Fun, but missing a bit of heart

Rating: 7/10 (29 March 2018)

'Ready Player One' is based on the 2011 book by Ernest Cline (he co-writes the screenplay here), and as with all novel-to-film adaptions, the movie's not quite as good. Ironically, it feels like there's more action in the book! That being said, this is still a Spielberg sci-fi epic, with plenty to see and experience. It's a conglomeration of 'The Matrix' and 'Avatar', with people in 2045 essentially living their lives in a virtual reality world (the "Oasis"), created by Halliday (Rylance) & Morrow (Pegg).
Wade (Sheridan) is the unlikely hero, trying to win the 'game', which is a mix of 80s/90s video games and other TV/film references/characters - you could spend the whole movie glimpsing/placing cool things: 'Back To The Future', Gundam, Halo, Ninja Turtles, Iron Giant, Tron, etc. This is fun, but often makes it feel like quantity over quality. Has some good songs, but I would've liked more. Helping Wade against the evil Sixers/IOI, led by Sorrento (Mendelsohn) is Artemis (Cooke) and Aech (Waithe) - with Sho (Zhao) and Daito (Morisaki) thrown in near the end for good measure. There's not much character development and it's hard to care too much when they spend most of their time as cartoonish avatars in the Oasis.
Plenty can be inferred from this bleak future, where everyone is disconnected from reality and humanity, instead spending all their time online - pros and cons both ways. The ending is satisfactory, but I feel like we needed more time in the real world, especially with the secondary characters, especially Pegg and TJ Miller. It does differ from the book in a few areas, but it is great to see a lot of it realised on the big screen - the battle at the end is quite spectacular and the car races suitably chaotic. It's good, without being exceptional.