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 When
the going gets tough, just get going. In 2045, that’s pretty much what
nearly an entire population of the civilised world has chosen to do,
while facing unending poverty and depression, with no hope in sight.
The poor and working class citizens of Cleveland, Ohio have learned to
live together -- quite literally -- in trailers piled one on top of the
other in a slum called “the stacks.” There is no privacy; in order to
go anywhere outside of one’s single-wide, they must rappel through many
neighbours’ property to reach the ground. When we meet one resident of
the stacks, Wade Watts is swinging from trailer to trailer like a lemur
on his way to an imaginary paradise.
There
is one escape from Wade’s bleak existence; OASIS. A virtual reality
world where players can pull on a pair of bulky goggles and leave their
cares behind. OASIS is a free game that enables its players to travel
anywhere in the world; scale Everest, golf the perfect game, burn up the
dance floor of the hottest club, or annihilate enemies on alien planets
for cash and prizes, and all achieved in their most perfect pixelated
self as an avatar. Small wonder the entire planet is addicted to it.
OASIS
was the brain baby of James Halliday, an eccentric genius who had a very
definite idea for his game. After his death, it was inevitable that
vultures would prey on the bones of Halliday’s beast. Nolan Sorrento, a
former intern of Halliday’s has set up a rival company, IOI, that has
fed off OASIS by selling players pricey in-game items they must pay for
by successfully completing games. If a player is killed in the game, so
goes all the money they have amassed, and they must work off their
interminable debts, chained to gaming stations, grinding coins for IOI.
Sorrento is desperate to claim OASIS’ financial potential, which
Halliday left untapped right through the day he died. The new
revelation of Halliday’s last testament is true to the game-loving
creator, as he has willed ownership of OASIS to any player who can find
three Easter Eggs hiding the three keys that will unlock OASIS and all
Halliday’s wealth.
Like
every single person hooked into OASIS, Wade could think of a few things
he’d like to do with such riches, but for the young man who grew up
idolising Halliday, there is more to the quest for OASIS than money or
power. Wade soon discovers he is not alone in searching for the
keys, not only to preserve Halliday’s dream of OASIS, but to keep it out
of the cheating, corrupt hands of Sorrento and IOI. Having to trust
real-life flesh and blood friends in the world outside of virtual
reality for the first time, Wade and his gamer pals, collectively called
the High Five, join together to save OASIS.
The
moment Wade pulls on his goggles to escape the washed out, dirty, dusty,
vertical trailer park of the stacks is akin to the moment in The Wizard
of Oz, when Dorothy steps out of her tempest-tossed, sepia-toned Kansas
home into Munchinkinland. Once Wade plugs into OASIS, he, as his avatar Parzival, is plunged is a 3D world, so overwhelming with colour, light,
beauty, and every type of entertainment imaginable (Including fun he
is too young to indulge in) that it’s amazing that anyone would
willingly leave. Based on the popular novel by Ernest Cline, one of READY PLAYER ONE’s biggest strengths comes from
designing the world of OASIS so perfectly. It simply goes on forever,
offering its players another existence of endless possibility, where
they can be anything and anyone they want.
Impressive on its surface, it’s the inclusion of the American pop and
gaming culture iconography of the late 20th century -- particularly the
1980s -- so dear to OASIS creator James Halliday that gives the world
and the film much of its heart. Many of the film’s oohs, ahhs, and
giggles occur when spotting characters like Ryu, Street Fighter’s main
protagonist strolling down a racing lane with Speed Racer’s Mach 5 on
one side, and the 1966 Batmobile on the other, moments before the
challenge begins and everyone is left in the dust by Kaneda’s scarlet
motorbike from the classic anime, Akira. Parzival’s own ride is BACK TO
THE FUTURE’s immortal DeLorean, tricked out with bits and pieces from
KNIGHT RIDER and GHOSTBUSTERS.
Keep a
sharp eye for Looney Tunes’ tiny Marvin the Martian making his way
through an office lobby, and a Freddy Kruger avatar being obliterated in
a shower of coins. It’s a world where a Madball has awesome velocity,
and Child’s Play’s Chucky is a secret weapon. Three generations of
gaming goddesses run into battle as Street Fighter’s Chun Li, Tomb
Raider’s Lara Croft, and Overwatch’s Tracer join forces. There is that
blink-and-you-miss-it moment of Parzival using Goku from Dragonball’s
signature Kamehameha move on an enemy, a short time after tearing up the
lit-up disco floor to the Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive” with fellow gamer
and quest partner, Art3mis.
Not
pinning everything on pure nostalgia, there are some clever spins on the
past, like turning Erno Rubik’s popular invention into a powerful
“Zemeckis Cube” that can send players back in time for 60 seconds. I
got a lump in my throat seeing the blistering appearance of the RX-78-2
Gundam on the attack, and realising this was the first time any Gundam
had been in a Hollywood film. (That Gundam is brought out to fight
the enemy’s MechaGodzilla, which doesn’t really look much like MechaG,
but I appreciated the reference.)
There
is a sequence that is almost a film unto itself involving Stanley
Kubrick’s classic, THE SHINING, that may lose viewers too young or
unfamiliar with the film -- like High Five member Aech -- to Aech’s
great peril -- while those in the know will cackle at the ingenious
inclusion.
The
production wasn’t only concerned with getting the gaming and movie
references right. They’ve taken great care with the imaginary world
backdrops: Seeing the racing panorama of 1980s New York made me a little
verklempt to catch sight of the old brick and mortar buildings standing
in the South Street Seaport as it was before its current, gentrified
glass and chrome coldness. They included other tiny details in that
scene that only actual New Yorkers would care about; like the bright red
neon sign of Delancey Street’s legendary Ratner’s bakery shining once
more, and Jurassic Park’s T-Rex popping up to chase the racers out of
Chinatown (Only Gamera might’ve been funnier). The appearance of
King Kong in that sequence, looking like the more realistic 1976 film
version, and more to scale as he uses the Empire State Building as a
tree, was touching because it felt so correct and like an homage.
All
these fond memories and tributes to beloved pop culture characters
elevates READY PLAYER ONE beyond its stunning visuals and submersive,
fast-paced, gaming action, which is great onscreen and entertaining for
any age; but it’s the look back to happier, more innocent times that all
those icons represent, that touches the heart.
For
all the mind-blowing visuals, it is when the film moves out of OASIS,
that it stumbles. The character development is at best shallow, at
worst, nonexistent: The real-life counterparts of the High Five comrades
Wade had previously only known online, don’t get any depth. (Though
the revelation of the youngest member of the crew is a laugh.)
For a film that is so immersed in the third dimension, it’s stunning how
one-dimensional READY PLAYER ONE’s real-life characters and script are.
For example, exposition about an underground resistance to IOI’s
debtor’s prison that aligns with Wade, is so offhand and perfunctory as
to be meaningless.
Even
our hero is a bit of a mystery; as it’s revealed in fits and starts that
Wade's parents have died, leaving him in the care of an irresponsible,
Blanche DuBois-like aunt, who brings abusive jerks into their home to
mistreat and steal from both herself and her nephew. That is handled
with barely a glance.
Also
jarring by its lack of any chemistry, was the romance foisted into the
story between Wade and OASIS legend, Art3mis/Samantha. After having met
once online in avatar form, Wade is practically writing sonnets to her,
and by the next meeting, he’s emphatically declaring that no matter who
she (or he) is, or what she (or he) looks like, he is
irrevocably in love with her, and so a side story is forced.
I
couldn’t tell if a lot of my disconnect with Wade was due to the
writing, or the not-exactly mesmerising performance of Tye Sheridan, who
seems to be getting all the roles, these days. Physically, Sheridan
reminded me of a young Richard Dreyfuss, who was Spielberg’s onscreen
avatar through his early films. Mild to the point of blandness,
Sheridan didn’t have the presence or chops to stand up to the onslaught
of VFX all around him, and his bishounen, silver-haired avatar, Parzival,
will probably be the image most people remember when they think of this
film. Sadly, without anything other than a skin-deep notion of
what Wade did in a day, other than be harassed by his aunt’s boyfriends,
and jumping into OASIS at every opportunity, we don’t really know who he
is, and so the real-life character of Wade, is far less interesting than
his virtual avatar.
Ben
Mendelsohn plays our villain, Nolan Sorrento, and I wouldn’t be
surprised if he was cast in part due to his resemblance to Paul Gleason,
who embodied the bellicose Principal Vernon in the late John Hughes’
1985 teenage opus, THE BREAKFAST CLUB. Sadly for Mendelsohn, he hasn’t
a drop of the late, great Gleason’s energy, charisma, or comic timing.
Again, this might be down to the slapdash quality of the real world
screenwriting.
I
would have also enjoyed more about the man who started it all. Outside
of a shaggy, nerdy, benign mad scientist, we don’t really get a feel for
the presence looming over the film, James Halliday. We also don’t
really get an idea of what exactly was the rift between him and his
closest friend, Ogden Morrow, who was like the Steve Jobs to Halliday’s
Steve Wozniak. We know there was one, but the only premise we’re given
of a possible love triangle couldn’t possibly be so cliché... could it?
While our short moments with Halliday are made compelling by the
excellent Mark Rylance doing very much with very little, Simon Pegg as
Morrow was utterly wasted.
Still,
nobody’s really here for the real world, which is a subject that bears
canny observation by the departed Halliday. READY PLAYER ONE is
all about escapism, fantasy, and turning off your mind for a while and
purely being entertained. In that respect, the film is a blazing
success.
Never
has a movie been made for more mandatory repeat viewings, if not for the
fun of it, then to try to catch all those wonderful characters and icons
strewn and hidden throughout. With READY PLAYER ONE, Steven
Spielberg has crafted an electric Wonderland that is a love song to
fans, fandom, gaming, and pop culture itself.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
March
28th, 2018
© 2006-2022 The Diva Review.com
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