Coastal View News
Steven Spielberg is at his best when channeling his
seven-year-old self. He’s got some good grownup stuff, but movies like “E.T.”, “Jurassic
Park”, “Hook”, and “Indiana Jones” are something else—they evince and evoke
childlike wonder in such a compelling way. That’s Spielberg at the top of his
game.
So it’s natural to have high hopes for “Ready Player One”,
which is about a bunch of kids playing video games. Or, to be a little more
specific, it’s about kids, and some lame adults, tooling around in a virtual
reality world called “OASIS”, which, in the 2040s, is how everyone spends their
time.
That’s because the world pretty much sucks otherwise.
Evidently there were a bunch of wars and riots and rebellions and things, and
what’s left is mostly high-rise trailer parks in places like Columbus, Ohio.
Ohio! Truly dystopian.
Well but at least OASIS is pretty cool. You put on those
googles and gloves, power up your omni-directional treadmill, and then you can
go anywhere, do anything, and be anyone. OASIS isn’t portrayed, initially at least,
so much as an (addictive and dangerous) escape from reality; rather, it’s portrayed
as an egalitarian, cyber paradise.
And that’s all possible because its creator, Halliday
(Mark Rylance), was a pretty good dude who just wanted to nerd out and play
video games and let everyone else do the same.
But, in real life, everyone dies, and so Halliday died,
and left the fate of the virtual world hanging in the balance. However, as one
final nerdy hurrah before his death, Halliday put an “Easter Egg” in OASIS—a hidden
prize that can be unlocked by finding and collecting three keys won by
mastering three challenges. Sounds like fun, but the real attention-grabber is
the prize: Controlling stake in Halliday’s company (valued at a cool
half-trillion).
So everyone is after it. Some really big company,
Innovative Online Industries (IOI), which is led by Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn)—a
total lame wad—wants control of OASIS so that it can put a seizure-level amount
of ads in players’ fields of vision. So they’ve hired a whole army of players
whose sole purpose is to find the keys.
But then there are a few independent players who don’t
want IOI to get control of OASIS. Most notably, Parzival (Tye Sheridan),
Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), and Aech (Lena Waithe) are serious flies in IOI’s all-consumer-ing
ointment.
And, luckily, since these noble nerds are pure of heart, and
thus are kindred spirits to Halliday, they have an instinctive edge over the soulless
IOI troops. Even though IOI has a whole team of professional researchers
dedicated to guessing where Halliday put his keys, they are getting PONED by the
amateurs.
Still, IOI is rich. And that’s a major advantage. So what
we have here, in “Ready Player One”, is a classic underdog story.
As I said, Spielberg is at his best when channeling his
seven-year-old self. In “Ready Player One”, it’s more like Spielberg is channeling
his 14-year-old self. Which isn’t as cool, or compelling. Whereas a child’s
wonder, even if somewhat nerdy, is endearing—even inspiring—Spielberg’s barely
pubescent gamer story is just, well, awkward … and dorky, and weird, and
cheesy, but mostly just, gah, awkward. The screenplay, in particular, is about
as smooth and stylish as a middle schooler’s first date. And no one wants to
see, or remember, or be in the vicinity of that kind of train wreck.
So “Ready Player One” is a disappointment on the
childlike-wonder front. Which isn’t to say it’s a total fail. As someone who
grew up in the 80s and 90s, it’s hard not to get a warm and fuzzy feeling from
this movie’s continual pop-culture references—from Atari to Terminator to Goldeneye
to Twisted Sister to Iron Giant. There’s plenty of nostalgia to go around.
“Ready Player One” is enjoyable in some other ways too. For
example, its made-for-3D cinematography is engrossing. And the premise is certainly
cool.
But, really, at the end of the day, insofar as I liked
this movie, I guess it’s mostly because I’m a sucker for Nintendo 64
references.
