BEFORE: I snuck out to the theater in April to catch this film, on the day that I posted my "Black Panther" review. Since I'd seen "Black Panther" 2 months before that, I essentially had a free day, no movie to watch - so that was a great opportunity to go out and watch another one, stockpiling one up for when I'd need it later on. Once I created the framework schedule that would take me all the way to July 4, it was easy enough to see an opening where I could slip this one in. So TJ Miller carries over from "The Emoji Movie", if I've done this right. Or perhaps wrong.
I was thinking that I'd save this one up for later in 2018, to connect with "X-Men: Dark Phoenix", since Tye Sheridan is also in that one as Cyclops, but now that film's been moved to a release date in February 2019, so there's no need to try and link to it this year.
THE PLOT: When the creator of a virtual-reality world called The OASIS dies, he releases a video in which he challenges all OASIS users to find his Easter Egg, which will give the finder his fortune.
AFTER: I've had the novel "Ready Player One" in my stack of books to read for about the last five years, and now I'm glad I didn't read it, because I would have gone into this film knowing too much about the story, and then also perhaps mad that the film didn't stick close enough to the novel. I just reviewed the plot of the novel on Wikipedia, and this confirms my suspicions - the movie changed quite a bit of the book's plot, which involved references to text-based games like "Zork" and another game I haven't heard of, "Dungeons of Daggorath", and those seem just a little bit too obscure for me, so I imagine that most movie-goers haven't heard of them either. Instead, there are references here to things seen by many more people, like "The Shining" and "The Iron Giant", not to mention "Back to the Future", "Battlestar Galactica", "Spaceballs" and so on.
Set in the future world of 2044, during an energy crisis caused by the depletion of fossil fuels, overpopulation, global warming and the destruction of the environment (Gee, can we trace these troubles back to the Trump cabinet and the deregulations of the EPA? Count on it...) most people escape into the virtual world, because there they can be anything/anyone they want, forget their troubles, and the virtual world's economy is more stable than the real one. (Cough...bitcoin...cough...)
As the film begins, it's been five years since the death of James Halliday, the co-creator of the Oasis, and a recorded message from him that claimed that anyone who could solve the three VR quests and obtain the three keys to the magic gates would find his "Easter Egg" and inherit the kingdom - his fortune and control over the VR world. But so far nobody has ever been able to beat the first quest, a VR auto race into and around a virtual Manhattan, on the worst day possible, when both King Kong AND a T. Rex are attacking the city. This race sequence, to me, was the best part of the film - so exciting, so action-packed, so thrilling - and since I saw the movie in 3-D IMAX format, I was really invested.
But with this exciting race sequence comes NITPICK POINT #1: Would all of these gamers run the SAME RACE, day after day, for five years straight, if none of them knew how to win it? It seems like an exercise in futility, even Parzifal knows that whenever he gets close to the finish line, King Kong's going to pop up and crush his car. With all the risks of crashing, getting destroyed and therefore losing all of their built-up coins, why would people continue to play the same game, without any visible way to win? Like, I quit playing "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" as soon as I reached a level that I couldn't beat after about three attempts. A good video-game that you play again and again should be difficult to beat, but not impossible.
Sure, I get that everybody wants to win the game and own the company, it's the whole "Willy Wonka" thing, but today's Millennials just don't want to work that hard, the stereotype is that they think everything should be just handed to them without them expending much effort. Just think how bad the teens of 2045 will be if that trend continues. To be fair, Parzifal and his team DO the work, they research everything about Halliday to try to figure out the quests or gain some kind of advantage, but I think that today's teens are going to walk away from "Ready Player One" with a different kind of message, namely "Someone needs to build that VR world very soon, so I can play these games, figure out the puzzles and then I can be the president of the company." Umm, kids, that's not how things are usually supposed to work.
Speaking of Willy Wonka, there's a new theory going around that Charlie Buckets didn't get the golden ticket randomly, that the shop-keeper in the candy store was working for Wonka and handed him the candy bar with the golden ticket on purpose, after identifying a child that was poor, so that he would appreciate what it would mean to be rich, and also thought of others before himself - he bought the second candy bar for his starving grandparents, after all. It's not that crazy, because remember that Wonka also hired someone to impersonate Slugworth so he could test the loyalty of the kids who were visiting his factory. (This connects to someone in "Ready Player One" keeping an eye on Wade/Parzifal from a safe distance, but no spoilers here...)
Anyway, back to the quests. I thought the solution to the first quest was unique and very clever - I never would have thought of that myself, not as a gamer, or a movie-goer, or a movie-maker. It defies everything we think we know about video-games and races, but it still made perfect sense. This Halliday guy referred to himself as a dreamer, but he was also very clever and tricky - the actor plays him (in the recorded flashbacks) as an obsessive space-cadet, maybe a little not right in the head and rather awkward and anti-social, but that all checks with what we know about programmers, and the actor did a very good job of being a disconnected, overly-creative nerdy type.
I wish the same cleverness could have been applied to the 2nd and 3rd quests, however, which didn't hold up in quality when compared to the car race, in my opinion. The 2nd quest looks just like the Overlook Hotel from "The Shining", which is a drastic change from the plot of the book, and they added a new room with dancing zombies, which isn't even a thing. So Part 2 felt a little forced to me, but by Part 3 they were back on track. Part 3 took place in Castle Anorak on Planet Doom, but the notorious IOI company used an artifact to place a magic shield around the castle, so nobody could play the final quest except for their operatives. That's just not in the spirit of the Oasis, or the game that should be accessible to all, so Parzifal sends out a call for everyone to send their avatars to Planet Doom in the VR World, to help defeat the evil power.
I'll admit it, when I saw all those thousands of avatars running over the horizon, I got a little emotional, even teared up a little bit. It's easy to draw a connection to other battles where people put the power of the populace to work, whether it's for gun control or for civil rights, it's heartening to think that when enough people take up your cause and the numbers are on your side, that's when you can enact some change in the world. OK, maybe the freedoms of the VR world aren't as important in the long run as civil rights are in the real world, but maybe you know what I mean.
NITPICK POINT #2: Will people in the year 2045 still listen to music from the 1970's and 80's? I very much doubt it. I get that this music fits in with classic Atari games, "Back to the Future", and all of the other cultural touchstones here, but teens today in 2018 barely know anything about 1980's music - why would it come back again, 30 years from now? That makes about as much sense as kids today listening to ragtime music or jazz from the 1920's, it just doesn't happen. Though back in the mid-1990's there was a weird resurgence of not only swing music ("Jump, Jive & Wail") but also Gregorian Chants. (I swear this is true, you can look it up...) So anything's possible, but I just think there will be so many new styles of music created between now and 2045 (and I bet I'll hate them all) that I just don't see people in the future circling back to The Bee Gees, Van Halen, and Twisted Sister.
Also starring Tye Sheridan (last seen in "X-Men: Apocalypse"), Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "Australia"), Lena Waithe, Simon Pegg (last seen in "For the Love of Spock"), Mark Rylance (last seen in "Bridge of Spies"), Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, Hannah John-Kamen, Susan Lynch, Ralph Ineson, Perdita Weeks (last seen in "The Invisible Woman"), Clare Higgins (last seen in "Cassandra's Dream"), Laurence Spellman, Letitia Wright (last seen in "Avengers: Infinity War").
RATING: 9 out of 10 Atari 2600 cartridges
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