Official
Australian release date: 29/3/18. Viewed: 29/3/18.
Director:
Steven Spielberg
Actors: Tye
Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance
Genre:
Action / Sci-Fi
Rating:
M
‘Ready Player One’ is based on the 2011
book by Ernest Cline (he co-writes the screenplay here), and as with all
novel-to-film adaptions, the movie’s not quite as good. Ironically, it feels
like there’s more action in the book! That being said, this is still a
Spielberg sci-fi epic, with plenty to see and experience. It’s a conglomeration
of ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Avatar’, with people in 2045 essentially living their
lives in a virtual reality world (the “Oasis”), created by Halliday (Rylance)
& Morrow (Pegg).
Wade (Sheridan) is the unlikely hero,
trying to win the ‘game’, which is a mix of 80s/90s video games and other
TV/film references/characters – you could spend the whole movie glimpsing/placing
cool things: ‘Back To The Future’, Gundam, Halo, Ninja Turtles, Iron Giant, Tron,
etc. This is fun, but often makes it feel like quantity over quality. Has some
good songs, but I would’ve liked more. Helping Wade against the evil Sixers/IOI
(led by Sorrento [Mendelsohn]) is Artemis (Cooke) and Aech (Waithe) – with Sho
(Zhao) and Daito (Morisaki) thrown in near the end for good measure. There’s
not much character development and it’s hard to care too much when they spend
most of their time as cartoonish avatars in the Oasis.
Plenty can be inferred from this bleak
future, where everyone is disconnected from reality and humanity, instead
spending all their time online – pros and cons both ways. The ending is
satisfactory, but I feel like we needed more time in the real world, especially
with the secondary characters, especially Pegg and TJ Miller. It does differ
from the book in a few areas, but it is great to see a lot of it realised on
the big screen – the battle at the end is quite spectacular and the car races
suitably chaotic. It’s good, without being exceptional.
Overall: Fun, but missing a bit of
heart.
Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.
