Do you know the name of the high school the characters attended in John Hughes’
movies? Did you play “Pitfall!” on the Atari 2600 when you were a kid?
And are you aware of what lurks behind the door of Room 237?
You
may be able to answer “yes” to all three of these questions (as I was),
and yet still not be able to register much more than a chuckle of
recognition in response to the vast majority of voluminous pop-culture
references scattered throughout “Ready Player One.” The action is
breathless and non-stop, both in the virtual reality and the reality
reality, but wallowing in ‘80s nostalgia is only so much fun for so
long—even if you’re a child of the era (as I am)—and it only really
works when it serves to further the narrative. So much of what
constitutes the humor in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s
best-selling novel is along the lines of: “Here’s a thing you know from
your youth.” And: “Here’s another thing.” And: “Here’s an obscure thing
that only an elite few of you will get, which will make you feel
super-smart.”
Chucky from the “Child’s Play” movies shares the screen with The Iron Giant and the DeLorean from “Back to the Future.” A thrilling auto race through the virtual streets of New York finds the characters daring to outrun the T. Rex from “Jurassic Park”
as well as King Kong. There’s no way to catch it all in one sitting.
This is a movie that has a literal Easter egg—and it is indeed a
“movie,” not a film, as Spielberg himself pointed out earlier this month
during its South by Southwest premiere.
Spielberg
would seem to be the ideal director for such a thorough (and overlong)
trip down memory lane. This is, after all, the decade he helped define,
asserting himself as one of our greatest and most influential
filmmakers. “Ready Player One” may have sprung from someone else’s brain
originally, but it’s a Spielbergian hero’s journey at its core,
complete with lens flares early and often. The young man at its center
is an obsessed gamer named Wade Watts who goes by the moniker Parzival
in the massive virtual reality everyone inhabits in the movie’s
dystopian future. But he’s very much a figure in the same driven,
single-minded vein as Henry Thomas in “E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial,” Harrison Ford in the “Indiana Jones” films, Tom Cruise in “Minority Report” or Tom Hanks in “Catch Me If You Can.” The actor who plays Wade Watts, Tye Sheridan (“Mud,” “X-Men: Apocalypse”), even resembles a “Close Encounters”-era Richard Dreyfuss.
“Ready
Player One” is at once familiar in its fabric and forward-thinking in
its technology, with a combination of gritty live action and glossy CGI.
It’s an ambitious mix that can be thrilling while it lasts, and yet it
fails to linger for long afterward, leaving you wondering what its point
is beyond validating the insularity of ravenous fandom.
The
movie’s copious needle drops drag us deeper into the decade, from Van
Halen’s “Jump” and Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” to George
Michael’s “Faith” and Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the
World.” At times, the selections can be painfully on the nose; the use
of New Order’s “Blue Monday” to set the tone as we enter a large, laser-filled dance club is absolutely perfect, however.
Somewhere in the middle of all this retro mayhem (which Cline himself co-scripted with Zak Penn) is an actual story—which itself is a throwback to something that’s never specifically named. This is essentially “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,”
complete with a scrappy, crafty underdog attempting to solve a series
of challenges posed by a whimsical, mystical genius in hopes of winning a
grand prize at the end.
The year is 2045 and the place is
Columbus, Ohio. Wade lives, as so many others do, in “The Stacks,” a
densely populated cluster of cruddy trailers piled high atop each other
and tied together by scaffolding. To escape their dreary lives, Wade and
his neighbors strap on their headgear and enter the Oasis, a sprawling
virtual reality where everyone spends the bulk of their time. Yes,
they’re doing VR in their RVs.
You can be whoever you want to be, go wherever you want to go, do
whatever you want to do. You can be a fearsome warrior or a sexy anime
vixen. You can gamble in a casino the size of a planet or climb Mount
Everest with Batman. Or you can just hang out with your friends—people
you’ve never actually met, but you feel like you intimately know—as Wade
does when he’s in the Oasis as the chicly rebellious, “Final
Fantasy”-styled Parzival. His best buddy is a hulking orc with a heart
of gold named Aech (Lena Waithe), and he’s smitten with a motorcycle-riding, punk rock badass named Art3mis (Olivia Cooke).
“Ready
Player One” would have been a far more compelling film with either of
these characters at its center, but we’re stuck with Parzival as our
bland yet brave conduit. Waithe has a swagger that’s hugely compelling;
Cooke doesn’t get nearly as much of a character to work with here as she
did in the gripping dark comedy “Thoroughbreds,”
but at least Art3mis is Parzival’s equal in terms of her smarts and
abilities, and she and isn’t simply relegated to being “the girl.”
They
(and everyone else) are searching for the three hidden keys left behind
by the late creator of the Oasis: the socially awkward, Steve
Jobs-esque James Halliday (Mark Rylance,
a much-needed source of quiet and humanity in this noisy, overwhelming
world). These are literally the keys to the kingdom. Whoever finds them
becomes the heir to his empire and the ruler of the Oasis. No one has
ever gotten close—not even Parzival, despite his encyclopedic knowledge
of the minutiae of Halliday’s life and inspiration. Meanwhile, the
greedy corporate villain Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn,
chilling as always) has built a massive army of mercenaries to scour
the Oasis for the keys so that he can exploit this realm for commercial
gain. Which is totally evil, according to this behemoth studio
blockbuster.
So much of “Ready Player One” consists of following
these characters around as they jump from one challenge to the next,
solving one problem before moving on to the next problem, with clues
from the movies, music and video games Halliday loved. But this instinct
leads to the film’s strongest sequence of all, which finds the
characters’ avatars landing right smack in the middle of “The Shining.” I wouldn’t dream of giving away which elements of Stanley Kubrick’s
film they explore—or which rooms of The Overlook Hotel. But I will say
it is the cleverest use of CGI within a live-action setting, and it
upends our expectations of a pop-culture phenomenon rather than simply
regurgitating something we know and love back to us. It comments on why
“The Shining” matters while also giving us the opportunity to see it
unexpectedly from a fresh perspective.
More of that kind of
multi-layered approach could have elevated “Ready Player One” from a
rollicking, name-dropping romp to a substantive tale with something to
say about the influences that shape us during our youth and stick with
us well into adulthood. Oh, and the answer to that John Hughes question?
It’s Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062.
Release date: March 28, 2018
Director: Steven Spielberg
Budget: 175 million USD
Production companies: Warner Bros., Amblin Entertainment, Village Roadshow Pictures, Amblin Partners
Music composed by: John Williams, Alan Silvestri
