Ready Player One had a lot of people excited - mostly people who enjoy pop culture and those who read the book. There were some hefty expectations laid onto the movie. Question is - does it live up to them?
Pandering to the Crowd
I went into the movie with apprehensive excitement. I thought it was quite possible to overdo the references. And to a certain extent, my fears were well placed. The movie constantly toed the line between amusing and heavy handed with the pop culture references. When characters popped up in the background, discreetly, it was a treat. Spying the cute little cameos and references wasn't distracting and was quite enjoyable. Then there were moments that felt incredibly forced, making the film makers look like they were trying a little too hard. Like when your dad tries to talk to you about things that interest you. "Hey son, I like the interactive digital entertainments, too!"
You couldn't help but cringe. I think Wreck-it Ralph did it much better - you've got references and easter eggs everywhere but they were subtle and they felt like they belonged in the world organically.
There's fun to be had
If you could get past all the pop culture they're trying to force down your gullet, Ready Player One is actually quite an enjoyable movie.
At its very core, Ready Player One is a detective treasure hunt adventure (it may or may not be considered a MacGuffin, depending on which definiton you subscribe to). It's a formula we've all seen before - Saving Private Ryan (Private Ryan was the MacGuffin), Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Da Vinci Code - but Ready Player One added multiple layers to the presentation and used a number of treasures so you feel like the movie could swing in a number of different directions. The detective work is quite fun to watch for the most part. Deciphering clues, figuring out the next steps - impressive logical feats kept us glued to the screen.
And throughout that journey, you eventually get to know the main players of the story. Most of the main characters were fleshed out, except maybe for our generic villain (who is totally the embodiment of the way we villainize EA, by the way). You're made to emphatize with our heroes and you care for what happens to them in their journey. And I think Ready Player One did a good job of making you care for the actual humans as much as you care for what happens to their avatars in-game.
The one thing I kind of hate about the characterization is how stereotypical they made James Halliday as the socially awkward game developer genius. It's frustrating that his personality traits even play an important part in the movie.
Pacing was on point, too. There were hardly any sequences that I felt weren't necessary and nothing felt dragging. This is Spielberg bringing his A game.
It's very much worth the price of admission.
Some nits to pick (SPOILERS AHEAD)
No hackers?
It's so weird that with that much money involved and that many people interested that it wasn't just hacked. Apparently, security hasn't gotten much better in the future because B055m@n69 still leaves his password scribbled on the side of his machine. That means people still use alphanumeric passwords in this dystopian future. And the kids were able to hack his game from a van in a matter of hours at most.
You can rest assured that as many people were trying to legitimately win, there'd be an equally large number of people trying to hack the system or just make sure that no one wins. I guess it could've been explained in the book, but it wasn't mentioned in the movie.
No dupes?
If you've ever played any MMO, you usually come across people rocking the same gear as you, especially if you're using top level gear. Even in a game where the only limit is one's imagination, for sure, you'd still see at least another guy with a Delorean and maybe 70 other people in a Batmobile. And in the final battle, there'd be like 3,000 Cloud Strifes and maybe 50 Wolverines.
Is this legitimately the only Delorean in the entire game?
No trolls?
I don't know if you've ever played an online game, but almost every single game has a pool of toxic trollish people. Just take Overwatch and League of Legends - these communities can get extremely toxic. Usually, the bigger a game gets, the more toxic the environment becomes. So it's remarkable to me that there weren't 50 Ugandan Knuckles surrounding our heroes, spitting at them and calilng Art3mis a false queen.
Do you kno de wae
And there was a total lack of people just fucking around. It's so unbelievable to me that 20 in-game minutes have passed and they haven't been reminded about how much they suck and which gender their mom identifies as and people she's sleeping with isn't your dad.
If VR chat is any indication, a place like Oasis would look very different.
Death has no real consequence
Yes, you "zero out," but throughout the movie, none of the actual tasks required any resources (I guess except the car). Even if you did need gear, apparently you can just mod everything into existence. Aech was able to mod the villain's entire office - did they need in-game money for that? And if there are no rules and you can just kill whomever wherever, then for sure there'd be people whose sole mission in life is to just randomly kill people. Have you ever tried going into the Dark Zone in The Division. You don't have to kill other humans but of course that's what you do. So in a game like the Oasis, where there are no real consequences to killing, it'd be a murder-fest.
Why don't people just DC before they die?
And if death is such a big deal, why isn't disconnecting right before you die a thing? It doesn't look like there are consequences for disconnections. There's no honor system. Even in Dragon Ball FighterZ, when someone's about to lose, they just disconnect. Why couldn't the citizens of the Oasis do just that? It's not like you're locked in and are unable to leave. It is still a just game, after all.
No one dies IRL from running into traffic or something equally stupid?
So, apparently, you have the option to go running in the streets to run somewhere in the Oasis. This is weird - do you have to run 10 meters IRL to run 10 meters in the Oasis? If you're not on that multi-directional treadmill, you'd have to run around in the streets apparently. Does that mean those Halo teens should've been killed by a speeding car or running straight into a goddamn wall? If people died playing Pokémon GO, for sure drones of people should've died playing this the way they play it.
7.5Overall7Story8Fun factor7.5Presentation
Despite these nits picked, it's a crazy good movie. Well worth the price of admission.