is one of the exceedingly rare occasions where Spielberg did not have John Williams compose his score, and Silvestri deals with this once-in-a-lifetime chance wonderfully. He essentially delivers what I might call an alternate universe version of the Back to the Future score -- and as that's one of my favorite scores he ever did, I'm all about it. This new music literally references the old in a few choice moments, but mostly it lifts a few bars from one section of the orchestra and then spins up an entirely new composition around them. It's effective, exceedingly clever, and I suspect will reward careful listening all on its own. (And as I noted earlier, the score references at least one other notable movie score, in the act two "enter a movie" sequence.)
Ready Player One isn't deep, but it was never going to be. It's a very good "fun thrill ride" of a movie. I give it a B+. It's definitely one to go catch on the big screen.
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