Ready Player One: Upon Further Review
This is the second of my series: Upon Further Review, where I return to previous films I’ve reviewed or seen, and see if my perspective has changed. For the first article click here!
As a casual fan of film, I was a firm believer in the video game movie. Taking a property that spawned from a game franchise and turning it into a successful franchise seems like something that Hollywood has deemed impossible, or they’re purposely putting out bad films for no good reason. Of the films that have been released to this point, the one I had the most hope for when it released was the Assassins Creed film. With a leading man in Michael Fassbender, it begged to take one of the most adaptable stories and create something that could finally be seen as the breakthrough for the genre. With its poor performance, I’ve been left to wallow in sadness as many of my favourite franchises haven’t made the leap. You’d imagine my surprise when one of the best video game films didn’t come from a game but from a book.
Ready Player One was another of those stories just begging to be made into a film, with some hefty changes of course. Rather a rare thing for myself, I had actually read the book Ready Player One prior to seeing the film, and I thought I would come in with a preconceived notion of what I wanted the film to be. But, as the day grew closer and closer to the film’s release, something had dawned on me, this didn’t need to be an exact recreation of the book, and how could it be? The book was based around the 80s and a lot of things that overall wouldn’t fit well for a 2-hour film. From a wider perspective, this was something that would shape my overall understanding of film, and how it’s ok to take creative liberties. With Ready Player One, it meant really anything could be on the table for the film and my enjoyment.
Perhaps this is why when I came out of my first viewing of Ready Player One, this film felt like one of the very best movies I’ve ever seen, and while I quickly came down off of that hill, I still enjoyed the direction taken. Some of the people I had seen the film with though came out with disappointment, as it’s accuracy to the book was often only on tertiary levels, avoiding perhaps some of the things they really enjoyed most from the source material. This is, of course, a fair criticism to have, but something that will be a person to person experience. Instead of being a story that develops over a long period of time, the film adaptation is often going at a breakneck pace, and now my preferred version of the story. That breakneck pace also means there will be some shortcomings, or perhaps story leaps that are expected to be accepted by the audience.
I’m not the first to say that this film has quite a lot of cheesiness to it. Whether it be the puppy love between Artemis and Wade or the long speech given before the climactic final battle, there are a few moments that could come off as cringeworthy. In my first viewing I was fully locked into the story of these characters, I can safely admit that those moments were things that I accepted in that first go. Now though, I most certainly wince very slightly when Wade expresses his love to Artemis in The Distracted Globe, but it forwards the story in necessary ways and I think that’s part of its charm as a whole. It’s meant to be cheesy in a way, to make the video game plot that much more fun.
As someone with a history of playing MMO style games, there are some elements of this story that just feel oh-so-right. Things like the artifact hunt, hanging with friends in their virtual garage, or the solving of puzzles with one another, it really felt like a film made for me. It’s a credit to the team who created the movie and Cline to be able to take a concept that many adults and members of older generations don’t really understand and make it easy to enjoy and feel invested in. Additionally, the team behind this film paid excellent attention to detail throughout the entirety of the story. There’s a multitude of blink and you miss easter eggs from familiar franchises and films, and that up-to-date connection makes it a joy to even just spend a viewing looking for every possible hint to another world fun.
Rightfully, Spielberg put a heavy focus on the visuals of this story. For a film taking place entirely in a virtual world, it’s beautiful vistas and sequences that engross the viewer in it’s larger than life story. Backed by a fantastic soundtrack, the set-piece moments feel just right and are arguably some of the best a film of this kind has to offer. I’d go so far as to champion Ready Player One as a landmark film for visual effects, creating nearly an entire film in a believable format that doesn’t make the viewer feel like they’re reaching the uncanny valley, but manages to awe all the same. I can’t do enough justice to the beauty of this film, so for those who haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it even just for the sake of its visuals.
When reflecting on my original opinions of Ready Player One, and how my opinion has changed on the movie since then, I believe that overall my stance has really changed heavily. I do recognize though that there are some parts of this story that just feel awkward. But they’re often necessary to progress the plot, they don’t take away from the overall enjoyment I have with Ready Player One: A fun action-adventure film with a sci-fi connection to boot. It’s not the most incredible film ever made, but man is it an enjoyable one, one that taps into the imagination of everyone who sees it.
