'These days, reality is a bummer, everyone's looking for a way to escape'
Ready Player One 7.2
In the year 2045, Wade, a lad with a hard family life plugs himself into Oasis, a universal VR system which becomes (to quote Red Dwarf) 'better than life' for most people. There's lots of talk about the system inventor James halliday, who died and left a Willy Wonka style challenge to find the Easter egg hidden in the game and inherit the system. You have to solve clues and think outside the box to succeed, and whilst on his quest our main character unwittingly brings his virtual troubles into the real world, a real no-no in this universe. Of course there is a villainous corporation in it just for the money and power, and a small group of players who have formed a rebel alliance to fight them.
I was hoping this was gonna follow in the footsteps of many other sci fi films and explore how AI and Tech will somehow attack or diminish humanity if left unchecked (one of my favourite film themes) and I suppose it does that in a small way, reminded me of things like Total Recall and The Matrix, but still it turned into something else, something less interesting to me, a more action based CGI-heavy adventure. I was disappointed that i didn't think it had that much of interest to say.
The introduction, including the first race is done very well. First we see 'the stacks', a futuristic, industrialised version of a block of flats, showing these people are very poor, at least in the real world. We follow Wade into the Oasis and see a crazy motor race which with its moving 'camera' is visually very impressive, in an OTT Video game style, it would have looked great at the cinema. Although it does look good, the big techno battle at the end lost me really, it wasn't really my thing atall. CGI can only ever be so impressive. No matter what you see in CGI, for me it is never as profound or memorable as real action filmed. I'll always remember the first time I saw Ben Hur's famous chariot race, it was so amazing to see because it is obviously actually happening, then that feeling was exceeded whilst watching a ship being pulled up a hill and flowing down rapids for real in the wonderful Fitzcarraldo. Those two, and many others, have the spectacle and the inimitable astonishment/respect for the work that was put into it, whereas something like Ready Player One only has the spectacle. Another example is the difference in feel of the Orcs in LOTR which were all prosthetics, and in the Hobbit where it's all animated. With this fairly empty spectacle through crazy looking visuals, it reminded me of Sucker Punch and a bit of Boss Level, both of which I enjoyed.
All this stuff would have worked better for me if I was more emotionally involved with the characters, I felt little empathy and had little connection with them, and little with the film overall, a fairly major flaw. For me, in terms of the characters, it didn't totally earn the emotional payoff at the end. But saying that, this was about the much bigger picture, not individuals. It is a super-nostalgic love letter to the 80s, early games and game makers especially. I think most of the music and references were from that period. It gave me the feeling of 80s fantasy adventure films like Never ending story and Willow, in the sense you don't know what you'll see next but it would still make some sort of narrative sense. It is rammed full of film references; There's something about Mary, Back to the Future, Akira, King Kong, Batman, Iron Giant, Aliens, Silent Running, Dune and Superman were all noded to within just the first 20 mins. There must have been countless other references I missed, especially from gaming, I imagine Halliday is a name from gaming in some way.
In terms of the story, there was always likely to be a plot point about the real identities of his online friends, and I was relieved when they all finally met in the real world. But for me there should have been more of their real characters in the story instead all the action, this made it a bit more 'throw-away' than I would have liked. It was going along nicely without being anything special, then an hour in we visit the Shining's Overlook Hotel... now that is a plot point to get excited about. It looked like they used little bits of footage from the film for inside room 237 which was a real treat for me, even if much of what happened there had no connection to Kubrick's masterpiece, one of my favourite all time horrors. Possibly only Spielberg would have the confidence to do this to a Kubrick film, they were friends, he cites Kubrick as his biggest inspiration, and he made A.I. after Kubrick handed him the project, thinking he was the right man for the job.
As is often the case with these modern blockbusters, I find they start and end well and sag in the middle. In this the lasting message is that games, which really represent escapism from the real world, shouldn't be everything to people. Wade decides to reduce the access to Oasis to encourage people to live their real lives more, which is a nice detail, a bit like I said about Vanilla Sky and the philosophy about always choosing a real life over a fantasy one. He was never gonna sign that contract, like Charlie and his chocolate factory, he proves himself worthy by showing humility. I liked how the meeting with Halliday took place not in some wizards cave but in the designer's room, where the magic happens. It was trying to bring things back to the real world and more importantly pay tribute to the real people and their humble beginnings, which i quite liked.
There's some of the sentimentality but not the same emotional engagement and clear storytelling you normally get from Spielberg, it's too focused on the world building and visuals I think, hence I didn't really notice if any of the acting was decent, although Ben Mendelsohn is always good as a villain. I can't quite put my finger on it but I think maybe it was too much in the game world and not in the real. Still, since it is made by one of the biggest directors of all time, you can't really argue with any of the technical aspects, it is undeniably well made in terms of editing, soundtrack and visuals. But as an experience I found it a mixed bag, unpredictable without really being that surprising, intriguing without really being that interesting and engaging without really being that engrossing. Mostly enjoyable and quite sweet at the end but it was a bit empty and wasn't human enough for me.
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