Get Ready, Player One

Rating: 8/10 (29 March 2018)

This review of Ready Player One only has minor spoilers
**** (4/5)
THERE'S A T-REX in Ready Player One, there's a DeLorean (that doesn't go back in time) and there's a giant King Kong wrecking havoc. Over the years Steven Spielberg has been called many names; auteur, master filmmaker, highly imaginative and cinematic master, yet if there's one name applies to more it's 'Big Kid' and with his latest nerd-fest that title is fairly apt. His latest, based entirely on Ernest Cline's best selling novel of the same name, the film comes chock full of special effects, blistering colour and finally it comes clogged with pop culture references aplenty, think you know them? Well, Spielberg will challenge your knowledge in his geekiest, his most fun, most exciting and his most explosive film in recent years.
We open with Wade (Sheridan), an 18-year-old lad who lives in a slum of Columbus, Ohio a place called The Stacks, a place where trailers are stacked high sat on metal stilts, to get away from this life he spends most of his time in the OASIS, a world where you can be literally anyone, change your facial features, your gender and even your lifestyle, and it's here when Spielberg's film finds it's full breathing room. It's a world filled with vibrant colour, incredible avatars of different sizes, and the real game changer they make up the shape of gaming and movie references. Here Spielberg unlocks his true nerd, and some of his most exciting directing in recent years. For example, there's a moment, not too long into the film where hundreds of cars, the DeLorean, the A-Team van and the Plymouth Fury (which happens to be driven by Lara Croft) are all racing each other through the streets of New York, having already outmaneuvered the Jurassic Park T-Rex, King Kong swings into view and as the angry giant ape appears. It's clear that all your lingering are dispelled - clearly Spielberg is going to deliver on his action-packed ride as promised.
And he's right; this is by far his most exciting, his most spellbinding and his most explosive film in recent years. What follows after is a high-octane, action-packed thrill-ride that is sure to unlock your inner nerd, so get ready, player one. Meanwhile on the outside world, there's the human players, Wade and his gaming partner Samantha (Cooke) have to outrun a big corporate gaming company IOI (who's logo looks a lot like binary from a distance) and their head boss, the ruthless Nolan Sorento (Mendelsohn) who tries to find the Easter Eggs before everybody else, thus leaving OASIS under threat from being taken over.
It's a high-risk contest, then, chasing the Easter Eggs announced by the recently deceased James Halliday (Rylance), the curator of the world. And Spielberg seamlessly melds the fast-paced action between the virtual world, and the real world with dazzling aplomb, melding the peril in both states and upping the stakes once we quickly approach the endgame. However Ready Player One isn't perfect as the film occasionally gets sidetracked by exposition (this is what an 'Easter Egg' is, here's why the Atari 2600 game Adventure is being used) which is only momentarily frustrating, but the real problem is with Mendelsohn, who again does too little to make any differences between Sorento, as he's also a lot like Rogue One's Orson Krennic and The Dark Knight's John Daggett. But, thankfully Spielberg's latest is mostly a joy, for Spielberg letting loose his kind of blockbuster techniques that gave him his name in the first place. And it happily shows that he can still do action-packed sequences like nobody else, clearly, he's back on top of his game.
VERDICT Spielberg has done the impossible; making a virtual world feel real, in his geekiest, his most exciting and his most enchanting film in recent years; it's a pure cinematic pleasure. So get ready, player one.