Green Goblin Reviews: Ready Player One
So this is one of those stories that, when I heard it was being optioned as a movie, I thought it would go one of two ways. Either:
A: The movie will die in development hell just like half the nerdy developmental properties that studios rush to get their hands on, without any idea of how to actually make it work as a narrative film (see, Halo, Zelda and hopefully Tetris).
-OR-
B: The movie will be made, but it will be made haphazardly and slapped together with a shoestring budget and no real understanding of how to convert the parts that work on screen properly (see, Percy Jackson, Warcraft, and probably Tetris, unfortunately…)
The reason for this is because (brace yourselves for this)…….READY PLAYER ONE IS NOT A VERY GOOD BOOK. I know. Shocker, right? Such a hot take on the internet to acknowledge that this book with very visible flaws has very visible flaws, eh? Now, I know harping on Eric Cline’s little runaway success has been the internet’s favorite non-political pass time leading up to this film’s release, but I do totally get why it became as popular as it was. Because despite its gatekeeping, toxicity and general fanfiction-esque quality, there’s always going to be a dumb lizard part of your brain that goes “I get that reference and I like that I did”. And that’s what Ready Player One appeals to; it’s wall-to-wall cheap pops. And sometimes you just need that catharsis drip-fed into your frontal lobe in whatever way you can. On that alone, I’ll say it’s not the worst thing I pulled out of a Lootcrate. But then came the news that they were turning into a film and I could not possibly fathom how they’d be able to fit all of the structure and setup onto the big screen adequately without sacrificing quality, but more importantly, how could they elevate the story into something that’s more than just “Parzival the best Original Character (DO NOT STEAL!!!!) of all time”. Answer: They got Steven Spielberg.
So the story goes like this: In the not-to-distant dystopian future, a fusion between Steve Jobs, Ray Babbitt and the Angry Video Game Nerd named James Halliday (Mark Rylance) creates an online world called as the Oasis, where one can do virtually anything with an avatar resembling whomever or whatever you want. Think Second Life truly realized with VR, omni-directional treadmills and haptic feedback. It naturally becomes a world-changing bit of tech, as it appears the planet’s entire economy eventually flows around it. It is naturally a very highly valued commodity, that has made Halliday one of the most impactful men in history. He passes away at the start of the film and leaves the literal keys to the kingdom hidden throughout the Oasis in the world’s largest Easter egg hunt. Clues to the keys all revolve around the things he loved in life; 80s pop culture, scif-fi, fantasy and vidja games. The winner will claim $500,000,000,000.00 and complete control of the Oasis itself. Naturally, every capable person on the planet is actively egg-hunting (“gunting”…?), including corporations who wish to exploit the Oasis for their own means, up to and including charging different membership rankings and adding lootbox-style services to the entire package (a pretty topical reference, though it seems kind of redundant when people in the Oasis literally have an entire planet dedicated to actual gambling. But whatever).
Now, just as a premise, plenty of people could have fun with this setup. This film thankfully chooses to embrace the positivity and wonder of the premise, while also altering the parts of the story that relied more on descriptions into bombastic set-pieces. Our main character Wade/Parzival (Tye Sheridan) still meets Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) while trying to get the first key, only instead of beating a skeleton lord in the arcade game Joust, the two are racing along the insane track that’s being shown off in the trailers. They also (thank god) tweaked Wade’s character to make him less of a creepy jerk. Instead of using his encyclopedic knowledge to show off or shut down “posers”, he uses it to bond with his friends and contribute to discussions. And they completely got rid of the whole stalking thing, which I’m fairly certain left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. More importantly, for the sake of narrative structure, much more of Wade’s accomplishments in the book are spread out amongst his friends, Art3mis, Aech (*spoilers*), Sho (Philip Zhao) and Daito (Win Morisaki). The CEO Sorrento (Ben Mendlesohn) is just as evil as he is in the books, but they’ve also elevated the minor character of i-R0k (TJ Miller) into a comical online hitman to pair him up with. This spreading out of responsibilities and plot points to other members of the respective clans makes both sides more approachable as characters and lets both Wade and Sorrento seem less impossibly capable of succeeding in virtually everything they do. It’s honestly quite apparent that Spielberg himself took this story and made it his own (up to and including the film basically pointing it out directly in second act).
The one thing Spielberg still wasn’t able to really accomplish was give the film much of a message. Don’t get me wrong. There is indeed an overarching point besides “first you get the egg, then you get the power, then you get the women”, but it’s application throughout the film is honestly so spotty, it can sometimes draw you out of the fun of the moment. And that’s what you really should take out of this film more than anything else, folks. The fun of the moment is why you’re here. This film is truly packed to the gills with references that that dumb lizard part of your brain will be craving more of as the credits roll, including a third act that had people cheering wildly in my theater. There were some changes that I wish may have stayed, but I understand that with film being a visual media, the focus on descriptions and explanations in the book simply wouldn’t carry over. So hey; if you’re gonna have to replace it with something, you could do a whole helluva lot worse than awesome spectacle and cheap pops.
For all the criticism the book (rightfully) caught and the leeriness of it being converted wholesale into a film, I’ll say that this turned out better than I ever could have hoped. It saddens me to think that people might not see this film based on snippets they’ve seen online of the worst parts of the book. The film is legitimately solid, it’s just not going to change the world in any meaningful way. And that’s fine. Sometimes, it’s cool to just lose yourself in the world of pure imagination.
8/10. It’s worth the ticket. It’s worth purchasing on home media, but I probably won’t be feeling the need to hang up a poster of it on my wall, as most of the cool bits are borrowed from other properties.