One of the best of 2018!!

Rating: 10/10 (15 February 2020)

An absolute masterpiece filled with fantasy spectacle, true romance, edge of your seat thrills and a wonderful message. Set in a dystopian future where the virtual reality platform Oasis has become everyone's central form of escapism, it's a world that is expertly crafted from a team who genuinely love video games and films and it's a film that perfectly encapsulates and projects the beautiful marriage of video gaming and cinema, where the two worlds collide fantastically. Pop culture references a plenty and there's two sequences involving one of the greatest horror films ever made and one of the greatest horror characters ever made that made me gasp with joy at just how great of a tribute it was to those films (the same feeling occurred when The Iron Giant appears; fond memories of Brad Bird's beautiful animation in 1999) Visually incredible but also has a truly engaging story with characters you love and want to spend time around; thanks to a great script adapted for the screen by Ernest Cline, who had written the original novel, and co writer Zak Penn (The Incredible Hulk, Inspector Gadget) and great performances by Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Mark Rylance, Lena Waithe, Simon Pegg and Ben Mendleson. Not forgetting a hilarious role by T.J Miller as I-R0k! Amazing soundtrack (Hall and Oates and Twisted Sister being two particular highlights) in a similar style to Scott Pilgrim vs the World in which straight after I bought the soundtrack and couldn't stop thinking about the visuals! Ready Player One features great dedicated performances and shows Steven Spielberg at the top of his directorial mastery