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Ready Player One

4/1/2018

4 Comments

 

C+
2.47

A dystopian future where the populace drowns their boredom in a vast online world.

Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Tye Sheridan and Mark Rylance
Initial Review by Phil Crone

Picture
One of the most successful books in recent memory, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One pays homage to all things nerd culture of the 1980’s through the guise of the most important man in its dystopian future setting, James Halliday, and the virtual world he created, The Oasis.  As with any book adaptation, there’s always a question on how it will translate to the big screen. This was especially the case here, with wall-to-wall pop culture references and a wide assortment of locales experienced in the book. While Steven Spielberg’s adaptation largely throws many of the book’s events out the window, the movie still retains many of the important touchpoints of the book and while the execution seems a bit forced at times, it’s hard for anyone not to enjoy this movie.

Ready Player One is a movie with some very high highs and some shockingly low low’s, and one of those lows is right at the beginning.  Spielberg shortcuts the first third of the book through interminable exposition narrated by our protagonist, Wade Watts. In this jam-packed exposition, we get the gist of the movie: the creator of the Oasis, James Halliday, has died without an heir.  In his virtual world, he’s created a hunt for an “easter egg,” which involves finding three keys and opening three gates. Whomever finds the easter egg becomes the new owner of the Oasis and heir to Halliday’s multi-billion dollar fortune. This exposition introduces us to Wade and his in-game avatar, Parzival, his best friend, the hulking gladiator Aech, and our story’s main antagonist, Innovative Online Industries (IOI) CEO Nolan Sorrento and his faceless army of “sixers,” IOI employees who hunt for the easter egg in the name of IOI to ultimately control the Oasis.

​Did that seem like a lot?  It should, because it is a lot.  Cline spends a large portion of his book world-building, something that Spielberg doesn’t have the time to do.  The mammoth exposition is necessary to give you a grasp on the world, and fortunately, it’s the only part of the movie that “feels" long.  Once we get into the hunt for the first key, the action ensues and really doesn’t let up for the remainder of the 140 minute runtime that doesn’t feel anywhere near that length.

That initial action scene in question, the no holds barred but unfinishable race, is just the first of many impressive visual sequences.  There’s no hiding the action scenes behind any fog or darkness – they are bright, and while chaos reigns, nothing is inscrutable. As shrapnel littered the line of sight, I had no problem following the action in the car race.  Likewise, the subsequent action scenes, most notably the major final battle at the castle of Halliday’s video game avatar, Anorak, plays out incredibly well, having its own flow that was both easy to follow and a visual treat. While there was some backlash to much of the CGI presentation initially, I doubt you’ll find any better sequences out there right now.

The initial race also introduces us to Art3mis, an infamous “gunter,” which is Oasis-talk for players who hunt for Halliday’s easter egg.  (“egg hunter” – “gunter” – Get it?) We again see another case of book short-cutting as Spielberg has to mash in Wade’s infatuation with Art3mis as well as the obsession with all things Halliday in the back-and-forth between Parzival and Art3mis into not a lot of time.  While the initial exposition does a workmanlike job getting a non-book reader into what this world is, it felt like this portion was a bit rushed and relied more on background knowledge to get the viewer to where the book readers already were.

A neglect of the Parzival/Art3mis relationship isn’t the only undercutting we get from translation from the book to the movie.  While Aech remains a fantastic character and nearly steals the show, her back story is non-existent. Diato and Sho are complete throwaways.  Ogden Morrow’s integration into the story is clunky at best. It’s a shame to see many of the book’s underlying themes tossed aside at the expense of just including them in the movie.  If you’re not going to use Diato & Sho for more than comic relief, just cut them.

That said, a book translation to the big screen can trim some fat and get some things right.  Cline meanders through Act 2 of the book, sending Parzival on a wild goose chase that gets him the extra life quarter by happenstance.  Integrating that into the hall of records was a smart idea to avoid this. Easily the best scene change was “The Shining Challenge,” and I dare say its inclusion may have bumped the movie up half a letter grade in my mind and provided a good dose of humor.  Overall, Spielberg did a solid job making a funny movie, between letting T.J. Miller really improvise as i-R0k – a role that was wisely expanded from the book to bring some personality to the otherwise faceless villains – and showing the real world equivalents to the motions in the video game.  The latter was a joke that felt a bit overused, but it still managed to keep making me laugh.

The smartest change Spielberg made from the book was with the character of James Halliday.  Besides Mark Rylance’s excellent performance, I thought the decision of highlighting Halliday’s inability to “take the leap” with people against Wade learning to do what his hero could not was a smart way to convey the messaging of the story in a more accessible way – plus, when you have an Oscar winner in your cast, you expand their role, right?

While the movie doesn’t take quite the same path to get there, I was happy to see the ultimate message of the book around the joys of “real” experiences over the virtual world and the cheesy emphasis on doing things as a team were all still there.  It’s the type of message Spielberg has always been able to deliver in an effective albeit manipulative manner, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a little choked up by the end. Still, this is Spielberg, and you’re usually going to get “safe” when you’re talking Spielberg.  If this movie is anything, it’s certainly that. Plotting wise, no big chances were taken, and many of the more affecting scenes in the book (Diato’s death being the obvious one) were totally scrapped at the expense of keeping the tone light and accessible.

Ready Player One is unapologetic fun.  Once you get past the exposition, it’s a thrill ride from scene to scene that’s best enjoyed when you’re not thinking too much about it.  This was the type of story that was in Spielberg’s wheelhouse, and he succeeds at it. However, there’s still a lot of the source material weighing it down that results in a lack of focus on key characters and relationships.  Definitely experience this one in theaters if you can.

Grade: B
4 Comments
Jon
4/10/2018 01:53:31 am

Luc Besson’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets came and went from 2017’s summer box office, justifiably so based on its wretched dialogue and awful characters. Set in a futuristic space megalopolis, director Luc Besson spent all his time on the environments and none on the people inhabiting them. Enough critics liked it to get it to 49% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I suspect some grade inflation there. The existence of a new property (albeit one based on a little-known French comic) able to potentially show audiences something new and daring is a needed shot in the arm amongst movie years when the top ten money makers are reliably sequels and spinoffs. I read a handful of reviews that gave A’s for effort and hand-waved the rest away. Into that same sphere comes Ready Player One. Adapted from the popular novel, Ready Player One and Valerian have plenty in common, from their heavily-CGI’d environments to their lazy characterization and woeful dialogue. They also both left me fuming and fidgeting in my seat. Besson at least brought undeniable imagination to his world. Ready Player One wants you to ‘member Chucky.

Set in a dystopian, collapsing future with cutting edge technology available to seemingly everyone, young and old, Ready Player One is built like the McGuffin chases Spielberg has previously made into great films. Except this time, more McGuffins. Players in the VR-world are on the hunt for the enigmatic creator’s last will and testament, which he buried in the world, and to find it, they have to find three keys, the location of which is intimately tied to his eccentricities and cultural tastes and personal history. The finder gets a huge sum of money and dictatorial control of the whole enterprise. Someone needed to be the voice of dissent on this harebrained scheme. Forget that I’m tiring of the fictional trope and the real-world equivalent of the benevolent billionaire swooping in to save us or give our lives meaning. This is just a lot to ask of the viewer for a movie that takes place in the real world, albeit one with fantastic VR technology. The most important resource in the world is going to be passed down through an Easter egg hunt whose primary skill is knowledge of a dead guy’s life. Keeping the Holy Grail out of Nazi hands is a less ridiculous premise.

A film can have silly goals if it makes me care about the characters chasing them. Ready Player One is a complete mess in this regard. Tye Sheridan is a great actor who hasn’t made a good choice since becoming an adult. With small roles in all-timer The Tree of Life and leads in the excellent Mud and Joe as the initial three credits on his filmography, he marked himself as one of the best of his generation, but I’m beginning to doubt it. Like Dane DeHaan in Valerian, he has little talent for turning bad dialogue into anything believable. His Wade/Parzival is a stock empty shell of a protagonist, a familiar trope in video games that is deadly in movies. Olivia Cooke as the romantic object and co-lead fares little better, Lena Waithe as Wade’s buddy Aech is a better writer than she is actor, and when Ben Freakin Mendelsohn as the villain can’t ever liven up your script, something is tragically wrong. Wade’s aunt does not register for a character who’s supposed to have some meaning when she’s blown up. TJ Miller emerges as the best of a bad bunch by toning down his usual brashness for the flatter affect of his bounty hunter character.

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Jon
4/10/2018 01:54:27 am

It’s probably unfair to judge the actors when the dialogue is as terrible as it is. Zak Penn co-wrote the script with Ernest Cline, the book’s author, and I will not be rushing out to read the source material. Penn has been all over big-budget superhero movies for decades, contributing to some strong films (X2) and some bad ones (X3, Elektra). As far as writing goes, this has to go in the bad pile. Maybe that was always going to be part of Ready Player One because there is so much information to vomit out. Sentences repeatedly consist of movie-specific nouns or verbs with connecting conjunctions and filler, utterly depriving them of any meaning outside of a world I’m not invested in. Throw in the awful romantic developments (another thing Valerian and this have in common), the uncritical fawning over the creator, and various teased-but-unfollowed threads, and it is cringe after scowl after sneer for me.

This is not a movie with anything to say about anything. It is a movie for children about a place, the Internet, that is not for children. Where’s the vitriol in the multiplayer gaming sphere? Why is this movie so sexless in the most sex-drenched realm of the world, and presumably moreso with full VR? I know the answer to that question, to make it as appealing as possible, but by being so cuddly and inoffensive, it makes itself toothless and tame. It understands nothing of how the Internet works now, to say nothing of creating a credible future. Reddit hive minds would’ve solved these asinine riddles within days. Ready Player One wants the bleakness of a dystopia so that it can push the greatest amount of people into the Oasis, but it leaves all that bleakness behind once the goggles come on. Go outside more? What kind of paternalistic nonsense is that for a world where everyone is at poverty level? Much like one of my many complaints in Ferris Bueller, Ready Player One risks nothing by having a goddamn trillionaire assert a lesson to people with tiny fractions of his comfort.

I would not be so irritated by Ready Player One if it weren’t directed by Steven Spielberg. If it’s his non-union Mexican equivalent, I get it, but the man responsible for a hefty chunk of the cultural artifacts that Cline and Penn are so aggressively ejaculating on is supposed to be much, much better than this. What drew him to this, at a stage in his career when he’s otherwise making The Post and Bridge of Spies? He’s talked publicly about the sameness of big-budget filmmaking irrevocably leading to bankruptcy and consolidation and suffocation, and this is his answer? I grant that the action is coherent. I will not grant that it is exciting or motivated. It’s like he directed this with a Seth MacFarlane devil on his shoulder, demanding that he cram in more references that the audience can congratulate themselves for recognizing. On the other hand, Spot the Reference is the level that the protagonists are operating under, so why should one of the greatest pop directors of all time ask anything more of them?

I had a sneaking suspicion this was going to be bad from the first trailers, but based on the talent involved, I hoped to be wrong. It’s inconceivable that Spielberg would accept this as finished product. There are so many gaping holes in plot and quality on display. The stakes are keeping ads out of the Internet. No one thinks to just stop playing. What if the stakes were how a bland nothing wants to take control of the Internet and patronizingly shut it down for two days a week, despite this being the sole generator of income for vast swaths of the global population? I’d be happy to root against that guy. This is the bottom of Spielberg’s career. Scorsese’s making Wolf of Wall Street and Silence in his 70’s, while his peer is sullying his good name with bleeps and bloops and characters needlessly wasting time by meditating during the big climax. D

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Lane
4/13/2018 10:05:29 pm

I’ve talked before about “world creation” in several reviews and how, I personally view this as the ultimate telos of fiction—whether it’s novels, painting, or film—I think that the chief question that a venture into these worlds should ask is: how well does the artist create the world he or she aims to depict. And how deeply enmeshed in the mythology of that world are we, the audience, supposed to become.

“Ready Player One” is a movie that asks us these questions on a few meta-levels and packages it all in a buttery popcorn 80’s nerd spectacle with Twizzlers tied in a bow on top, all for our enjoyment and consumption. In a way, Spielberg seems to be wrestling with ghosts of his ‘70’s and ‘80’s past, and what better way to wrestle than to put all the great nerd references and clichés of a few decades into one feature film and let them have it all out.

You can tell that there’s always been a wrestling match happening inside of Steven Spielberg’s soul. In this corner, weighing in at whatever a broken shark machine weighs, it’s the action adventure summer blockbuster which Spielberg, along with his New Hollywood USC colleagues like George Lucas, literally invented in the late ‘70’s. In the other corner is the prestige drama—dramatically and thematically much heavier than its opponent, these are the films that win Oscars and allow studios to pat themselves on the back.

Spielberg has always been best known for the former film—“Jaws,” “ET,” and “Jurassic Park” being the chief examples for me—but in recent years his imagination has gravitated towards different mythologies: mythologies of nationalism, religion, and the tenuous ties of nation-state that came to define us in the 20th century but have been fraying at the edges in the 21st. These films always make a splash at the box office. Cynically, this is probably due more to the director’s name than to their actual excellence, though don’t get me wrong, some of these films have been duly great. “Bridge of Spies” was wonderfully acted and beautifully directed, though the story itself underwhelmed. I thought “The Post” was a great newsroom drama, though not without its flaws, and I think it will be more well regarded in time. And I always forget about “Lincoln,” but it also was a great film.

But enough history, what about this turn back to the popcorn—this saccharine dope hit of $100 million special effects and nerdy teen adventure stories? This most Spielbergian of Spielberg types? Well, I enjoyed it. I think it’s a movie that has be taken on it’s own terms, which is to say—it is what it is.

Spielberg is a populist auteur. He’s got a vision and knows what he wants to say and it just so happens what he wants to say appeals to lots of people. “Ready Player One” makes this distinction clear. There are some things in this film that I really think no other director could really pull off. The disco club scene; the Overlook Hotel scene; all of the world creation—there’s a care of world creation here that is sometimes masterful.

There’s also some stumbles in this film: I didn’t feel like there was a ton of emotional depth to the characters. The “neglected smart kid” trope is pure Spielberg, but in RPO there’s just not enough emphasis given to the domestic struggles of our protagonist to make us care. And Jon rightly points out that the stakes for success and failure are stunningly low. Much of the film’s tension seems forced.

What could have been a really interesting way into the conversation over how our virtual lives work doesn’t ever really take off. There’s a lot of intellectual capital left sitting on the table by the end of the day, and that’s too bad, because some of these themes are things that really need to be talked about.

But this film is all about the eye candy, and so that’s how I watched it. I came to be visually amazed and I wasn’t disappointed. Just inject that big screen goodness into my veins all day.

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Lane
4/13/2018 10:06:05 pm

My grade is a B, by the way.

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