Ready Player One can't find meaning amid digital nostalgia

Parzival and Anorak in Ready Player One. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

Ready Player One tries to find meaning amid ephemera. It wants to have a heart and a story to tell about leaving fantasy behind to find value in the real world. Escapism, or at least an excessive amount of it, is a dangerous thing in Steven Spielberg’s Columbus, Ohio circa 2045. Yet the fantasy he renders is far, far more interesting than the reality he shows, and the character who pushes the heroic gamer Parzival (Tye Sheridan) to leave the digital cocoon has an unintentionally mixed message. The aesthetic flourishes and moments of inspired delight are hampered by Spielberg’s attempts to find meaning in the wrong place.

The timing for Ready Player One is just about perfect. The movement spurred by the Parkland students and the youth’s push for a voice in the social conversation mirrors Ready Player One’s story. The kids, Parzival, Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), Aeche (Lena Waithe), Sho (Philip Zhao) and Saito (Win Morisaki), are all right. They carry the burden of saving the digital haven called The Oasis from the evil Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), showing poise and courage beyond their years. That the fate of a digital world is at stake reduces the urgency and the importance of their actions. And the timeliness doesn’t obscure the fact the story has been done a lot, and often better than Ready Player One.

But the film is less about growth than regret, with Spielberg and writers Ernest Cline (who wrote the eponymous best selling book) and Zak Penn centering the story’s heart on lonely game designer Halliday, played in digital flashbacks by Mark Rylance. Halliday, who launches a Willy Wonka-esque hunt for keys and clues across his virtual universe upon his death, is depicted as a lonely, lonely man because he couldn’t sustain a human interaction. The idea has promise, and Rylance is wonderful when showing the heartbreak that drives Halliday. Yet Ready Player One defeats that message just based on the rules of the contest. In order to succeed, players have to relive his life to succeed, spending hours diving into his memories and analyzing every little moment of his existence. Players are forced to live in fantasy in order to embrace reality, forcing a growth experience through years worth of effort. And the nature of the contest is inherently solipsistic, focused on the passions and obsessions of its creator, following only his passion for pop culture from a very specific time frame.

At least Halliday's looming presence in the future explains the continued love of '80s culture by a much younger generation. What it doesn't explain is the insertion of contemporary franchises like Overwatch, Halo, and the current iteration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It's unclear why 12 year olds in 2045 would remain passionate about those franchises almost 30 years into the future without the presence of a figure like Halliday to maintain their popularity. What it comes down to, then, is a choice by the filmmakers, one that disrupts Ready Player One's thin sense of cultural logic. Where are the figures from 2045, or from either pop culture history or any history before Halliday became invested in the world? Why is cultural significance limited between the very late 1970s to 2018? This is the trouble with creating a nostalgia based film in a futuristic setting. Without defining those rules, it creates holes in its internal logic that fans of such nostalgia are trained to tear into.

What is easy to tear asunder is the nature of The Oasis itself. Admittedly, Spielberg's representation is visually gorgeous and brilliant, about as splendid as something so infinite could possibly be. What it is in Ready Player One's reality though is questionable. The film tries to sell The Oasis as a place to spend one’s time, but rarely shows it as something more than a video game platform. People don't really live in The Oasis as much as visit it regularly, still anchored strongly to a clear sense of reality. It's difficult to get lost in The Oasis when the filmmakers prevent their characters from getting lost themselves. It's a strange decision given how important that idea is to Cline's book. He should know better than anyone that The Oasis needs to be seen as an equal to reality.

It's one of a myriad of problems with the efforts from Cline and Penn, who deliver a story that was either edited to death or dead on arrival. Ready Player One has plot holes upon plot holes, decisions made by characters that make little sense at the moment, and even less after considering it shortly thereafter. The narrative is overly convenient, with key characters placed in close proximity to one another and security failures caused by sticky notes. The story's pace is wonky, especially with the relationship between Parzival and Art3mis, as well as the hyper-speed friendship developed between Parzival, Art3mis, Aech, Sho and Daito. The script's dedication to giving nearly equal time to the world beyond The Oasis is undercut by a fervent unwillingness to put the characters in any real danger. The ending is cheap, easy, and abrupt. The killer though is the exposition. The problem doesn't arise with how much of the plot is revealed via dialog; rather, it's the cultural references that get explained. Ready Player One lives on the expected knowledge of its viewers, who already speak the language and understand the references. Explaining the references is a cheat, a cop out that undermines the inherent universality of pop culture. Viewers speak the language; they don’t need a translator.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 140 minutes

Genre: Sci-Fi

Ask Away
Target audience: Steven Spielberg devotees and fans of '80s pop culture.

Take the whole family?: The violence might get a little heavy for young kids, but kids 10 and older will be fine.

Theater or Netflix?: If you're going to see it, be cheap and go to a matinee.

Is the book good?: It really depends who you ask. Ready Player One has a fair mix of diehard fans and people who hate it, due largely to the Ernest Cline's nostalgia overload and issues with the portrayal of Art3mis. The criticisms are fair (and still infect the movie), but the writing is solid when Cline escapes his childhood. And his depiction of The Oasis is addicting and reinforces how difficult it can be to leave such a place.

Watch this as well?: Some of the scenes when the characters from multiple franchises interacted reminded me of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Some of the movies referenced in Ready Player One, most notably The Shining and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8^th Dimension, are definitely worth seeking out.