Ready Player One: Review

[Overmind One]

Oh wow, I just watched this movie and what a ride! I thought it was just going to be some whiz bang CGI orgy, which it kinda was, but the premise of the movie totally was about that and virtuality. Here is the trailer:


The characters in this movie are extremely well developed. Each of the real life characters has an avatar in a virtual reality game called The Oasis which is a global MMC. There is corporate greed and ruthlessness, a love story, a story of camaraderie and heroism, and the effects are AWESOME. They even have the proper 1980s soundtrack selections. In the virtual world, you have powerups, artifacts, secret places, and the object is to find 3 keys. The finder of the three keys becomes the ruler of The Oasis and becomes the owner of the corporation which created it (trillions and trillions valuation).

I was pleasantly surprised to see Mecha Godzilla, the DeLorean from Back to the Future, characters from familiar cartoons, and references to the coolest movies ever made. This movie is for boomers and millennial alike.

Must see!

 

[Joelist]

I also liked it. Definitely a little kiddish but the characters were engaging and the solutions to the keys were intriguing. Also remember that the Oasis was much more than a MMORPG, it was where most of the population literally spent their waking hours. In that respect it was a virtual reality take on a dystopia.

 

[Overmind One]

I also liked it. Definitely a little kiddish but the characters were engaging and the solutions to the keys were intriguing. Also remember that the Oasis was much more than a MMORPG, it was where most of the population literally spent their waking hours. In that respect it was a virtual reality take on a dystopia.

Definitely kiddish, in the way Stranger Things is. Overall, it is almost Tron-like, with some GoG and Matrix thrown in. The story is definitely for the younger set, but not a children's movie.

 

[Quetesh]

I enjoyed this movie as well.
I thought it was fun and I liked how it played it. ( pun intended )

 

[Joelist]

You know, after watching a massive disappointment like The Matrix Resurrections I was paging through HBO Max and saw Ready Player One.

Why not revisit it said I to myself said I?

Here are some thoughts.

I liked this film when it first came out and I still like it. The acting is good, the story holds together, the effects are pitch perfect and it is well directed, showing a dystopia with a lighter tone which is refreshing - the world is still dystopic but not dark and angsty.

Also, this might be the most meta movie ever made. The underlying story involves the search for an Easter Egg in a movie that has literally hundreds of Easter Eggs embedded in it. As a corollary, all the shows and movies trying to do nostalgia and member berries should ask Spielberg how it's done, as Ready Player One is like a filmmaking class on how to do it right so it feels organic and not like pandering.

Something else that also stood out was how both leads (Wade/Parzival and Samantha/Artemis) had actual arcs in the movie. Not just the romance but Wade found a real sense of purpose and both of them who started loners wound up valuing friends and "clanning up" - The High Five may be a small clan but it winds up the most powerful one in the Oasis.

It was also nice that of the three keys only one was actual "game" thinking (the first one). The second key revolved more around knowledge of Halliday and understanding relationships and the last one was centered around why people play games. Then there was the final test which was clever and a big hint tossed out that Aramak/Halliday was some sort of sentient AI living in the Oasis.

Nice watch!

 

[Lord Ba'al]

Yeah. Saw this again a couple of months ago. Still enjoyable.

 

[DrWho42]

i have a signed copy of the book by the author ernest cline!

 

[Joelist]

i have a signed copy of the book by the author ernest cline!

The irony is this is one of those cases where the movie is better than the book