By Brett Blake As an avowed Steven Spielberg enthusiast (some might say apologist), obviously I was in the tank for READY PLAYER ONE to some extent, and it basically met my exceptions. This is big, splashy fun, a blockbuster without pretensions that serves up a gigantic helping of (somewhat hollow) entertainment with no small amount of flair. It’s 2045. The world is a dreary place. Most find solace and excitement in the Oasis, a sprawling virtual reality world where people can literally go anywhere, do anything, and be anyone in a sort of pop culture heaven. When the creator of the Oasis, James Halliday (Mark Rylance), dies, he sets in motion a Willy Wonka-style contest for all Oasis users: complete three challenges, collect three keys, and claim an Easter Egg which will grant the winner full ownership and control over the Oasis. Enter Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), an average young man who attempts to complete the challenge before dastardly businessman Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), the head of an unscrupulous rival tech company. With the help of a fellow Oasis hotshot named Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and a motley crew of friends, Wade finds himself thrust adventure. Fundamentally, READY PLAYER ONE shows that Steven Spielberg is still at the height of his directorial powers, and he’s dipping back into the “crowd-pleasing blockbuster” part of his skill set in a more pronounced way than he has for pretty much his entire 21st century output so far. He has made better movies than this over the last 18 years, but there’s a pure-hearted desire to entertain on display in this which works. This is almost a sort of comfort food movie, and its ambitions are not particularly higher than that; some will find fault with that, feeling that there’s not enough substance here, and that would be fair. However, I think there’s a real exuberance on display in Spielberg’s direction, and that goes a long way. The movie is a celebration of nostalgia, there’s no question; the amount of joy that Spielberg clearly derives from this stuff is absolutely evident in the way he stages things. However, there is a tiny bit of complexity at play, too. This is not total elevation of nostalgia with no strings attached -- there is a slight touch of ambivalence present (particularly in how the movie presents the character of Halliday), and the way in which the story resolves sends you out of the theater on a high note, sure, but also with a little bit of something extra to chew on. Ultimately the movie posits that nostalgia (and by extension, the online “world”) is good and fun, but it shouldn’t consume you, otherwise you’re just constantly looking backwards and missing chances in front of you. This is fairly lightweight stuff in intellectual terms, and again, some will find it too light (if not empty), but to me, there’s just enough of it to keep the movie from being simply a braindead spectacle. The narrative of the film is built around the spine of the three challenges that Wade (and eventually his allies) must complete. The first - a dazzling car chase through New York City - has been heavily featured in the marketing, as has the third - a massive siege of an armored fortress. However, the second challenge has been kept hidden from view in the trailers, and that’s for good reason: it is a wonderful surprise of enormous proportions, and one best discovered within the movie itself. It is a jaw-dropping homage to a much-loved movie from the 1980s, and it is brought to life with such care and affection from Spielberg that it’s impossible not to be at least a little charmed by it. As the sequence began, I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and it will surely be one of 2018’s movie high points at the end of the year. Fans of the particular film being homaged (and more than homaged, replicated) are in for a real treat. Some of READY PLAYER ONE’s effectiveness for any given audience member will inevitably depend on how much that movie-goer is familiar with the dozens upon dozens of movies, games, and shows the movie explicitly references on an almost nonstop basis. In a certain sense, the references provide a bit of something for everyone, but somebody who is really attuned to so-called “geek culture,” or who grew up in the 1980s, will likely find more here to enjoy than somebody who isn’t as plugged into to that stuff. The good news is that the narrative is not dependent upon those references; they’re there (and everywhere!), but they’re the icing on the cake, not the cake itself. The story still functions as its own thing, and while aesthetic changes would be necessary, there could have easily been a non-pop-culture-infused version of this basic tale, and it could have been effective on its own. It’s a simple plot, and one with familiar contours, but it’s strong enough to hold up - and sustain - the added dressing and trappings of the homages and the cameos and the references. A few words about READY PLAYER ONE’s music, both the score and the song choices. Composer Alan Silvestri’s resume - which includes such 1980s classics as BACK TO THE FUTURE, WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, PREDATOR, and THE ABYSS - made him a perfect choice to fill-in for usual Spielberg collaborator John Williams. Silvestri’s score is big and bright, featuring an unabashedly old-fashioned and upbeat main theme, and Spielberg allows Silvestri several moments for the score to really shine. It’s a throwback for Silvestri, and it’s neat to hear him reach back to some of his ‘80s sound. In terms of the songs, Spielberg has chosen some killer needle drops; yes, many of them are fairly obvious choices, but obvious doesn’t always mean bad, and it’s great fun to hear some hits of the era underscoring a movie whose aesthetics and effects stand firmly in the 21st century. That type of anachronistic contrast always runs the risk of being pandering or silly, but that’s not the case here with Spielberg’s guidance. At the end of the day, it’s impossible that READY PLAYER ONE will achieve the kind of resonance that Spielberg’s greatest blockbusters have, but the movie does feel like a genuine, hand-delivered gift to his fans and the mass audience hungry for quality pop cinema. READY PLAYER ONE just has such an eagerness to please; in lesser hands, this material could have so easily slipped into the realms of the obnoxious or the overbearing, but in Steven Spielberg’s hands, it’s extremely entertaining.
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