This is a special edition of KCAIC as I am presenting to you a movie review for a film that was released this weekend.  Why?  Well, the thing is….  It has to do with… Oh just read the review and you’ll understand. 🙂

I love movies science fiction movies, and I love video games.  So the question of, does it work when you put the two together?  Here is the answer.

Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg, came out this week in theaters.  But way back when I originally heard of the announcement of the movie, I was as excited as I was to see a Star Wars or Marvel movie, but more.  I even bought the book.  But unfortunately, I am a slow reader.  Perhaps now that I have seen the movie not once, but twice, I may be able to read a lot quicker.  But how could a movie like this be so interesting?

Earnest Cline wrote the original novel that was so seemleesly assembled with a cross between the real world and a virtual reality world called the Oasis.  In the Oasis, you are able to become who you want to be and play anything that you want to.  But how is this different than any other movie?  In RPO, there are so many references and nods to games and pop culture from the 70’s, mostly 80’s and some of the 90’s.  This was a geek heaven!

The story follows Wade Watson (Tye Sheridan), who when he is in the Oasis, goes by Parzival or Z in the year 2045.  He lives in a society where the majority of the population tends to escape from the reality to enter the Oasis, a virtual world created by James Halliday (Mark Rylance), who also was a fan of the early pop culture.  When Halliday dies, he announces to the world that he has created three impossible challenges across the Oasis that lead to keys to find a special Easter egg.  Whoever finds the keys and the egg, will inherit the entire Oasis and the large financial amount that is attached with it.  Once the keys are placed into the Oasis, its game on.  Watson does everything that he can to try to find the keys by participating in certain tasks/games.

In the meantime, corporate giant Innovative Online Industries, IOI, is also after the same thing so they can control the Oasis from every level. The majority of their purpose is to advertise within the Oasis and monitor the usage.  This is all run by Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn).

You know what, that’s about all I am going to say in general about the film.  The rest of the review is what I thought of it.

HOLY CRAP!!!!!!!!  Did this movie really just happen?  From the minute you start watching the film, you may find your eyes wandering everywhere on the screen.  Just like Clines book, the movie has so many references to the 80’s and 90’s pop culture that it is not funny.  But please note, this is a great thing.  I was at times upset though that they couldn’t stay on certain scenes long enough to see certain things.  The movie is about finding keys and an Easter Egg.  And at the same time, as an audience member you need to try to find certain Easter Eggs yourself.  If you aren’t familiar with that term, an Easter Egg is something special that if you look just right, you would see it.  This is not ruining it, but for example, at the beginning of the race, you see a huge lineup of cars.  One of them is the A-Team van.  This is not a spoiler, this was in the trailer.  Now, how did I find it?  Besides seeing the movie twice, I did a frame by frame search of the trailers over and over and over and over again.  Yeah, I’m one of those people that does that.  When it comes out on blu-ray, I am guessing I will probably do a frame by frame for certain scenes also.  This movie deserves that type of treatment!

Spielberg does an awesome job of throwing the best of the pop culture into this film.  From the Back to the Future Delorean to the T-Rex of Jurassic Park, it was almost as if the book was written for him.  And the CGI team need to get a big standing ovation for what they did too.  With all the chaos and action on the screen, I personally didn’t think it looked muddy at all. And as much as I want to talk about “one” part, I won’t.  Because there are too many “one” parts in this film.

Now I will say that as much as 3-d is cool, I’m not a pure fan of it.  I will watch it if it is available.  And for this, it was.  The effects and usage of 3-d was incredible.  It is almost as if the movie was made for it only, and I was very pleased to see in this format.    There were projector problems at the beginning and thanks to the theater, I was allowed to watch the first 20 minutes again.  Thank you AMC Theaters.

If I was to compare this to any other movie, I couldn’t do it.  I would have to say though, if Avitar, The Matrix, Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Tron had a child, Ready Player One would be that child.  This is by far THEE best video game movie ever made.

One more thing to mention, if you have read this to the end, get over to  to watch some trailers, check out posters, and… oh yeah, play some Robotron, Tapper, Sinistar, Joust, Defender and Race for the Key.  There goes my productivity time.  I guess that’s just an awesome excuse to…


Keep Calm and Insert Coin



Brad Feingold (103 Posts)
