Film Review: Ready Player One

"This Isn't Just A Game. I'm Talking About Actual Life And Death Stuff..."

With The Post earlier this year garnering a wide flurry of Oscar nominations and a critical consensus which boarded on the side of rousing positivity, a return to form for director Steven Spielberg after the yawn-inducing mediocrity of The BFG was welcomed with open arms, and with only three months since its' release here in the UK, Spielberg returns once again to the movie-fold with Ready Player One, a cinematic adaptation of Ernest Cline's 2011 science fiction adventure novel of the same name. Projected in 3D for its' preview screening release, Spielberg's latest primarily focuses on Tye Sheridan's (X-Men: Apocalypse) Wade Watts, a slum-stricken teen who uses the environment of the OASIS, a virtual reality gaming platform created by Mark Rylance's (Dunkirk) recently deceased James Halliday, to both escape his daily slumber and more importantly, to join many others in the hunt for three "Easter Eggs" left within the game by Halliday before his death which give the finder both riches beyond belief and the key to control of the entire OASIS itself. With pop culture references galore and an upbeat, heroic sensibility, Spielberg's latest undeniably should work in the hands of a filmmaker renowned for popcorn delights, but with a brain scorching over-reliance on digital effects and a screenplay both absent of emotion and effective engagement, Ready Player One doesn't work as a whole and is merely saved by individual elements which make it passable rather than thoroughly entertaining. 

With an obvious social commentary regarding the nature and impact of modern technology, Spielberg's movie mixes the subversive ideas within Cronenberg's Existenz and Videodrome with a obvious love for the science fiction genre in its' eye-watering levels of on-screen references, levels which makes The Cabin in the Woods look like a passing fling with its' respective horror genre, but too a staggering amount which by the half-way point does become overly tacky and cheap. With an entire segment dedicated to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, the set-piece is a real bottle spinner in regards to how one might respond, with my own personal obsession with Kubrick's masterpiece resulting in a subverted distaste to seeing our on-screen heroes quickly pop through the Overlook Hotel, music cues and all, and instead making me think how I would rather be watching The Shining instead. With Ready Player One a movie which Spielberg himself has coined as the most difficult movie he's worked on since Saving Private Ryan due to the staggering levels of visual effects, the CGI battle scenes really aren't worth the time, particularly in a final act which boarders on George Lucas style dullness and a complete lack of character engagement when at least eighty percent of the film is spent inside the OASIS itself with digitally designed "avatars". With Ben Mendelsohn once again resigned to Rogue One style typecasting as the film's one-note central antagonist and a ear-scraping level of exposition heavy dialogue, Ready Player One certainly has more negative aspects than positive, and for a director who time and time again has proven that giant gargantuan science fiction spectacle is part and parcel of his day job, Spielberg's latest annoyingly doesn't hit the heavy heights we are all very much used to.

Overall Score: 4/10