It starts off well, I must say, the first 20 minutes of Ready Player One, even with significant changes, capture the spirit of the novel. And the moment when Wade Watts’ name first appears on the Oasis leaderboard is ALMOST as impactful as it is in the novel.
The story unfolds in a near, dystopian future where life revolves around obtaining the hidden, inheritable key of a virtual reality that dominates every aspect of life (education, work, entertainment). However, the changes, which were obviously necessary for the story to work as a film, and even more so as a visually stunning one, gradually overshadow the narrative.
From the overwhelming computer animation that makes up 99-100% of Ready Player One, your head soon starts to buzz, and you feel like you’ve sunk into a Japanese role-playing game filled with manga characters, watching with increasing boredom from the sidelines as the avatars of other characters duke it out.
It’s like being in one of those muddled Transformers movies.
The youth-level black-and-white characters and childish humor don’t help much, nor does the shivery programmer god, Halliday, who seems to look like he’s pooped his pants at every appearance. But the worst is clearly the ultra-lame main antagonist.
Then, as you scratch your head in bewilderment wondering why you sat through the Ready Player One film adaptation (if not just to write about it), you read in the credits that this film was directed by a certain Steven Spielberg!
“Holy crap!” – you think, there’s ANOTHER Steven Spielberg out there!
Because if there isn’t, then for heaven’s sake, it’s obvious that the original one started absent-mindedly poking around in his own nose every time someone in the crew mentioned the words “UM, THE SCRIPT…” and only showed signs of life again upon hearing the following: “Don’t worry, boss, we’ll just shove in some CGI here!”
5/10
Ready Player One (2018) (IMDb)
Director: Steven Spielberg, Stars: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn