For the second time in the span of one month, I have encountered a movie that was not made for me. Ready Player One, along with A Wrinkle in Time, both offer valid interpretations of their very popular books. However, both movies left me cold and in many instances actively worked against me getting into the film.
Ready Player One is about a young man named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) who like everyone else in the world goes into the OASIS to escape. He has friends Aech, Daito, Sho, and meets Art3mis as all of them are trying to get the three keys to win the contest Halladay has created in the OASIS.
IOI, a greedy corporation headed by a former Halladay intern (Ben Mendelsohn) wants to be able to monetize the game nearly to the point of causing seizures but not that far. It becomes a battle that has more than just pride on the line and the characters fight for their lives to ensure their world will survive.
Steven Spielberg knows and understands spectacle better than most, so I’m not surprised that the action in Ready Player One is aesthetically pleasing (save one sequence in the dance club). He does well to blend the CGI worlds and human worlds to deliver some superb sequences. There is a sequence that takes place entirely in the location of a famous movie and it is just brilliant in its execution.
Where this movie falls apart is that it doesn’t interrogate itself the way that it interrogates the corporate interest v. fan interest. Much is made of how Halladay wanted everyone to have something good and fun, what games used to be. In many ways, this is a story meant to coddle gamers and serve as a “aren’t we great!” tale. But what of the rougher interpersonal issues it chooses to ignore? Nobody is called a racial, sexist, or homophobic slur, which let me know right away we were in a fantasy land.
Perhaps most egregiously, the movie cannot shake free of the shackles of being written by straight white nerdy men. So many of the people who watch this movie are going to have no issues with the many many ways this movie adheres to the status quo. Not with the manic pixie dream girl, not with the tokenized minorities, none of it. There’s a particular character reveal that is so bafflingly stupid in how it strokes the egos and fantasies of the people like it’s creators that I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. There are so many times that Ready Player One could have wrestled with its nostalgia love or more problematic elements, but instead it’s just a movie with no there there.