An action-packed, funny, and visually striking ode to geekdom...

Rating: 8/10 (19 April 2018)

Based on the Ernest Cline novel, Ready Player One is set in the year 2045. People use a vast, limitless virtual world called "The Oasis" to escape their slum-ridden reality. After the Oasis' creator James Halliday dies, he issues a three-step easter egg hunt to all Oasis users that will grant the winner his fortune and control over the Oasis. When 18-year-old Wade Watts is the first user to uncover Halliday's first clue, the corrupt video game conglomerate Innovative Online Industries (IOI), led by Nolan Sorrento, resorts to hostile means in order to acquire control over The Oasis. Wade joins a rebellion led by famous Oasis user Art3mis to find Halliday's easter egg before IOI does. The film is directed by acclaimed filmmaker Steven Spielberg and stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg and Mark Rylance.
This film adaptation deviates from the novel quite a lot, but in some ways for the better. The story in the novel is very complex and often drifts into slow, overstuffed territory here and there, but the film takes a much more briskly-paced, focused and easy-to-understand approach, ignoring filler and driving the story forward with each simple occurrence. This is mostly due to the more practical challenges the characters endure in order to solve Halliday's easter egg clues. In the book, the challenges are very unorthodox and require loads of exposition because chances are the reader won't know a thing about the specific game or movie from the 1980s that's heavily involved in the challenge. In the movie, one of the challenges is a race. Everyone knows what a race is. Done. Explanation redundant. Carry on with the story. It's that straight-forward and a massive improvement over the novel.
The film is a constant surge of nostalgic fun. It features a plethora of cameos from movies, video games and even music, with some breathtaking CGI to back them all up. Examples include Back to the Future, The Shining, Overwatch, The Iron Giant, King Kong, and even Battletoads. Think of it as the Who Framed Roger Rabbit of 70s, 80s, and 90s pop culture. Like in the novel, a clear appreciation for geek culture is displayed, and it really had me grinning and chuckling for a majority of the runtime. Thankfully, the film doesn't go overboard with these cameos to the point where it distracts from the story. In fact, they help deliver quite a thrilling final battle, the visual highlight overall.
The performances were adequate, mostly hoaky coming from the younger cast members, but I must single out Mark Rylance as James Halliday. Halliday is the film's emotional highlight. Rylance's performance appears to be a homage to the late Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. In fact, before Wilder's death I believe Spielberg attempted to have Wilder come out of retirement for a final film role. Could've been this one? Anyways, Halliday is just an eccentric, old man in search for a worthy successor. He has an affective personal history that strongly supports the story, and his final monologue is quite absorbing, especially coming from a doddery old soul lost in his own world. Alan Silvestri's score is a whimsical nod to Back to the Future, which he also composed. The music also includes some thematic touches similar to the work of John Williams', Spielberg's frequent collaborator who was originally set to score Ready Player One.
On the unfortunate side, the character chemistries are pretty weak, which is too bad because the film at first takes a more interesting route with Wade and Art3mis' connection. Rather than meeting in person at the very end of the story, Wade and Art3mis meet personally very early on in the film and even spend a lot of screentime outside of the Oasis. Their in-person interactions should've established a more genuine chemistry and romance because they're seeing their non-avatar bodies for the first time and they lived up to their expectations, but in the end it's just another formulaic, hasty Disney channel-esque love story. They barely have anything in common, yet they become a couple just to please a demographic. Boring!
Some characters pivotal to the story are kind of downplayed, namely Ogden Morrow, Halliday's friend, former colleague and the co-founder of the Oasis. Morrow was very important in the book and personally assisted the main characters when danger escalated. In a kind of a predictable twist, Morrow does still help the protagonists uncover Halliday's egg before IOI, but it's one of the few creative liberties against the novel that I think didn't work right and didn't serve much justice for Simon Pegg's minimal involvement. The film needed more upfront interaction with Morrow. Some sequences in the novel featuring Morrow were very dark and exciting; they would've made for some dazzling set-pieces. Some scenes that left massive impacts in the novel felt rushed, such as Wade meeting his friend Aech in reality, which ignores a rather humorous revelation, and especially the ending, which seemed very abrupt in the wake of a riveting, near hour-long climax.
Despite my gripes, I think Ready Player One is a fun ride. It's an action-packed, funny, and visually striking ode to geekdom everywhere and every era. The cameos ranged from familiar to extremely unconventional, and they deliver quite a wild climax. However, it's difficult to NOT compare/contrast with Ernest Cline's novel. Some liberties felt justified, but the character chemistries were pretty weak, and some moments felt rushed and complicated the story a bit. Also some characters that were pivotal in the book were sadly downplayed. But as a movie, it's mighty fine popcorn entertainment. Spielberg really knows how to tackle every genre.