Runtime:2 hours, 20 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Steven Spielberg
Quicik Impressions:
When I first read Ernest Kline’s 80s nostalgia fest about three years ago, I immediately thought, My husband, and my son would love this! It’s no surprise they’re making it into a movie! It reads like it’s a movie already!
We’re very much an 80s nostalgia family. I grew up watching classic movies, and since becoming a parent, I’ve broadened the umbrella term “classic” to include iconic films from my childhood, as well. We’re also a family of gamers. We all love video games, and even my two-year-old enjoys our family sessions of D&D (though, for him, the object of the game is to steal everyone’s dice).
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My husband finally got around to reading Ready Player One a few weeks ago. As a result, the events in the novel are completely fresh in his brain, while I quickly discovered I now have a very hazy recall of several essential sequences. (It’s kind of surreal watching a movie and thinking, “This wasn’t how it happened in the book,” but knowing it would be foolish to state that aloud if your audience had any follow up questions whatsoever.)
In many instances, a brief conversation with my husband would jog my memory. (For instance, I knew the first challenge in the film was wrong, but I had forgotten all about the Tomb of Horrors until he mentioned it. Then once I remembered, I became incredibly disappointed that it hadn’t been in the movie.)
What I did remember clearly from the book were the characters, their various identities, passions, and motivations. Conveniently, this is the part of the book the movie delivers (basically) intact.
In many ways, I think Spielberg’s movie actually improves on Kline’s novel, omitting some slow and awkward parts, and presenting alternate material that plays better on the screen and builds cinematic momentum.
And I can feel doubly confident and positive about saying that because the author of the book also co-wrote the screenplay (with Zak Penn who also wrote my favorite screen version of The Incredible Hulk). So there’s no kind of uneasy Stephen King/Stanley Kubrick kind of tension here to make us feel guilty for praising the movie.
The Good:
Fans of the book should like the movie, too. But it’s best to take it on its own terms, thinking of it as a related creation by the same author. Though the story progresses through the same basic plot components, what happens within each component is different (often radically different).
To be honest, I think most of the changes work. Even if it’s a bit disappointing not to see some favorite parts dramatized on screen, what is there works much better as a movie. (I mean, how could they dramatize someone living and quoting through an entire existing movie and make that interesting to a movie audience?)
Maybe the in-game challenges sometimes feel more generic and less exciting than in the book, but scenes in the world outside of the OASIS are much better in the movie, which also eliminates and re-envisions some real world portions of the book that drag.
Of course, you don’t need to read Kline’s novel to appreciate Spielberg’s Ready Player One. You also don’t need to know anything about 80s pop culture. Honestly, though all the scattered pop culture references make cute Easter eggs for people in the know, the movie gives you everything you need to enjoy it as you watch. (The scattered Easter Eggs are fun, though! The Zemeckis Cube, the Holy Hand Grenade, the graffiti on the van, the filmographies of some actors in minor roles…)
There’s also this weird meta delight in watching a book about a misunderstood genius obsessed with 80s pop culture come alive on the screen under the direction of Steven Spielberg whose genius helped to create 80s pop culture (to put it mildly). He seems like the only director who could do justice to the project, and I’m sure his name helped secure permissions to use a lot of the famous stuff referenced in the film.
The presence of Spielberg also made me think a lot about his potential investment in the character of Halliday. There’s this great line, “Halliday is dead,” that brings front and center the anxiety of all creative geniuses. Once you’re dead, your work really and truly is out of your hands forever. If you don’t want people to grossly misinterpret it, you’d better hope that you entrust your legacy to somebody who actually gets you. It’s so sad when a person creates something with good intentions that is subsequently used in not-so-good ways that he neither intended nor anticipated. So if the film is a bit heavy handed in its message that the real joy in life comes from meaningful connection with other humans, that’s totally forgivable and even kind of sweet. The idea seems to be, yes pop culture is awesome. Yes, friends in movies and lead characters in games do such awesome stuff. But don’t just get lost living in nostalgia or virtual reality. Develop close relationships in actual reality and change the world for the better.
The film does a wonderful job of exploring the fractured relationship (ideological differences, practical tensions) between James Halliday (Mark Rylance) and Odgen Morrow (Simon Pegg).
Rylance gives such a touching, nuanced performance as Halliday. I loved his interpretation of the character and also the way he plays Anorak. In fact, his interpretation of Halliday, and the film’s careful exploration of the great man’s psyche may be my favorite aspect of the movie. I didn’t quite get the same sense of pathos from Halliday in the book. Here he’s like a sad Willy Wonka. He seems to be trapped in the purgatory of his own subconscious fixations and anxieties, a prisoner until brave Parzival comes to rescue him. (I really like the idea that we’re all trapped inside ourselves until somebody who gets us comes along and sets us free.)
I also loved Ben Mendelsohn as Sorrento. (That intern bit is a great way to work in exposition about the character’s motives and intentions.) In fairness, I love Mendelsohn in everything. He particularly excels in playing this type of villain, ruthless and cruel with a wicked agenda, and yet (despite all his unconscionable acts) almost tragically inept at accomplishing his goals.
In terms of looks, T.J. Miller’s I-R0k has by far the coolest costume. He’s also got some pretty funny lines.
The film does a great job of bringing The High Five to life. (Weirdly, though, I only heard them once referred to as The High Five, in the epilogue and without explanation. My husband said he thinks he heard the term used one other time but can’t remember when.)
I loved Tye Sheridan in Mud and Tree of Life. I did not realize until the credits that Wade Watts is played by that incredibly talented child actor (who has grown up quite a bit). He’s good in this movie, too, and I really like the look of his avatar.
As Art3mis Olivia Cooke is just incredible with the perfect voice for the character. I wish now I had seen her in Thoroughbreds. She’s amazing here, and they give her so much to do in the real world portions of the story. That’s a nice touch because girls like adventure, too.
I also thought the actor portraying Aech was perfect and that the film presented and utilized that character well.
Sho (Philip Zhao) and Daito (Win Morisaki) are quite different from their counterparts in the book, but I like the way the movie uses them better, actually.
It’s also pretty great that 80s staple Alan Silvestri scores the film. I mean, how cool is it that Parzival gets to compete in a race in the DeLorean from Back to the Future accompanied by music written by the man who scored Back to the Future?
Best Scene:
Part of me (well, actually, all of me) is convinced that in this movie the most interesting parts take place outside of the OASIS (which is cool because that’s a major point the film is trying to make).
Personally, I enjoyed Samantha’s escape and subsequent mission of espionage. This section of the story is quite a bit different from the book, and the movie version is immensely superior.
Best Scene Visually:
The sequence set within The Shining looks pretty fantastic. It’s one of the most engaging parts of the movie. I won’t spoil it for you.
Best Action Sequence:
Even though the race at the beginning of the movie didn’t quite thrill me, I loved the chase sequence at the end. I like the way all of The High Five are deeply and meaningfully involved during the most tense moments of the film.
Maybe the real life car chase at the end of the film is meant to be more suspenseful and exciting than the race at the beginning. Maybe this book-ending of the two scenes is meant to illustrate the movie’s message that reality and team work are superior to self-focused game play. (When you’re racing only to win a virtual prize for yourself, you’re literally going backwards.)
The Negatives:
One aspect of the movie did kind of disappoint me. In the book, we’re repeatedly told that Halliday loved 1980s pop culture specifically. In the movie, we get a much more vague reference to pop culture in general. Because of this, any pop culture phenomenon is fair game, even if it’s not from the 1980s.
I can see a practical advantage to this change (slight in wording but huge in impact). Getting all the permissions to use so many pop culture icons must have been a hugely expensive and time consuming feat (one that probably would have been nearly impossible without the name Steven Spielberg attached to the project).
But still, this movie is not so much about the geek culture dreamworld of a guy obsessed with the 1980s as it is with any sort of pop culture from the 1980s onward. (And The Shining stuff really pushes that early limit since the movie adaptation was released in 1980.)
In a way, this makes a lot of sense. I mean in 2045, it makes sense for a character to say he loves the 80s and then cast a much wider net than one decade, in the same way that someone today might gush, “Oh I love 1960s icons” and then site James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) as an example.
But it’s too bad the movie doesn’t incorporate more specifically 1980s stuff. It has all kinds of little off-hand mentions and Easter eggs in there for fans, but the major set pieces often don’t have a specifically 80s feel. I mean, that race at the beginning doesn’t feel very 1980s specific. And The Iron Giant (the movie) was made in 1999 adapted from source material Ted Hughes wrote in the 60s. I guess somebody’s Tracer avatar makes sense because not everybody was as obsessed with the 80s as Halliday.
I also found the opening race a bit lacking in excitement. What makes the book cool is its niche knowledge specificity. That race seems like a by-the-numbers action sequence that could appear in any movie, and–except for Parzival’s DeLorean–so many of the big things that pull focus are from other decades.
I have mixed feelings about this opening challenge. On the one hand, it makes for a quick and dynamic introduction to all the key players and their objective. We see the pointless, clueless grind of the Sixers. We meet Art3mis right away and see her in action. The complexity of Parzival’s feelings for her is shown not told. We also get a speedy and through introduction to Aech.
But I do miss the complexity of the novel here. I miss Ludos and school and the Tomb of Horrors and the way Parzival gets the first key. In this section of the story, the novel is memorably unique. The movie replaces it with something that feels like it could be an action scene in any movie (except for Parzival’s cool looking trick at the end).