23) Ready Player One (2018)

(3.5 's out of 5)

"I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal." - Groucho Marx

Director
Steven Spielberg

Cast
Tye Sheridan - Wade Watts/Parzival
Olivia Cooke - Samantha Cook/Art3mis
Mark Rylance - James Halliday/Anorak
Ben Mendelsohn - Nolan Sorrento
Lena Waithe - Aech
Win Morisaki - Toshiro Yoshiaki/Daito
Philip Zhao - Sho
Simon Pegg - Ogden Morrow
T.J. Miller - i-R0k

The 2018 sci-fi action movie. "Ready Player One," based on Ernest Cline's novel of the same name and directed by Steven Spielberg, is one long eye-popping pop-culture fest. 

I enjoyed the book very much, and the movie is just as loaded...saturated even...with all things pop culture from the last 50 years. So many characters and properties are crawling throughout this story that it'll take a lot of viewings to catch half of them, especially characters who have a second or less of screen time. 

Otherwise, "Ready Player One" is high energy entertainment. It doesn't waste any time. 

The takes place in the year 2045. All of society has grown immensely despondent, and everyone collectively escapes from reality by immersing themselves in a virtual reality world called the OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation). Every participant takes the form of an avatar and conduct themselves in all manners of entertainment, commerce, education, etc. It was created by programmers James Halliday (Mark Rylance) and Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg) both of whom founded the fictional company Gregarious Games. 

Users can choose their own avatar, which are often characters from various movies, television shows, music groups. or video games. They can also purchase or acquire various power-ups or accessories also taken from various properties. So. the OASIS is jammed with just about every pop culture reference you can think of. 

As Halliday has since passed away, his avatar known as Anorak, previously announced to all the world that Gregarious Games and the entire OASIS will be handed over to one single lucky winner of an on-going contest taking place inside the OASIS. All the lucky winner has to do is be the first player to find an Easter egg hidden somewhere in the artificial world. The egg is locked away and can only be obtained with the use of three separate keys that also need to be found. 

To achieve the keys, players need to accomplish three separate challenges which aren't easy to win. 

OASIS avatars Parzival (left) and Art3mis in "Ready Player One."

Any egg hunter looking for these keys are referred to as "gunters." 

One of these gunters happens to be Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), the corrupt millionaire CEO of Innovative Online Industries, or IOI for short. 

Sorrento utilizes both IOI employees and indentured servants to work around the clock digging through all of Halliday's interests life events which may serve as clues as to where he hid this egg so IOI can own Gregarious Games and control the OASIS. These workers of his are known within the OASIS as "sixers."

Meanwhile, one random teenager named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) not only immerses himself in the OASIS as frequently as anyone else, he's also a dedicated gunter. 

Inside, he goes by the avatar "Parcival" and is friends with a few other gunters called Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), Aech (Lena Waithe), Daito (Win Morisaki) and Sho (Philip Zhao). 

Wade studies the life and interests of James Halliday closely as records of Halliday's life, interests, writings, likes, dislikes, life events, achievements and failures, and other works and points of interest are all recorded in an archive database. 

After Wade figures out how to win the first challenge - a race that no one has yet won - and becomes the first gunter to win and score the first key, he works tirelessly with Art3mis, whom he has a crush on, and his other friends to find the remaining keys and be the one who scores the egg.

Wade becomes the first played to find the first of the three keys, which grabs the attention of Sorrento. He's willing to do anything to make sure he finds the egg before Wade does. 

It's comical to watch a corporate type wrack his brain and spend hours upon hours trying to figure out rather insignificant things (well, to most people) such as how to maneuver through now obsolete Atari 2600 games such as "Adventure" for clues alongside memorizing the importance of retro junk as it all pertained to one dude, Halliday. And he puts himself up against one teenager who's smarter than he is. It certainly says a lot about greed - corporate greed, which is certainly a plot point of the story. 

The whole thing feels satirical. So much energy, importance, life and death, over a giant virtual reality system. Of course, the prize is immense. It's like a modern day, or futuristic, action packed, geek version of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."  

There has to be hundreds of pop culture references dating between the 1970s to the mid-2000s jammed in here. Unless you watch "Ready Player One" which has a run time of 140 minutes, one frame at a time, or you have the attention and eyesight of a falcon, or just have nothing better to do on a Friday night and are desperate to accomplish at least one thing in your life, there's otherwise no way to catch them all. 

The Iron Giant attacks Mechagodzilla in the OASIS.

Most of the ones that are catchable have less than a second of screen time. Nevertheless, the movie depends so much on all the pop culture jampacked into the story that it seems the movie forgot to add some much-needed depth and development to the characters. 

They're too stale. It's not necessarily bad to focus on what Wade and the other characters are trying to accomplish. The movie feels completely full. There's a lot happening at every inch of the story, which alternates between the OASIS, Sorrento, and Wade's activities. Yet, the one thing that's missing is any insight into the characters. There's some insight, but not nearly enough. That's really the only initial problem I have with "Ready Player One." 

There's a fortune at steak, but it's hilarious watching everyone treating the OASIS like an absolute necessity. I'm sure there's some social commentary in that as far as modern society's dependence on technology and its addiction to constant visual gratification. That's on top of the commentary of corporate greed. All these references to other movies and such brings to mind those "member berries" from "South Park." Remember that? Remember? Oh, sure - I remember that!

Anyways, Spielberg knows how to wow an audience with eye-popping visuals and can tell a story that completely immerses the audience's attention. The pacing is great, and the story is entertaining. Weirdly enough, its audience is broad yet specific. Pop culture fanatics, geeks and nerds probably get the most out of this movie. There's enough pop culture and video game culture to feed the movie's intended audience of Gen X'rs, Millennials, and maybe some Gen Z'rs which spans more than 50 years. 

I read the book before the movie's release, and I enjoyed it. I also read the sequel, "Ready Player Two" as well, also by Ernest Cline. It felt slower and not as thrilling as the first book. 

Anyways, I like this movie for two reasons. The first being its dedication to irreplaceable reality (believe it or not), and that reality is where we all need to really need to spend most, if not all of our time. And two - the notion that we need to work for our success no matter what amount of success we achieve. No one's entitled to anything. Halliday makes each player use their brains to find his ultimate Easter egg. The entire experience comes down to its entertainment factor, and it is entertaining!