Summary
4 tech score
“Ready Player One” (Warner Brothers)
Are audiences ready for “Ready Player One”? Some will be and some will not. This is a Steven Spielberg directed movie based on the novel of the same name by Ernest Cline. It concerns the world of the future, circa 2045. It is a bleak world where life has become so hard and tedious that most people escape to an optional world of virtual reality. The virtual reality of choice is a world called “Oasis”. Here people can live out their fantasies and escape the humdrum.
Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) is a teenager who spends most of his life in this virtual world, which was created by two brilliant men, James Halliday and Ogden Morrow (Mark Rylance and Simon Pegg). Ogden was forced out of his ownership of the company and Halliday controlled it all. Upon his death he set up a contest whereas anyone could obtain clues and search for three keys.
The person who finds all three will take total control of “Oasis”. Wade joins in the search as does the head of the company IOI. Wade wants to keep “Oasis” open and free for anyone whereas IOI wants to run it as a pay for play operation.
Most of the movie takes place in the world of “Oasis” where people do not appear as humans but as avatars. They take assumed names and design their bodies as they wish them to be. Wade takes the name of Parzival. Through a variety of circumstances he pairs up wth a girl named Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) to search for the keys.
Since most of the movie takes place in the world of virtual reality it is required there be a collection of sights and sounds that the VR world would have. This calls for some great computer graphics that awe those watching, but it doesn’t mean that there is a heart to the film. In most of the sequences there appears to be a hollow core. This is disappointing because Spielberg tends to go towards the heart -warming in his most successful movies (“E T” anyone?).
Mark Rylance is certainly miscast as James Halliday since most of the time Halliday is shown to be a very young man. Rylance is 58 years old. He is a good actor but even he can not turn back time. Sheridan shows some potential as the hero of the piece but since his character spends so much of his time in the VR world you don’t get to judge him on anything other than his voice.
In many ways “Ready Player One” reminded me of “Pacific Rim: Uprising.” They are both movies that focus on the special effects aspect of their stories and fail to provide a human element to which audiences can relate. It is all flash and bang, over and over again. For some that might be enough but for others it will be sorely lacking in entertainment value.
The movie is rated PG-13 for much profanity and violence.
When Steven Spielberg directs a film you expect it to have a measure of greatness. You certainly don’t get even a wisp of that in “Ready Player One.”
I scored “Ready Player One” an unplayed 4 out of 10.
Jackie K Cooper
www.jackiekcooper.com
