Ready Player One (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 2h)

It is never easy, especially in the world of criticism, to admit that your prior conceptions of a film may have been wrong. Your hatred of the very concept of it may have been caused by a mix of poor marketing, a cynicism of a film that in some people’s eyes took a large number of beloved childhood franchises,merrily ripped their soul out, and dropped them into a messy badly written story that wore its geek kudos on some overwrought Where’s Waldo of  mid 1980s to early 1990s pop culture “spot the character/song/reference”.

I was wrong, at least partly. Here, thus, is my open apology, of sorts: Ready Player One surprised me. I liked Ready Player One, despite my entire view of the film being stacked against it. That alone is a surprise.

 Don’t get me wrong, Ernest Cline’s original novel is still a badly written piece of trash that reads more like a strategy guide than a novel (but then, a good chunk of Spielberg’s career has been in turning trashy airport novels (Jaws, Jurassic Park) into the thing of childhoods), whilst Spielberg’s  film is still overly reliant upon the film throwing pop-cultural elements at you like a demented 80s/90s holiday special. But the vast majority of it is simply window-dressing to a quintessentially Spielbergian (and more generally 80s) narrative of a young man setting out to defend the world (both real and virtual) against nefarious forces, with the help of his friends, which, whilst patchy in places, shows a little of the old Spielberg charm and magic in places.

At the heart of the film is the quest; for a film that sets itself largely in a myriad number of worlds, and takes its influence from video gaming, 80s geek subculture, and 80s culture in general, this quest takes a simple format; hidden by Halliday shortly before his death are three keys, each buried inside challenges that range from a race across a monster-and-hazard strewn racecourse across New York, a detail-perfect recreation of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and a forbidding castle. Get all three keys, and you get your hands on Halliday’s Easter Egg, a sizable fortune, and, most crucially complete control of the virtual worlds of The Oasis.

Much of the quality of the film comes, surprisingly, from Wade/Parzival, his friends, and the surprisingly affecting portrayal of the creator of The Oasis, James Halliday, by Mark Rylance. Wade, played by Tye Sheridan, ticks all of the Spielberg boxes, from a healthy disrespect for authority, to a unskewable moral compass-even when Ben Mendelson’s villainous Nolan Sorrento, the head of the corporate IOI, who intend to monetize the Oasis, attempts to win him over with promises of money, a job, and a place of his own, Wade refuses to budge; his quest, as with his Arthurian counterpart, drives him onward.

Samantha/Art3mis, played by Olivia Cooke, is a likable foil to Wade, a no-nonsense freedom fighter who seeks to foil IOI’s plan-more importantly, she’s a complete subversion of a good number of female heroine stereotypes of 80s (and indeed more recent) films, as well as a complete revision of her character from the rather flat “will thou gets the girl” Aesop that Cline ends her storyline in the original with. The trio of  Aech (Lena Waithe), Daito (Win Morisaki) and Zhou (Philip Zhao), are all likable characters, with two of them utterly subverting the stereotypes of gamers in a trio of excellently written (and funny) character intros.

Yet, it is surprisingly Halliday who comes out as the most interesting, and intriguing figure of the piece; one can clearly draw parallels between him and other creators-there’s more than a little of Steve Jobs in his inability to connect with people, a key theme that runs throughout not only the challenges that he sets the users of the Oasis, but through the film in general. Rylance adds a degree of fragility, especially in Halliday’s older age, of a man clearly ill at ease with his creation, unhappy at the damage that it has caused society, as well as mourning the connection which he has lost with a person he clearly loved. His final scene, at the end of the challenge, is surprisingly affecting, affectionately watching his younger self play videogames, rather than connect with the world outside, before reminding Wade that reality is, after all, the only thing that is real-it may be a slightly flat Aesop but it’s one clearly meant to remind the audience that, after all, this is just a game

Around his cast, Spielberg creates one of his true masterpieces of visual design, from the pitch-perfect recreation of countless cinematic, gaming, and musical icons as disparate as the Iron Giant, MechaGodzilla, Tracer from Overwatch, Goro from Mortal Kombat…, not to mention the worlds they inhabit, (as well as adding a fair number of visually striking creations of their own) the list goes on. Neither, I am more than surprised to say, is there much of the “geek bingo” I was mildly afraid the film’s dialogue would slip into-the key things, including Art3mis’s bike (from anime Akira), the aforementioned Mecha-Godzilla, King Kong, Gundam, but the film mostly steps back to let us take in the view without continually reminding us who these characters are. The other major surprise is the care taken with every one of these characters-even the Iron Giant, one of the characters whose presence in the film generated the most concern, is handled, for most of its appearance, with the utmost care, and respect. What is more, this is a film that is surprisingly reverent, especially from an elder statesman of cinema, towards videogames and gamers; whilst this is a little bit of a double-edged sword, the grand alliance of gamers against the amassed armies of IOI is clearly an indication that, at least in Spielberg’s view, these amassed hordes of fans are people whose hobby is just as relevant and just as uniting as anyone else’s.

And yet, and yet…Ready Player One is far from perfect. The Aesop of bonds between people is a messy one, and comes and goes in places, and even at its strongest, seems inconsistent-the bonds between our main heroes clearly grow, but outside of this, it seems to arrive when the plot demands, most notably in the rallying of the colossal army, who appear on the simple words of Parzival. The romance between Wade and Samantha seems to arrive at the end of the film, as though Spielberg himself realised that the film needed a romantic ending to this subplot, albeit a more equal one than Cline’s original novel.

Mendelsson’s villain seems equally muddled, floating between egomaniacal, punch-clock, and even surprisingly cowardly towards the end, again seeming to shift as the plot demands, whilst Simon Pegg’s Ogden is reduced to a bit-part player, who merrily rolls up whilst the dust is settled. The rest of the High Five (as Wade’s key-seekers call themselves), are developed, but compared to the main duo never seem to have the limelight aside from a single spotlight scene.

Perhaps, for all the case clearly taken with this film, and the innumerable pop cultural references it makes, is that this seems to be a world stuck, but for a few token examples, in the halcyon days of the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. It seems a world trapped in endless nostalgia, a wish for the world to return to the simple aesops, catchy tunes, blocky graphics and chunky-plastic-childhoods of that period where Halliday (as well as  many of the cinema-goers) was a child, rather than the smorgsborg of Cline’s original novel, which threw everything, from retro to up-to-the minute into the pot-to see some more modern games, more modern icons, to see old and new rubbing shoulders, to hear some new takes on the sounds and sights of the 1980s, or indeed things of more modern decades, would have been more rewarding, less slavish to Spielberg and his peers. The reverence is perhaps overplayed, the film perhaps too attached to the nostalgia-factor that consumes Halliday.

The film ends on an Aesop of connecting with other people, enjoying the worlds we live in in everything from cinema to gaming, but remembering our feet are, after all, rooted in this one. Ready Player One is just one of these worlds; for all my fears it’s a perfectly serviceable two hours of retro-styled entertainment. But perhaps a simpler, more brutal Aesop is needed. Grow up. Stop wallowing in nostalgia all the time. Enjoy the present, enjoy the past, but remember which one your feet are really in, and which one you need to live in.

Rating: Recommended.