Movie Review: Ready Player One (2018) *Spoiler Free*

Movie Review: Ready Player One (2018) Spoiler Free

I'm not familiar with the book Ready Player One is based upon, and I haven't really played computer games since leaving my teens behind at the end of the 1980's - though that last point puts me in just the right demographic to enjoy the eighties nostalgia of this film.

When I saw the trailer last year it looked fun, fast paced, and packed with so many references to other movies - on scale not seen since Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It felt like a movie I needed to see.

Set in the not too far distant future (2045) the plot is centered around a virtual reality world, called the Oasis, that seemingly everyone is plugged into to escape having to deal with real life.

When Oasis creator, Halliday (Mark Rylance) dies he challenges everyone to find the ultimate game Easter egg that will allow them to become his successor to owning the game world and his fortune.

The story then follows Wade (Tye Sheridan) and his group of friends as they attempt to solve the puzzles that will unlock the egg. Upping the stakes is a very determined corporate leader, Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), a one time prodigy of Halliday, who will stop at nothing to find the Easter egg before anyone.

As a movie Ready Player One states right from the start what it is and doesn't really deviate. It's a fun ride, where we get to watch the various players try to complete the game quest set before them. There are some surface level messages about social media like, not everyone is the same in real life as their online persona, and spending too much time playing computer games is probably not a good thing, but it doesn't get any deeper than that.

Personally I did enjoy Ready Player One but it wasn't quite what I was expecting (bearing in mind my entire impression of the film going in was from one trailer). In the trailer we see vistas of a slum city trailer park unlike anything I've ever seen before. It's like the world is so over populated that they just started stacking trailers on top of trailers to create cheap housing instead of building actual cheap housing apartments.

Ready Player One - Trailer Park Slums

To me, that world, which is the real world in the movie, looked way more interesting than the game world. I think I wanted to see more of that, and the characters who might live there than what I got.

The real world is where the real stakes happen but I got the impression the movie was holding back some what in order to avoid anything harsher than a PG-13 rating. Most of the film happens in the Oasis where, if you die, you can just start again - though I'm pretty sure hardened gamers will tell you that's a big deal when you've put weeks (even years) of time into your character to level them up.

I found it hard to connect with the characters in a way that really made me care about them. Wade we meet in the real world right from the start but we don't learn enough about him to be too invested before meeting his Oasis avatar/persona. Everyone else we meet in the Oasis first. This disconnect between the real world and the Oasis kind of works against getting to know the real people behind the avatars. Which is possibly why I thought we'd see a lot more of the real world than the Oasis.

I will say, don't go into this film just for the nostalgia cameos. Some of them are so quick you won't even be sure if you saw them. As fun as it is to spot the various references to pop culture, the speed at which they happen is deliberately designed to prevent you from being too distracted by them. I never found myself playing 'spot the cameo' for very long, even in scenes where there are a lot of cameos to spot.

Overall Ready Player One is a fun movie with visually stunning CGI that all looks very convincing, given that it didn't need to be, since we know it's all happening in a computer game. At no point did poor CGI take me out of the film.

It never gets too deep into teaching life lessons or examining social issues, though you could probably glean a bit more from it than I did if you really wanted to analyse the movie. It's pretty much Steven Spielberg doing what he does best, fun adventure films that entertain you for a couple of hours. It may appeal more to long time gamers but there's enough there for most people with a passing interest in technology and social media to enjoy.

Comments

TV Series Review: Velma (2023-2024) No Spoilers

A s a kid, Scooby Doo cartoons were something I used to watch fairly regularly. I wasn't a diehard fan but it was one of the better, of the many, cartoons I used to watch. I had heard about the new animated series, Velma , around the time of its release but it wasn't coming out on any streaming service I was subscribed to so it went off my radar pretty quickly. Quite by chance I signed up to a streaming service so I could watch DC Entertainment's, The Penguin, and noticed Velma was on that platform. I figured I may as well get my money's worth out of the subscription. I did know that Velma, herself, had been race swapped for the show, which made no real difference to me, though I do prefer classic Velma if pushed to choose. However the first episode of season one was a real shock to my expectations! No where had I heard this series was skewing very much into adult humor and themes. I was expecting something more along the lines of the original Scooby Doo show. Instead I

TV Series Review: The Office - Australia (Prime Video) (2024) No Spoilers

W hile I'm a late comer fan of The Office, only watching after the original and USA versions were both available on streaming services, I did watch them in the order of release i.e. I watched the U.K. version first. Now, with the release of the Australian version of The Office on Prime Video, I think it's best to approach watching this new version understanding that it is not those shows. More importantly, remembering the US version was not well received or as popular as it has become since streaming became a thing. I personally remember people often saying the original version was better, back in the day. Of course, the Australian version has analogues for all the same characters you're familiar with from the previous versions, with their characteristics, so you can easily see who is the Aussie version of each character. While there are actually 13 different adaptations of the series worldwide, I was surprised to learn this is the first time the boss has been female. No

Movie Review: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023) No Spoilers

I f you're like me and didn't go to see Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in theatres you made the right choice. For context, I loved the first Aquaman movie . It's one of my favorites from the Snyder/DCEU era. It is a relatively well made adventure story, with some fantastic world building, amazing visuals, and included some commentary on environmental issues as well. Despite having, mostly the same creative team, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom comes across as a film that couldn't decide what it wanted to be, in terms of a sequel. On the one hand it wants to showcase the cool, fun, wisecracking, but bad ass, rock'n'roll version of Aquaman (Jason Momoa) with another rollicking adventure. On the other it feels like someone said it had to be epic with potentially world changing stakes so Aquaman would have to do 'King Shit' and be all serious, navigate deep sea politics, and generally try to be a responsible heroic good guy that he is when he's not being

Trump's 2024 Election Win Will Change Everything - At Least I Sure Hope It Does!

Trump by Leonardo.ai & TET A s an outsider looking in on the US 2024 election, right up until election day, it is beyond my belief that the election continued to be a 'close race'. It is even further beyond my belief that Trump won, without question. Even if the Democrats wanted to claim the election was rigged somehow (which I'm sure Trump was gearing up to do had the outcome been different) it would be hard to make the case, beyond a recount. There's no slim margin here. Trump clearly won. While I would've preferred a Blue win, I at least got one outcome I was hoping for. A clear winner on election day. If I could give the Democrats some free, unsolicited advice for the next election. Stop targeting the opposition as if they're somehow selfish, evil villains. That's not how political parties work. At the end of the day the all represent the public. The people. The everyday citizen who you're trying to convince that you have what it takes to meet t

Optimus Robots, Self Driving Cars and Buses - Tesla's 'We Robot' Event and the Evolution of Optimus

Tesla Optimus Robot Serving Guests. Image: Tesla O n the tenth of October Tesla held their 'We Robot' event, which I guess is the new incarnation of their previous Tesla AI Day annual event. There were three much talked about reveals, the driverless taxis, a driverless bus, and Optimus robots moving around the event, fully interacting with people 'on the ground'. Tesla Driverless Taxi. Image: Tesla While it was cool to see so many driverless taxis, that you could get in and experience for yourself as they drove around the Warner Brothers lot, and the driverless bus was something of a surprise reveal nobody expected, my attention was on Optimus. Tesla Driverless Robovan. Image: Tesla It was in September of 2021 that Elon Musk first announced his plan to create an affordable, humanoid, domestic robot, that would eventually be in homes worldwide. That vision was underlined with a person wearing a robot suit, that wasn't as well received as Elon may have liked, despite

If I Could Talk to the Animals... Maybe AI Can Make This a Reality?

W e've always been able to talk to animals, and it's sometimes said, jokingly, you may have a problem if they start talking back, but what if they could? One thing that AI is good at is processing data and spotting patterns, common elements, and highlighting relationships which makes it ideal for all kind of research, so why not studying the language of animals? It seems like science fiction but so were real-time language translators not too long ago. What if you could understand exactly what your pets are saying to you and speak back to them (through a real-time translator) in their own language? While were not there yet, advancements in AI learning systems seem to suggest that the idea is no longer as far fetched and fanciful as it used to be. To be honest, using AI to decipher animal communication accurately, is something that never crossed my mind but I'm truly excited to know that this research is being done. Watch the Bloomberg Originals video, Could AI Unlock the S

I'm Confused About Why People Prefer to Say Discombobulated?

D iscombobulated. Is a word that I think someone rediscovered about three or four years ago (maybe more because the pandemic years have thrown out my sense of time) and now I hear it a lot. It's not a new word by any means, but when I started hearing multiple celebrities using it in everyday sentences, I actively had to look up what it meant. Define it with as many synonyms as you like but essentially it's just another word meaning 'confused'. Seinfeld Quotes: Quotes.net The words are pretty much interchangeable. He was discombobulated by too many choices. He was confused by too many choices. My confusion is the length of the word. It's unnecessarily long with too many syllables. There are many other words that mean confused, and therefore also mean discombobulated. Most of them are shorter and easier to say. So why not just say 'confused'? Perhaps discombobulated sounds more intelligent, maybe? Hawaii Five-0 Quotes: Quotes.net I've noticed it gets us

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog