An Entertaining Ode to All Things Pop Culture (With Its Imperfections)

Rating: 8/10 (31 March 2018)

I'm not familiar with the book, nor have I been a fan of Steven Spielberg's latest stuff; to me, he has become either an Oscar-bait or blockbuster-bait director, depending on which Steven Spielberg you get (This year's "The Post"?), so there was no reason for me to be excited about Ready Player One, especially with the almost cringe-worthy amounts of CGI and enough action to give me fatigue. And yet, here I am, giving this film a good 7.5-8/10. Ready Player One is a the film for fulfilling any fanboy/fangirl's dreams, riddled with tasteful pop culture references on the backdrop of an otherwise familiar, formulaic plot.
With nearly 80-90% of the film taking place in the Oasis, a majority of the film is CGI and takes place literally in a video game; despite this, Spielberg manages to seamlessly blend between reality and virtual, adding character development and depth to its characters and their virtual counterparts. This film could have easily been a CGI mess, and yet it isn't; Spielberg is able to let audiences distinguish between physical and virtual realities, and adds equal amount of heart to each.
As a nerd myself who is nearly obsessed with all things pop culture, I was blown away by Ready Player One's precise attention to detail in its pop culture references. From subtle musical cues from Back to the Future (by the franchise's same composer, Alan Silvestri) to deliberate plot devices taking place within an iconic 70s film, audiences will be simultaneously nostalgic and thrilled as they understand the pop culture references and comprehend how they tie into the plot of the storyline. It creates a joyous type of anticipation that doesn't lend the film predictability.
By no means is Ready Player One perfect; the script has some of the most cliche lines that sometimes made me cringe. The line that was also used in the trailer about Wade being named by his parents because it sounded like a superhero alter ego still irritates me every time I hear it. The plot is formulaic and even has some plot holes left unexplained; the only thing fortunate about this is that these plot holes aren't anything that the story relies on to maintain its integrity, but still deserve to be questioned.
I came in expecting Ready Player One to be all things wrong with Hollywood; banking on CGI, unoriginal references, and relentless and unnecessary action from a director who only seems to embrace Oscar/blockbuster-bait projects. Instead, I came out feeling a joyous nostalgia for a film released that night. Ready Player One is a formulaic movie, yes, but maybe it's formulaic and predictable because it's much like the movies that we've seen growing up, with the same amount of heart and soul.