Review: "Ready Player One" is Sloppy, Excessive, and Vital

Scene from Ready Player One

Ready Player One may be director Steven Spielberg's most meta movie. No, seriously. There has been no filmmaker as ubiquitous with the process of making spectacle as that of Spielberg. He is the one voice who has influence and shaped pop culture for over 40 years now, whether it be in Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, or even Schindler's List. His work has become its own style, and informs a lot of the references located within The Oasis: the film's virtual reality landscape where anything can happen, no matter what intellectual property is involved. It's a grandiose image that will fill the audience with glee, though this is only the surface. For as much fun as Spielberg seems to be having, the film has a bit of deeper commentary on pop culture as a concept, and in that finds a transcendent accessibility to something personal. Why does any of this matter if it's not real? To Spielberg, it's more than just consuming it, it's creating it.
The most essential tool in the film is the casting of Tye Sheridan as protagonist Wade. He is the audience's eye into The Oasis as he puts on the virtual reality goggles. It isn't that he's Spielbeg's most compelling character, nor is Sheridan necessarily one of his best collaborators. What is most striking about him is the appearance of Wade as he sits in his bedroom, miserable, wearing glasses. It has to be more than coincidence that Sheridan shares a passing resemblance to the director as a teenager, someone who will be the first to suggest just how much time he spent at a cineplex, taking in the journeys of the movie stars of yesteryear. There's a nostalgic eye already at play, only this time it isn't one that goes back to the epics of Lawrence of Arabia, but to the predominantly post-Jaws era, where blockbusters were born and where films like E.T. explored what it meant to grow up not only in an alien movie, but as a child who collected alien toys and dreamed of meeting an extra-terrestrial.

Spielberg is the enfant terrible of pop culture, and it's shown in the films he produced or even influenced. At the core of the film is an understanding of what these characters mean to the people that use them as avatars, wandering around The Oasis and finding joy in mountain climbing with Batman and racing in the Delorean. He understands the joy of excess so clearly in the film that it becomes what he excels at. The opening race scene is one of his most eccentric, stuffy, and dizzying scenes in years and it all plays like the best video game movie imaginable. As much as the consistent references can bog down the appeal, it's a tool to establish The Oasis' appeal: an escape from a lower-class existence and neglectful parents. By the end of the race, the film becomes something richer.

Wade is a lone gunman, enjoying his journey through his own personal obsession with the media he consumes with disturbing regularity. He is a man not defined by his own achievements, but by his avatar. Even his game name, Percival, is taken from history. He almost ceases to exist as a person who, in spite of this, looks for some gratification. He needs the key to creator Halliday's (Mark Rylance) personal will following his death. It drives him to befriend others, but only creates a shroud of mystery that is never fulfilled as he wonders who the people he befriends actually are. Where there could be compelling exploration of online identities, the film chooses to brush over them with the most innocent (though effective) plot twist. It's one of the places that the film begins to go from having bite to being Spielberg's inability to be fully critical of the culture he helped create.

But another tool that comes with the search for keys is Spielberg's own construction of film. Wade manages to create an understanding of how to deconstruct The Oasis following a stray line of dialogue he hears Halliday say in a video. The smart viewer would not spend their time in the references and instead treat the experience as a scavenger hunt, where the film becomes layered and emotional weight is uncovered underneath such things as an inspired Stephen King reference. There's a heartache to the journey, and one that Spielberg is willing to go down towards, especially in Halliday-centric scenes where a social misfit expresses his loneliness. For all of the joy that The Oasis gives, it has a depressing core and motivation behind every piece. Even if Spielberg doesn't seem interested enough to fully revel in it, he does create a text that at least reaches for something grander.

By the end of the film, he wants to know what draws us to pop culture, and why do we escape through video games, movie, TV, random trivia, etc.? It's a hefty goal, and one that could only exist with some of his sloppiest film making in decades, capturing a view of the modern digital era better than any contemporary. His ambition leads to some provocative conversation topics, including the emotional well being of the users, the economic structure of the internet, and is The Oasis really a terrible place if it brings people together? These are all ambitious talking points that Spielberg discusses, and in the process creates one of his most vital films of the 21st century. Technology is only going to become more ingrained in our everyday lives, and these points are going to be even more important. 

With all of this said, there is that underlying sense that virtual reality is inessential and thus the weight of the story is deflated. Why does it matter what people do in The Oasis? Why can't they just try and make the world a better place? It's an enormous grey area that Spielberg tries to address, but it comes across as the weakest element of the film. The real world is visually compelling as a unique dystopia, but it's far less compelling than The Oasis - a land of infinite opportunity. It's also here that the references get more ridiculous and the general action lacks a fluidity and excitement. As much as it helps to explore identity, the story has too much going on, so the shifts are often jarring and silly. Why does The Oasis matter? Because art matters.

Much like their previous collaborations, Spielberg's scenes with Rylance have the most impact in part because they feel more connected than the visual exterior of Sheridan. Here is a man whose work has been given to the masses, and thus gets bastardized in obnoxious ways. Much like using The Iron Giant for militaristic intents, there is a warping of culture that is regretful, but inevitable. Rylance gives another compelling performance that serves as a warning to the excess that surrounds the film. He created The Oasis with love, and it's important to be understood as such. It's important to have an identity that goes beyond avatars, and create something of value to society. It's what Wade must do to truly be more than an alternative version of Percival.

Is this Spielberg's best movie? Not by a long mile. Even in the realm of movies that focus on the metaphoric technophobia of films like A.I. and Minority Report, it feels a bit lacking. However, it does feel like a culmination of a career that has been done to make others happy. Had the film been made early in Spielberg's career, Wade would likely be sitting in a movie theater, enjoying the awe of a David Lean epic. The theater has been replaced with the internet, and it's kind of isolating. Underneath all of the joy is a bit of bittersweet sadness and caution that Spielberg never fully allows to sink in. However, it's one that tries to be more than references, and that goes a long way to making Ready Player One a solid movie. After a string of adult dramas like Bridge of Spies and The Post, it's nice to know that he still wants to entertain. It's also nice to know that he wants to say things that are hard to convey, and succeeds most of the time at getting the point across.