Ready Player One (2018)

Directed by: Steven Spielberg | 140 minutes | action, adventure | Actors: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, TJ Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, Hannah John-Kamen, Ralph Ineson, Susan Lynch, Clare Higgins, Laurence Spellman, Perdita Weeks, Joel MacCormack

71-year-old Steven Spielberg is looking forward to it! From 2015 (‘Bridge Of Spies’) he treats us to a new film every year. After ‘The BFG’ from 2016 and ‘The Post’ from 2017, the public can now marvel at the visual spectacle ‘Ready Player One’.

‘Ready Player One’, based on Ernest Cline’s 2011 science fiction novel of the same name, is packed with references to Western pop and game culture. It helps if you are a bit at home in that, but even without that knowledge the film is a feast for the eyes.

Almost from minute one all the most fantastic CGI floodgates open and two hours and twenty minutes later you are exhausted, but completely satisfied after all the overwhelming visuals that Spielberg’s crew poured over you.

The Story in a Nutshell: It’s 2045, Columbia, Ohio. Our hero and orphan Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) lives with his aunt in ‘the stacks’, a trailer park consisting of stacked containers. To escape his worries, he loses himself daily in the virtual game environment OASIS, designed by computer genius James Halliday (Mark Rylance, ‘Bridge Of Spies’). Just like everyone else, because OASIS is a so-called MMORPG: a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Everyone takes on their own ‘avatar’ to search the virtual oasis for the ultimate reward, the Easter Egg.

Wade’s avatar Parzival, racing around in the iconic DeLorean from ‘Back to the Future’, forms an alliance with Aech (Lena Waithe), Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), Daito (Win Morisaki) and Sho (the disarming Philip Zhao) in the quest for three keys to get your hands on OASIS. But then the five still have to deal with the innkeeper, bad guy Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), director of the largest virtual game group IOI.

Along the way we are inundated with references. You’ll probably have to watch ‘Ready Player One’ three or four times to tick them all off. What’s coming along? King Kong, Godzilla, Super Mario, Duran Duran, Michael Jackson, Rubik’s Cube, John Travolta’s dance moves from Saturday Night Fever, The Iron Giant and Akira. The icing on the cake is a virtual trip to famous scenes from The Shining.

So, are you somewhat versed in gaming? Then you will really like the movie. Are you not at home in that? Then you will find the film ‘over the top’, but nevertheless ‘extremely cool’. In fact, you lack eyes and ears to take it all in.

Everything is clearly made with love and dedication. Every scene, both virtual and in the real world, looks slick. We take it for granted that the plot is a bit simple. Steven, we hope that you will often wake up the child in yourself and that you will regularly knock us over with these kinds of brilliant productions!

‘Ready Player One’ is a ‘classic’ in the making. Baseball hats off to this cinematic cabinet of curiosities!