Spielberg's 'Player One' not so ready as sci-fi thriller propelled by pop-culture references
“Ready Player One” - ★ ★ ½
If a futuristic action movie must be propelled by pop-culture references, Steven Spielberg's dizzying “Ready Player One” demonstrates how best to do it: in bursts of explosive, nostalgic imagery principally extracted from 1980s movies, music, fashion and video games.
I have long held that allusions rank as one of the easiest and most uncreative devices in cinematic storytelling (as fans of “Wayne's World” can attest), but the speed at which so many visual and aural pop references strike our retinas and eardrums in this film might demand multiple viewings just to absorb them all.
Spielberg's movie - taking significant deviations from Ernest Cline's pop-culture-fanboy best-seller - does more than resemble a big-screen video game. It immerses us in a virtual world where characters literally cash it in upon losing their lives. And it suggests that VR has become the new, supreme opiate of the masses.
“Ready Player One” takes place in a dystopian 2045 Ohio trailer park where decaying mobile homes sit atop each other in “the Stacks.”
But most of the action occurs in the OASIS, a virtual reality world created by the late genius James Halliday (Mark Rylance), who leaves behind an irresistible challenge to fans: Whoever discovers three hidden keys and uses clues to win an elaborate Easter egg hunt will take control of OASIS and rule the world.
We meet the hero of “Ready Player One” during the weakest opening ever attached to a Spielberg movie.
Young Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), known as Parzival when he becomes an avatar within the OASIS, delivers a droning voice-over speech introducing himself and giving us the rundown on his poverty-stricken existence and why disillusioned humans retreat to the OASIS. (Zak Penn and Cline would have better served their screenplay by ignoring the novel's first-person perspective, as writers for “The Hunger Games” did.)
Wade thinks he can win the contest with his virtual best bud Aech (pronounced “H” and played by Lena Waithe), a mechanical wizard with robotic apparatus for his midsection. The two eventually team with Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), a sassy, motorcycle-riding anime “gunter” (short for “egg hunter”).
Halliday's offer of world domination also piques the interest of corrupt corporate executive Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn, channeling a high school principal from a John Hughes movie).
His company IOI goes all-out to win by hiring hundreds of gunters to locate Halliday's clues based on his vast trivia knowledge of pop culture from the 1980s.
Sorrento stops at nothing. He arranges an explosion that kills many people in the Stacks, but misses Wade.
I wanted to really like “Ready Player One.” I admire some of the elaborate set pieces and several of the astonishing CGI visuals.
Spielberg's frenetic and dense nonstop action sequences engage, but seldom thrill. And threats to the heroes' lives don't feel all that convincing or urgent.
While Sheridan and Cooke create personable characters, they ultimately lack the sizzling chemistry needed to punch through the artifice of the OASIS.
Supposedly, Halliday and his partner Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg) ruled as overlords of 1980s pop culture.
But how can they when they ignore the “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” films, some of the top sci-fi nerd classics of all time?
<b>Starring:</b> Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance, Simon Pegg
<b>Directed by:</b> Steven Spielberg
<b>Other:</b> A Warner Bros. release. Rated PG-13 for partial nudity, bloody images, violence. 140 minutes