Pop culture wonderland
If you’re a fan of pop culture in general, you’ll not want to miss Ready Player One.
Ready Player One Director: Steven Spielberg Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance.
TO truly appreciate the glory of Ready Player One, one must first and foremost be a true purveyor of pop culture.
To watch this movie is to be bombarded with an endless stream of pop culture references and homages, including Street Fighter, HALO, Back To The Future, King Kong, Akira, Godzilla, The Iron Giant, John Hughes movies, and even Monty Python And The Holy Grail.
With Ready Player One, director Steven Spielberg, who is personally responsible for creating many of history’s most iconic pop culture moments, has created a veritable Easter egg fest for the pop culture geek. Heck, even the plot revolves entirely around the search for an Easter egg.
It’s set in 2044 on a planet Earth that has become over-populated with humans. They escape the harshness of the real world by entering a virtual world called the OASIS, created by the late James Halliday (Mark Rylance). Before he died, Halliday created a game within his virtual universe in which participants hunt for an Easter egg which will grant the winner total control of the OASIS.
With great potential power, of course, comes great evil. Here, it comes in the form of Innovative Online Industries (IOI), a giant corporation led by the smarmy Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendohlson), which employs an army of players to try and win the game.
Enter Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), aka Parzival, an egg hunter (or Gunter) who manages to get further in the game than anyone has ever been, thus attracting the attention of Sorrento. Together with his best friend Aech (Lena Waithe) and the beautiful but mysterious Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), they have to try and win Halliday’s game, and prevent the OASIS from falling into the hands of Sorrento and IOI.
While the story doesn’t really stray far from the typical “unknown hero saves the world” trope, don’t let that stop you from watching this. Ready Player One is most entertaining when you look past its flaws and just revel in the pop culture wonderland that Spielberg has created.
Much of the movie takes place within the OASIS, with the characters represented by their virtual avatars. Spielberg contrasts this fantasy virtual realm with a stark dystopian real world where people live in “stacks” made up of rusty RVs stacked on top of one another.
While the animated portions of the movie set in the OASIS take some getting used to at first, it is interspersed with enough real world segments that the transition doesn’t feel too jarring.
It also helps if you are a fan of video games – from classic game Adventure to the popular HALO, first person shooters to arcade racers, Spielberg, an avid gamer himself, incorporates elements from the video gaming world that at times make you feel as though you’re in a video game itself.
The opening race sequence, featuring iconic vehicles like the Delorean from Back To The Future, Kaneda’s bike from Akira ,and even the A-Team’s signature black van, is an exhilarating set piece that sucks you right into the action and makes you feel like you’re actually in the race.
Oh, and wait till you see the climatic final battle – it’s so chockfull of Easter eggs you’ll need multiple viewings just to catch them all. And, if you’re a fan of Japanese mecha anime, there’s also a scene that will have you punching the air and cheering in the cinema.
Ready Player One is an immensely entertaining love letter to pop culture that will have you whooping out of joy and feeling nostalgia at the same time. If you’re a fan of iconic 1980s and 90s movies and TV, video games, and pop culture in general, you’ll not want to miss this.