Skip to main content

Ready Player One -- a review


I didn’t care for Ready Player One, the novel written by Ernest Cline. It was a vapid, empty-headed excuse for an adventure story with a main character that was so thinly written he could have been a cardboard cutout. Taking place in 2045, in an economically depressed United States where most people live in trailer parks that have the trailers stacked one on top of each other, the only reason for living for most is the Oasis, an online “world” that’s created by a deceased Steve Jobs-like genius named Haliday.

Before he died, Haliday created a game within the Oasis where players had to collect “keys” by solving riddles and surviving endurance tests. The player who received all of the keys would then become the ruler of the Oasis (as well as becoming set for life, financially). As can be expected, many people have been on the hunt for these keys, including a multi-billion dollar corporation that wants to further commercialize the Oasis once they seize control of it.



The problem that I had with the book was with the main character of Wade, who was a dedicated gamer that knew everything there was to know about the life of his hero, Haliday. It’s the sort of unhealthy hero worship where the worshiper knows so much about the person of his affection—every last detail—that his own identity becomes lost. This was the problem with Wade, and since the book was written in the first person narrative we were stuck with his narrow-minded world view, and if you don’t like the main character of a story, that pretty much trashes the story itself.


However, to my surprise, I loved the movie version of Ready Player One. Directed by Steven Spielberg—a guy who knows a thing or two about making a smart blockbuster movie—Ready Player One, the film, wisely avoids slavishly following the book’s dopey story. The changes they make in the story not only cut it down for a cinematic run time, but they’re also smart, intelligent choices that uplift the project as a whole.



Tye Sheridan was a good choice for Wade; his performance is subtle, lacking the manic, hollow-headed intensity that made the book-version of Wade so off-putting for me. Plus, he manages to make Wade come off as being an expert on all the little details of Haliday’s life without losing his own humanity. Olivia Cooke is wonderful as Art3mis, a legendary denizen of the Oasis who teams up with Wade on his quest. And she’s involved in one of my favorite scenes in the film—one that made me laugh out loud when I first saw it—involving the Alien chest-bursting scene.


Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One) continues his own quest to play every version of the nefarious baddie in as many pop culture movies with his solid performance as Sorrento, the CEO of the evil corporation that wants the Oasis for its own ends. And speaking of pop culture, the various cameos by heroes and villains from movies and TV in RPO are fun to see, and add to the enjoyment of the film.



Before RPO came out, there was some hand-wringing in the entertainment media about whether or not Spielberg still “got it.” Having seen this modern day fairy tale (which is the apt tone that Spielberg chose to tell this story in), I think it’s fair to say that he never lost “it.” He took a flawed story and polished it up into a vastly entertaining, epic tale that can be enjoyed even by people who don’t play video games. --SF





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Explorer From Another World

It’s Friday night during the summer in Beutter county, an idyllic farming community in Indiana, and the good folks are settling in for what should be another humdinger of an evening. Until their plans are shattered by the arrival of an Explorer From Another World! This turns out to be an alien (Gemma Sterling) who starts savagely killing people from the moment it disembarks from its flying saucer. Local kids Eddie (Colin McCorquodale), Marybeth (Sage Marchand) and Culpepper (Nolan Gay) are planning on seeing a movie, but it looks like they’ll be battling for the very survival of the human race instead! Explorer From Another World is a wonderfully done throwback to the B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Ably directed by Woody Edwards (who gives himself a small cameo as Hank in the sheriff’s jail cell), the film is forty five minutes long, but manages to tell its torrid but funny story very effectively in the time allotted. And the short running time tracks when you...
Post a Comment
Read more

Batman: The Return of the Caped Crusaders -- a review

Holy animation,, Batman! Batman: The Return of the Caped Crusaders is a loving tribute to the 1960s TV series that manages to feel like the second 1960s-era Batman movie, thanks to the voice-casting of original Batman and Robin stars Adam West and Burt Ward, along with Julie Newmar, who reprises her role as Catwoman. Taking place in the same time period as the series, the film is filled with the social mores of the time, such as having Catwoman demurely step to the side whenever Batman and Robin battle the villainous henchmen (complete with the customary BIFF! BAM! and POW! word balloons the original series always flashed during the fight scenes). Catwoman is a part of a fearsome foursome of rogues that includes the Joker, Penguin and the Riddler as they set out to work together to wreak havoc on Gotham City. The fact that these villains team up, along with their use of a penguin-themed zeppelin later in the film, is a nice nod to the original 1966 Batman movie that was relea...
Post a Comment
Read more

My Top Five of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is returning (finally!) on the 17th of July with an all-new third season. To celebrate the return what has become my favorite of the new Star Trek shows on Paramount+, I decided to create a list of my top five episodes from the first two seasons. Memento Mori After several episodes of hinting at their presence, Memento Mori is the first big confrontation between the Federation and the Gorn. First introduced in the TOS episode Arena , with a memorable fight between Captain Kirk and a slow moving, green-skinned humanoid lizard, the Gorn have popped up in the episode The Time Trap of ST: The Animated Series , and in the In A Mirror, Darkly Part Two episode of ST: Enterprise (using really bad CGI that wasn’t much of an improvement over the Gorn suit used in Arena ). We never actually see the Gorn in Memento Mori , except for their ships, which look like angry claws ripping their way through space. This is a wise move, because not showing the...
Post a Comment
Read more