Film (Flashback) Friday: Ready Player One
Author’s note: This review was originally posted on April 1, 2018, when the movie was in theaters. I’m reposting it now because I think it is worth watching and is now available for streaming on HBO GO.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline came out in 2011 and very quickly in my mind entered the same territory as A Tale of Two Cities and War and Peace. Literary classic? No. A book that I often lied and told people I read? Absolutely. A book abreast with pop culture references from the 1980’s—a decade in which I never lived but consistently opined for? I’d love it, surely. But I never read it and never could articulate the reason I didn’t read it. Some part of me felt I didn’t need to; I knew the gist and that was enough. Does this reflect a larger problem of self-aggrandizing in my life with wanting everyone to believe I’m incredibly well read? Likely, but this review column is not my therapist and therefore not the place to dive into that.
If the movie is any indication, my assumptions about the gist of the book were accurate. Ready Player One, the movie, is 2 hours and 19 minutes of Steven Spielberg cramming more nostalgia down the audience’s throats than a several-day VH1’s I Love the 80s binge, which admittedly enough people clamored for that VH1’s I Love the 80s Strikes Back became a thing. This movie has a massive audience it seems, or it definitely did in the early 2000’s according to my VH1 programming knowledge.
The plot centers around American society in 2047. America looks suspiciously a lot like 2018 with more wrecked cars and shoddy trailer stacking based architecture developments except nearly everyone spends the majority of their time in a virtual reality world called the Oasis. The founder of the Oasis leaves behind a major Easter egg following his death, and whoever can find three keys and ultimately the Easter egg will receive control of the Oasis and his stock estimated to be worth $500 billion. This is still a lot of money in 2047 as inflation has not reached a comically bad level though the movie does not tell me the relative price of bread or milk for comparison—lost opportunity really. The movie starts with this explanation and takes twists and turns from there. Ultimately, the basis of the story doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. It boils down to one question.
Want to see a movie featuring characters and non-hidden homages to Gundam, The Iron Giant, Transformers, Back to the Future, almost every Atari 2600 game, and the rest of the 80s pantheon of geekdom? If you answered “meh,” then this movie might not be your cup of tea. If you answered “hell yeah,” then see the movie.
Writer Demi Adejuyigbe perhaps sums it up best.
Just got word that I can finally share my rejected theme song from @readyplayerone. They went with Alan Silvestri's theme, but I still want to thank Steven Spielberg & @WarnerBrosEnt for the wonderful opportunity. pic.twitter.com/aK32ZOUA16
— demi adejuyigbe (@electrolemon) March 7, 2018
Is this problematic? Not to me.
Dramatic reenactment of my thoughts during the first third of the movie:
“Ah! Battletoads! Yes! Back to the Future! I miss all of these movies and games. Being a kid was awesome and being an adult kind of sucks! This race scene makes no real sense and I’m fairly confused. Ah! King Kong.”
Copy and paste that substituting the name of various games and movies, and you have both the inner workings of Clint watching the movie and someone in a 1980s video arcade on just a touch of acid. I’m not sure I could articulate major differences in the two.
The best moments of the movie are a lot of fun. The sense of adventure is genuine, and the laughs are earned throughout—rarely cheaply given. Ready Player One is undoubtedly Steven Spielberg’s most fun movie in years and years. Lincoln is a phenomenally well-made movie, but if you argue it is “fun,” then we cannot be friends. I don’t think Daniel Day Lewis knows how to be fun, but I would pay my entire life’s worth to see him cast in a sequel to Goodburger. Hollywood. Game. Changer.
Is the movie perfect? No. The acting is strong and the special effects are incredible, but everything takes a back seat to the sea of allusions. The main romance is paper thin and unnecessary. The dialogue, while often funny, can be incredibly awkward. A character, for no real reason, refers to a character already established as his aunt as “my mother’s sister.” It’s weird, doesn’t make any type of sense except the most literal, and is just one example of occasionally clunky writing.
Should one see this movie? Well, ultimately that question is only answered after examining a larger question: what is the purpose of the movie?
According to the director, Ready Player One is more of a film than a movie. The film represents something larger than just some fun. In a New York Times piece from a week before the release of the film, Mr. Spielberg says all of his films now have a purpose.
“In all my early films, from ‘Jaws’ to ‘Raiders’ to ‘E.T.’, I was telling the story from a seat in the theater — from the audience, for the audience — and I haven’t done that in a long time,” Mr. Spielberg said. “I haven’t really done that since ‘Jurassic Park,’ and that was in the ’90s.”
Why not?
“Because I’m older,” he said, with a laugh. “Now I feel a deeper responsibility to tell stories that have some kind of social meaning.” He added: “If I have a choice between a movie that is 100 percent for the audience and a movie that says something about the past — that resonates for me or elevates a conversation that might have been forgotten, like with ‘Munich’ — I will always choose history over popular culture. Even with all the popcorn in a film like ‘Ready Player One,’ it does still have social meaning.”
First, it’s upsetting yet reaffirming to know Spielberg didn’t make Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for the audience. It always felt like he made that movie despite knowing there was an audience who wanted it to be not horrible. Boy, he taught me a lesson in having any type of desire. More importantly, the thought that every film has a social meaning leaves Ready Player One open to a broader, important dialogue that is happening in entertainment surrounding representation and the like. The male lead is sort of a bland every man white guy who gets the girl though not having very many heroic qualities outside of an encyclopedic knowledge of 80s pop culture. Lena Waithe, known for her roles on The Chi and Master of None, plays the lead’s best friend, and while it is nice to see a lesbian woman of color having a really prominent role in a Hollywood blockbuster, the actor’s avatar is an incredible large man. The movie passes the Bechdel test, barely, but the film really centers around the male lead, who is far from the most interesting character. He’s actually kind of boring, pretty clueless when it comes to both women and general social interaction, and he says “my mother’s sister” to the person who is dating his aunt. What a weirdo. This is not to take away anything from Tye Sheridan, who is fine in the role, but Hollywood really loves a bland attractive white guy.
Some critics have said Ready Player One’s escapism is akin to a lot of the problems in the Gamergate scandal. Constance Grady for Vox does a pretty thorough job of explaining some of the backlash to the book, and this same argument could be made against the movie. I’m not sure that the brunt of the criticism is ultimately fair, but if Steven Spielberg believes the most important thing is putting a social meaning into his work, then I think he opens it up to far broader criticism.
Ready Player One should be viewed through the lens of a movie more than a film—a distinction that means nothing more than tempering one’s expectations, but a distinction that matters in movies like this. It is a healthy dose of nostalgia and a fun two hours of adventure. It isn’t perfect, and it definitely doesn’t break ground in any type of thought provoking away. Yet I still hold there is value in escapism. From theater to books to movies to music, there is art that moves people. There is art that causes us to think, to feel, to love, to cry. There is also art that is made because life can be tough and a pointless laugh or smile is just needed some days.
Ready Player One falls into the latter camp. It’s fun. It isn’t much more than fun, but I’m not sure it needs to be.