Skip to main content

Movie Review: Ready Player One (2018) *Spoiler Free*

I'm not familiar with the book Ready Player One is based upon, and I haven't really played computer games since leaving my teens behind at the end of the 1980's - though that last point puts me in just the right demographic to enjoy the eighties nostalgia of this film.

When I saw the trailer last year it looked fun, fast paced, and packed with so many references to other movies - on scale not seen since Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It felt like a movie I needed to see.

Set in the not too far distant future (2045) the plot is centered around a virtual reality world, called the Oasis, that seemingly everyone is plugged into to escape having to deal with real life.

When Oasis creator, Halliday (Mark Rylance) dies he challenges everyone to find the ultimate game Easter egg that will allow them to become his successor to owning the game world and his fortune.

The story then follows Wade (Tye Sheridan) and his group of friends as they attempt to solve the puzzles that will unlock the egg. Upping the stakes is a very determined corporate leader, Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), a one time prodigy of Halliday, who will stop at nothing to find the Easter egg before anyone.

As a movie Ready Player One states right from the start what it is and doesn't really deviate. It's a fun ride, where we get to watch the various players try to complete the game quest set before them. There are some surface level messages about social media like, not everyone is the same in real life as their online persona, and spending too much time playing computer games is probably not a good thing, but it doesn't get any deeper than that.

Personally I did enjoy Ready Player One but it wasn't quite what I was expecting (bearing in mind my entire impression of the film going in was from one trailer). In the trailer we see vistas of a slum city trailer park unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's like the world is so over populated that they just started stacking trailers on top of trailers to create cheap housing instead of building actual cheap housing apartments.

Ready Player One - Trailer Park Slums

To me, that world, which is the real world in the movie, looked way more interesting than the game world. I think I wanted to see more of that, and the characters who might live there than what I got.

The real world is where the real stakes happen but I got the impression the movie was holding back some what in order to avoid anything harsher than a PG-13 rating. Most of the film happens in the Oasis where, if you die, you can just start again - though I'm pretty sure hardened gamers will tell you that's a big deal when you've put weeks (even years) of time into your character to level them up.

I found it hard to connect with the characters in a way that really made me care about them. Wade we meet in the real world right from the start but we don't learn enough about him to be too invested before meeting his Oasis avatar/persona. Everyone else we meet in the Oasis first. This disconnect between the real world and the Oasis kind of works against getting to know the real people behind the avatars. Which is possibly why I thought we'd see a lot more of the real world than the Oasis.

I will say, don't go into this film just for the nostalgia cameos. Some of them are so quick you won't even be sure if you saw them. As fun as it is to spot the various references to pop culture, the speed at which they happen is deliberately designed to prevent you from being too distracted by them. I never found myself playing 'spot the cameo' for very long, even in scenes where there are a lot of cameos to spot.

Overall Ready Player One is a fun movie with visually stunning CGI that all looks very convincing, given that it didn't need to be, since we know it's all happening in a computer game. At no point did poor CGI take me out of the film.

It never gets too deep into teaching life lessons or examining social issues, though you could probably glean a bit more from it than I did if you really wanted to analyse the movie. It's pretty much Steven Spielberg doing what he does best, fun adventure films that entertain you for a couple of hours. It may appeal more to long time gamers but there's enough there for most people with a passing interest in technology and social media to enjoy.

Comments

Buy Gifts and Apparel featuring art by TET.

Popular posts from this blog

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices.  My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe?  Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us...

Movie Review: Captain America: Brave New World (2025) *No Spoilers*

I  decided not see Captain America: Brave New World in a cinema because everything I heard about the film pointed to a disjointed mess, from testing poorly, to whole characters being added in during reshoots. The trailers looked okay but, since they featured Red Hulk, quite a bit, it felt like there wasn't much left as a drawcard for seeing the film in a cinema. Having now seen the film on Disney+ I feel it was a good decision. While the big budget effects no doubt would've looked better on a big screen, the story wasn't particularly complex or intriguing enough to make the film stand out. If anything, it's a straight forward action movie with a hero who is just kind of... there. The story revolves around a plot to kill the newly elected US President, former General Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford). Captain America (Anthony Mackie) must find who is the real mastermind in order to clear his friend and the original Super Solider, Isaiah Bradley's (Carl Lumbly), name. I...

TV Series Review: Humans (2015-2018, 3 Seasons) *No Spoilers*

Colin Morgan, Katherine Parkinson, Ivanno Jeremiah, Gemma Chan, and Emily Berrington in Humans (2015) W hile it may seem late to be reviewing Humans now, nearly seven years after the show wrapped, the only thing that's really aged about it is the opening titles... and even then, not that much. I think I caught the first season on Netflix back in 2015, and then kind of dropped off waiting for a new season to appear. As of writing this, all three seasons are on Amazon Prime. Humans is set in a parallel world that looks much like ours except humanoid robot helpers, that look just like real humans, called 'Synths', are now common place. Season one begins at the point where the first synths go from being subservient machines to gaining consciousness, and explores not only how humanity reacts to that but how the synths react to humanity's perceptions as well. Initially it follows a group of OG synths, already given consciousness by their creator, and just trying to survive i...

Australian Federal Election 2025 - World's Most Boring Government Re-elected by Landside - We're Even More Fine!

Anthony Albanese Victory by ChatGPT and TET. W hen I started writing about the 2025 Federal election the polls were suggesting the world's most boring government was crusing to a defeat . As it turns out, boring is good, and Australia wants more of it, handing the current government a landslide win with a majority vote. Anthony Albanese became the first PM since John Howard to win a consecutive term, and the first Labor PM since Bob Hawke to do so. Some of that comes down to the leadership revolving door both major parties had through the mid 2000s. Although Anthony is my preferred PM over Dutton the irony is Dutton sounds more like a leader with a fairly commanding voice and an ability to speak well, without sounding like he's waffling and dodging questions, even if he is. Anthony, on the other hand, does have the ability (and speech writer) to say a lot of inspiring things but it gets lost in the delivery. He doesn't seem to know when to emphasise a point for effect. In h...

Resident Dragon: Checking In with My Daily Gag Cartoon/Comic About a Fire Dragon Living in the Suburbs

A t the beginning of the year I introduced you to my latest cartoon/comic series, Resident Dragon (because a dragon's got to live somewhere).  A daily - well, week-day-ly - gag cartoon about Red the Fire Dragon, living in a shared house in the suburbs, with his human friend, TET and his two pets, Grrr Dog and Cool Froyd the cat. Back then I had about 100 cartoons sketched out, with eleven completely digitally inked and coloured.  As of writing this, I haven't yet skipped a day of my schedule, and am seven toons short of an even 200 sketched out, with 31 fully inked and coloured. Actually, it's 33 but I only publish one full colour toon each week, so I have two in the wings. I'm not planning on doing daily toons forever. My goal is to hit 366 so I have enough to fill a daily desk calendar, should I decide to sell one. Currently you can buy individual prints of my finished toons in my Resident Dragon Store . When I have enough finished toons I will be compiling them into...

Movie Review: A Complete Unknown (2024) *No Spoilers*

Y ou would think the Bob Dylan story would be 'wind-swept and interesting,' to quote Billy Connelly, however, despite  A Complete Unknown  being quite an engaging film, it feels like it missed the years that really shaped him as a song writer/performer. The film starts in 1961, with a then unknown, 19-year-old Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet) arriving in New York City with his guitar.  From there he forges relationships with musical icons on his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking performance that reverberates around the world. The problem being, according to this film, Dylan arrived in New York, for the most part, fully formed as a folk singer/song writer. In virtually no time he makes a very important connection that puts him on the trajectory of doing the work and becoming a name, before making his world changing performance. While there is some drama behind the scenes with his various relationships, none of it is particularly unique to any number of up and com...

TV Series Review: Star Wars: Andor - Season 2 (2025, Disney+) *No Spoilers*

D isney+'s Star Wars: Andor  the first season is widely regarded as some of the best Star Wars since the original trilogy, and I don't disagree in my  Andor Season 1  review. Despite that, it does have its problems, mainly a lot of space between action pieces. That's not to say nothing is happening in those spaces, but I do remember being frustrated how long season one took to get to a promised heist scene, going from conversation to conversation over several episodes. However, when Andor does have action, it usually delivers, with action that serves the story rather than action because 'it's time for some action now'. Unfortunately that gave Andor the reputation for being Star Wars 'for grown ups'. People who understand how tension and intrigue can come just as much from character interaction, who is talking to who, and what they're saying. That lead to low viewership and the show's proposed number of seasons being reduced to just two (I believe...