When this movie was first announced at SDCC 2017 I was beside myself with excitement.  By that point i’d read the book at least four times and it quickly became one of my favourite books of all time. When Spielberg was announced as director it was as if every dream had been answered, The man behind the greatest classics of all time was at the forefront of a film that would finally envision them all together. So it was March 2018 and I first saw the movie the day it was released and came away speechless. Literally speechless. I didn’t talk for at last ten minutes after leaving the cinema because my brain was still processing everything i’d just watched up on the big screen. So here’s my quick overview!

If you haven’t seen the movie (yes there’s spoilers coming up what did you expect!?) the main premise of the plot goes like this: Wade Watts (Ty Sheridan), a teenager living in 2045 in Oklahoma city is part of a global community inside a immersive VR game called The Oasis. The game’s creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance) has passed away leaving behind him the world’s biggest treasure hunt to find the game’s Easter egg (The winner of the egg inherits his company and vast fortune). Wade (Under his game avatar name Parzival) teams up with fellow Gunters (egg hunters) Art3mis, Aech, Daito, and Sho (in the book Shoto) to find the egg before a cruel business company IOI can win.

So I saw this movie a total of three times, each time focusing on certain aspects of the movie:

1. The Plot
2. The Characters
3. The references

Let me just blunt and upfront the plot itself isn’t great, although let’s be honest you saw the trailer and went “Freddy Kruger’s in this movie?!” or had a wow moment the first time Rexy from Jurassic Park showed up. We all saw this movie for the pop culture so the plot wasn’t really something everyone focused on upon viewing. Steven Spielberg himself said “This is a movie not a film”. He wasn’t creating a masterpiece like Jaws or Schindler’s List, he was creating something that people adore visually. The plot as I said isn’t great. It like many modern films uses countless plot devices to ensure the story continues, For instance a sequence occurs when all the characters first appear all together in the Overlook Hotel (from The Shining) where they all know one another despite half of them never meeting until this point! They all act as if they’ve known each other for the past hour of the movies run time despite never even holding a conversation before, the only two who are actually friends from the beginning being Parzival and Aech. The plot itself does make sense but making sense unfortunately doesn’t make a film great!  There’s also a lot of narration through out the movie and while it makes sense for maybe the first five minutes it doesn’t really work at points during the rest of the movie! Just make Parzival talk to Art3mis instead of giving me dull narration whilst he sits alone and broods on the facts of the day! The plot line involving IOI (the movies big bad) has very similar attributes to that of the battle for Net Neutrality. The company wants to become the soul owner of the game causing them to be able to heavily tax players and limit their game play (it’s pretty political so I won’t go into to much detail!) Outside of the story their in they sound stupid and pointless but to the movie they work reasonably well other than the occasional plot device to further their part in the movie. Plot: 5/10

In this section i’m going to focus on three of the movies crucial characters: Parzival (Wade), Art3mis (Samantha) And Anorak (James Halliday). These are the characters that drive the book and so had to be transferred to the big screen well or else the film would automatically crash and burn. The performances by all three where good on the most part although Mark Rylance’s portrayal of Halliday is one of the big highlights of the movie. Halliday in the books was autistic and whilst never confirmed in the movie Rylance’s performance immediately confirms it for the audience. In the trailer Rylance delivers the line “If you’re watching this i’m dead” in such a deadpan blank face manor that many people immediately switched off to his portrayal of the character, but as soon as the movie starts it all becomes crystal clear why he’s perfect for the role. Rylance nails his performance and is the real stand out of the movie. The next two characters are both portrayed reasonably well but they are subjected to an immediate movie sin: inconsistent character writing. Art3mis begins the movie as one of the best characters, mysterious, bad-ass and a serious lone wolf. All of this continues to build in a pretty decent character arc especially at the end of the Disco fight sequence where she lashes out at Wade after he declares his feelings for her, proving her to be a stronger character than him. This doesn’t last. Just past the movies mid point where Samantha and Wade meet up in the real world she stops growing. The arc ends. Her character goes from a strong female lead to being benched behind Parzival, preventing anymore character development that made her as a character so interesting! Olivia Cooke however works well as the character and she does give a good performance with the story she’s been given despite the dwindling character arc. Ty Sheridan as Parzival is a good choice and like Cooke works hard to bring his character to life, however I do have issues with the character. Wade whilst in the Oasis falls in love with both Samantha and her virtual avatar Art3mis. The issue arises when Art3mis rejects Wade at the end of the Disco scene and he refuses to accept the rejection, continuing to pursue Art3mis. This comes back to inconstant character writing as Art3mis literally twenty minutes later goes back on everything she said to him and immediately try’s to start a relationship (which of course Wade accepts). While yes they’re cute it just doesn’t fit either character, Wade almost seeing Samantha as a form of trophy and Samantha’s dramatic personality change don’t fit the character either started as. Characters: 5/10

Of course it’s slightly obvious this section will be positive as the references never end! The movie opens to the song ‘Jump’ by Van Halen an 80’s classic, the film consistently using everything from New Order to the Bee Gee’s. The music is definitely not the only point as the inanimate props (CGI props and physical props) are just as consistent, small things like the “vote Goldie Wilson” poster (Back to The Future) in Aech’s workshop. The references are a mixture of things that both adults and kids will understand, The Zemeckis cube (Named after Back to The Future and Goonies director Robert Zemeckis) or the Holy Hand Grenade ( A nostalgic reference to any Monty Python Fan!). Active gamer’s will see everything from the Spartans in Halo to the Mk 2 Lancer from Gears of war. The references never end! Thousands of characters are painstakingly added during production including (big list coming up!): Lara Croft, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, Sonic, Battletoads, Beetlejuice, Tracer, Speed Racer, Jason Voorehees, Goro, Deathstroke, Harley Quinn, Joker, Iron Giant, Chucky and Max Rockatansky (this is nowhere close to all of them!) References: 10/10

In conclusion Ready Player One isn’t a masterpiece or a flop. It’s a movie for the sole purposes of audience entertainment and while many love it some really dislike it. It’s fun to watch regardless of some of the character tropes and plot lines, of course it’s mainly there to be watched as a mash of hundreds of movies from many decades all put together on one screen. I advise watching this movie with friends rather than alone, the more you watch it with out being able to joke around, the more problems you begin to notice.

Ready Player One: 7/10