Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance
Rated PG-13, 140 minutes
The year is 2045. Overpopulation and resource depletion and species-wide ennui have plunged the human race into a state of widespread poverty and disillusionment. To alleviate the pain of living, everyone partakes in a virtual reality video game called the Oasis, which constitutes an alternate-universe refuge from the real world. When the game’s creator dies, he leaves behind a message to the world: Hidden within his creation are three keys, and whoever finds them will be granted ownership of the Oasis. So is the foundation laid for “Ready Player One,” which takes off from this somewhat unremarkable premise and then runs absolutely wild. If there is such a thing as the platonic ideal of an action movie in 2018, “Ready Player One” is surely it.
This isn’t a perfect movie—far from it—but it’s the sort of movie that is so entertaining, so pleasing to the moviegoer lizard brain, that to get hung up on its shortcomings would be to miss the point completely. “Ready Player One” is like those genetically modified apples you see in the grocery store that weigh twice as much and look twice as red as the locally grown organic ones. It’s designed to be pure entertainment, and in that regard it’s immensely satisfying.
Take, for example, the race that kicks off the central plotline, a maximalist but almost wordless sequence that sets the tone for the two-plus hours of indulgent sensory overload that follow. And while “Ready Player One” largely takes place in the uncanny valley of hyperrealistic digital animation, it does so intentionally, meaning it actually feels as immersive and overwhelming as it wants to be.
Or consider the bevy of references to ’80s pop culture, covering everything from John Hughes to “The Shining” to the Atari 2600 to Tab—references that would be ingratiating if we weren’t currently living through a pop culture phase dominated by nostalgia. Set 27 years in the future, the world of “Ready Player One” is evidently dominated by nostalgia for our own present-day nostalgia, so rather than coming across as insufferable, the pop culture references throughout the movie have the feel of an in-joke.
Curiously, this is the movie’s most incisive comment on current affairs. Despite boasting a premise rife with opportunities to explore the geopolitical consequences of a game like the Oasis—disastrous economic inequality, corporate hegemony, cybersecurity, and so on—“Ready Player One” ignores all of them, choosing instead to focus on how rad Van Halen was and how cool Buckaroo Banzai looked.
This must be a disappointment to viewers who subscribe to the idea that refraining from political discussions is itself a political act, or who want a more nuanced exploration of the consequences of allowing technology to take over our lives. And this is fair criticism, but to Steven Spielberg’s credit, at least he never tries to pass off anything in this movie as tackling those themes. If anything, the characters in “Ready Player One” display a startling ignorance of the underlying issues at play—they leave their passwords in plain sight, for instance, and they blindly trust strangers they met online. In fact, so immature and irresponsible are the movie’s treatments of its political themes that I can only assume we were never supposed to pay attention to them.
Instead, we’re supposed to have a grand old time, and that is what this movie delivers in spades. Predictable though it might be, it hits all its marks and sticks every landing. Yes, there’s a scene in which a character fumbles with a key while trying to insert it into the lock, and no, nobody seems to care that the second act is punctuated by a horrific act of terrorism; yes, plot holes pop up here and there, and no, the film’s climax doesn’t make any sort of statement about much of anything (though it tries, halfheartedly). Yet the whole point of “Ready Player One” is to leave these sorts of troubles behind and just enjoy the show—and it’s a hell of a show, at that. If “Ready Player One” is intended as a warning that flashy technology distracts us and makes us complacent, it is also itself a reminder of how powerfully true that is.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 4/13/18.