READY PLAYER ONE
DIRECTOR Steven Spielberg CAST Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Simon Pegg, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance
PLOT To save a VR realm from the threat of a corporate villain, underprivileged teenager Wade Watts (Sheridan) must discover three keys hidden somewhere in the computer-generated world.
THERE’S A MOMENT, not long into Ready Player One, where hundreds of cars, including a Delorean, the A-team van and the Plymouth Fury from
Christine, are all racing through New York when, having already outwitted the
Jurassic Park T-rex, King Kong swings into view. At this moment it’s clear: the film is going to deliver on its thrill-ride promise, and then some.
Set 27 years from now, the world is overpopulated and, if not quite yet a dystopia, certainly thinking about it. Wade Watts (Sheridan) lives in the Stacks — a shanty town of campervans piled perilously on top of each other. It’s an existence worth escaping and people do so in the OASIS, a virtual world where anything is possible. For any filmmaker, that toy box is an enticing prospect, and there’s no-one better to play in it than Steven Spielberg.
The OASIS Spielberg puts on screen is a visual marvel, obviously computergenerated as befits its video-game status, but realistic enough that it doesn’t just feel like an expensive cartoon. The action has consequence and weight. And it’s saturated with pop-culture references, some obvious (the Iron Giant; a squad of Halo Spartans), some so blink-andyou’ll-miss-it a Blu-ray and a remote control will be required to spot them all. A less accomplished director could get bogged down in this, but Spielberg strikes the perfect balance. He knows exactly when to pull back to focus on the characters — especially the relationship between Wade/parzival and Samantha/ Art3mis (Cooke) — and the story.
That story focuses on a competition announced by the creator of the OASIS to find his successor. Hidden somewhere in the virtual world are three keys — the first to find them all will be granted his billion-dollar fortune and control over the VR realm. Ready Player One picks up five years later with the first key yet to be claimed. Most have given up searching, but Wade and his friends are still on the hunt. As is Nolan Sorrento (Mendelsohn), the nefarious CEO of rival software company Innovative Online Industries (IOI), who employs an army to find the keys for him, his ultimate goal to make as much money as possible from it, even going so far as to force players who fall into debt to work in (online) labour camps known as Loyalty Centers.
It’s a high-risk contest, then, and the action switches between the real and virtual worlds with dazzling aplomb. The film does occasionally get sidetracked by exposition, but mostly it’s a joy, with Spielberg letting loose the type of blockbuster moviemaking that made his name. And it shows that when he’s on his game, there’s no-one else who comes close.
VERDICT Spielberg has done the impossible: balancing sugar-rush nostalgia with an involving story to create a cinematic ride that recaptures the magic of his early films.