"Ready Player One": An Enormous, Fantastic, Breathtaking Mess

Rating: 5/10 (13 April 2018)

"Ready Player One" is based on a 2011 novel of the same name by Ernest Cline. For the most part, I felt the film lacked real substance or meaning. It seemed terribly derivative, and quite honestly I felt the film could have gone in different directions. Rather than create a fascinating thriller that thrives on character study and exploration, that explores the bounds of the human imagination when exposed to something as intangible as technology, the film focuses on spectacle. Quite possibly the thing I disliked the most was the lack of character building. Typically, there needs to be an exciting or tense backdrop/situation for a group of characters to work around. Most importantly, the said backdrop is tangible and actual and has stakes to it. With RPO, the immensity of the plot happens in a virtual world, where it is made clear at the very beginning that death there is not permanent nor applicable in the real world. In order to construct a somewhat competent action film, and to create actual chemistries and relationships between various characters, which is what the film aspires to be, there needs to be some traits or weight to them. These characters were generic. There's Wade Watts, the lead, who has no defining characteristics to him, his girlfriend??, Samantha, who has a birthmark, and there's Wade's best friend, Aech, (underused, and fully capable of replacing Samantha as the romantic lead, please the chemistry is there). I did, however, had some fun with the bad guy and his company, IOI, the antagonist that competes with Watts to locate several keys/clues within the game. The world was interesting to me, especially the concept of the loyalty centers and the premise of the corporation itself. I was captivated in the character studies surrounding Sorrento and his ascent to the head of IOI, Halliday's relationship with Kira and how he interacted with her and Morrow. I think the stories surrounding these characters deserved to be fleshed out more.
This is not to say that this is a terrible film , or even a bad film, really. It's fairly competent and has some impressive visuals, some incredibly entertaining, well-paced sequences that are performed and written well. For example, a scene is a spin-off/tribute/montage to "The Shining," in which the characters interact with settings and characters from the original Kubrick film. I had a lot of fun with these scenes, like the fluidity of the car chase scene, or the creativity and colorfulness of the club scene, or the nostalgic giddiness surrounding the Iron Giant sequence. I loved a good amount of this film, yet it could have been so much more.
5/10
50%
C