LOVE LETTER TO THE ’80S
Spielberg’s latest a nostalgic trip
If you’ve ever yearned to see what a love letter to Steven Spielberg from Steven Spielberg would look like, you’re ready for Ready Player One. Even hero Tye Sheridan in his wire-rimmed glasses looks like a younger version of the director.
Actually, it’s more of a love letter to a decade.
The beautifully jarring first note comes when the words Columbus, Ohio — 2045 appear on a black screen at the start of the film, accompanied not by some post-apocalyptic dirge by Vangelis, but Van Halen’s raucous hit Jump, from 1984.
That’d be like starting a modern movie with the title PRES ENT DAY over Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock.
But in this version of the 2040s, drawn from the popular 2011 novel by Ernest Cline, everything old is new again. Citizens the world over plug into a virtual reality called the Oasis — which, by virtue of having been invented by a GenXer named Halliday (Mark Rylance, looking like a cross between Bill Gates and Garth from Wayne’s World) — is heavily influenced by all things ’80s.
Sheridan plays orphan wiseacre Wade Watts, who goes by Parzival in the online realm, and is an amateur “gunter” — or egg hunter.
When Halliday died in 2040 — there are hints he may still be around as a ghost in the machine — he left behind three virtual Easter eggs.
Whoever finds them gets control of the Oasis and a gazillion dollars.
Parzival is joined in his quest by Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), whose sylphlike avatar has him smitten, even as his best friend Aech ( best not to spoil who plays this character) reminds him that people in the Oasis may not look anything like their offline selves. But the real world has a way of butting into their quest, usually in the form of an evil megacorporation headed by professional bad guy Ben Mendelsohn of Rogue One, The Dark Knight Rises, etc.
The three-keys quest gives Ready Player One its simple structure, and it’s a wonder it doesn’t wear out its welcome, clocking in at a solid two hours and 20 minutes.
Chapters include: Parzival participates in a road race that feels like an extreme version of trying to get from JFK into midtown Manhattan. Parzival and friends infiltrate a Kubrick movie (don’t worry, it’s not A Clockwork Orange).
And Parzival and Art3mis shoot looks at each other that will discomfit anyone in the audience who isn’t precisely 13 ¾ years old.
The screenplay, co-written by Cline and Zak Penn (Last Action Hero, various superhero movies), pares down the lengthy, andthen-THIS -happens narrative of the book.
Those hoping to see Wade quote-check his way through Monty Python and the Holy Grail — we know who you are, you’re an anarcho-syndicalist commune — will have to do that on their own time. There is, however, a Holy Hand Grenade in play, as well as a nifty device called a Zemeckis Cube and an Atari 2600. (Ask your dad, unless you are one.)
There’s also a fair bit of humour, much of it coming from T.J. Miller’s character, an oversized bounty hunter with an underwhelming personality.
And pop culture geeks will be geeking out for years over the references tucked away in odd corners.
I spotted a poster for Mayor Goldie Wilson, and was sent scrambling to YouTube to reacquaint myself with a 35-yearold Tootsie Pop commercial. Spielberg even throws in a few references (Citizen Kane, It’s a Wonderful Life) that were old before he came of age.
The film does a good job balancing and in a few cases overlapping the virtual and real worlds — though anyone from the future will tell you that you don’t run down a street wearing VR goggles.
And while it barely pokes into the darker and/or more philosophical corners of a life lived mostly online, it isn’t trying to be a primer on teleology, any more than Jaws is a treatise on marine life or Raiders an archeology lesson.
No, this is Spielberg in popcorn mode, and it’s his best in the genre since 2011’s Tintin, and a fair sight better than the lumbering BFG from 2016. Sure, it’s also a bit narratively fuzzy, but that’s part of the charm.
If you’re old enough to have mucked around with photocopiers, making duplicates of duplicates, you’ll know what I mean.
But you’ll also enjoy this nostalgic trip all the more.