Ready Player One (2018) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

3

I got a quarter in my pocket, and I’m heading for the arcade.

Ready Player One is a pop-culture-laced, feel-good action film loaded with nostalgia and basic truths. It’s about the little guy trying to topple the unbeatable enemy, with a healthy dose of media-inspired easter eggs in the process.

First Impressions

The trailer is narrated by Wade Watts, a young man living in a dystopian-looking future, which includes an online virtual reality system called the OASIS. The creator of the OASIS has died and left a golden Easter Egg somewhere within the system for one lucky person to inherit. They will win control of the OASIS when they do. Wade is swept up into the game like many others, including some corporation and its white male leader. The film includes imagery of dozens of other properties, including Back to the Future, The Iron Giant, and King Kong. Are you Ready Player One?

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

In 2045, teenager Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) (so named because his father thought it sounded like a superhero) lives in the slum-like Stacks of Columbus, Ohio, and spends his days gunting (egg hunting) in the virtual world known as The OASIS, a cross between a virtual reality simulator and a massively multiplayer online game. Online, his avatar is named Parzival (after Percival, the first knight to find the Holy Grail), who, in conjunction with Aech (Lena Waithe), spends their days completing races and other quests in the search for clues to James Halliday’s (Mark Rylance) hidden Easter Egg–which will give the winner riches and total control of the OASIS. After five years, no one has yet to find the first (of three) keys to the puzzle, including the Sixers of IOI (Innovative Online Industries), led by their CEO Nolan Serrento (Ben Mendelsohn).

During a vehicle race through a virtual New York City, Parzival encounters Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), the female-presenting avatar of Samantha Cook, and a fellow gunter. He saves her from being zeroed out (death in the virtual world) and introduces her to Aech, who repairs Arty’s Akira motorcycle. They discuss their mutual admiration for Halliday trivia (laced in the pop culture of the 1980s), which gives Wade an idea. He returns to the Halliday Journals, an online repository of everything James Halliday ever read, watched, listened to, or did, and finds a clue he believes will lead him to the Copper Key. Running the New York race again, Wade takes his Back to the Future DeLorean backwards, which opens a secret pathway to the finish line. He becomes the first name on the virtual scoreboard and receives $100,000 coins. Wade gives hints to his online friends on how to finish the race, and soon Aech, Art3mis, Daito (Win Morisaki), and Sho (Philip Zhao) are on the board too.

Sorrento takes note of the wins, sending his Sixers to complete the task for IOI. When he wins, he plans to sell advertisements in up to 80% of the visual field for each user, monetizing something that was created as an escape from the real world. In the OASIS, IR0k (TJ Miller), a profiteer, provides Sorrento with the Orb of Osuvux, a magical weapon that creates an impenetrable force field. Parzival becomes an instant celebrity, finding it difficult to continue his research. The clue for the next key triggers something else in Wade’s brain, and he takes Arty to the Journals to look up the only known reference to Halliday’s true love, Kira (Perdita Weeks). Halliday missed out on dating her due to his shyness, and she eventually wed his business partner, Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg). Wade wins a bet about Kira with the Journal’s virtual curator and gets a shiny new quarter. Art3mis makes a date with Parzival to go dancing at a virtual club they believe to be the answer to the next clue about the “leap not taken.”

At the club, Parzival reveals his real name to Arty, which is overheard by IR0k and forwarded to Sorrento. Sorrento initiates a DM with Wade, offering him money and fame if he comes to work at IOI and helps solve the puzzles. Wade refuses, so the IOI CEO sends bomb laden drones to the Stacks, blowing them up (along with Wade’s aunt Alice) in an attempt to kill the scoreboard leader. Wade runs and is kidnapped by a surly looking man, who actually works with Samantha Cook (Art3mis’s true name) as part of a local rebellion. She has figured out the second clue, and Parzival and Art3mis, along with the other members of the High Five clan, head into a virtual recreation of the film The Shining. Arty cracks the puzzle and becomes the new top leader on the board, followed by everyone else. Unfortunately, IOI has tracked down Sam’s hideout and kidnaps her, while Wade escapes. Samantha is put into an IOI Loyalty Center booth, forced to do menial labor in the OASIS in support of the company.

Sorrento’s team of oologists (dozens of young nerds studying the Journals for IOI) has discovered the third task, which is located on Planet Doom. IR0k deploys the Orb of Osuvox around the castle where dozens of Sixers are playing through every Atari 2600 game, trying to find the one that belongs to the quest. Samantha is freed by Wade and her friends when they hack Sorrento’s virtual rig. She lets them know of the final challenge and opts to stay in the IOI offices so she can assist in the virtual realm (being part of the team inside the castle force field). Outside the castle, Parzival opens an OASIS-wide chat and urges everyone to come help with stopping IOI from winning the game. Thousands of gamers show up to support Wade and also stick it to the man! Sorrento emerges from the Castle inside Mechagodzilla, fighting with Daito, who arrives in the Serenity spaceship and takes the form of the original Gundam mecha. Arty manages to bring the force field down, and Wade enters the castle. He zeroes out Arty’s avatar so she can escape IOI, IRL.

Wade believes he has figured out the puzzle. While the Sixers have been trying to win Atari 2600s Adventure, Wade believes it’s really about just playing the game. Sorrento returns with the Cataclyst, a bomb designed to kill everyone in the area, and sets it off, knocking everyone offline–except for Parzival. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the quarter provided by the Curator, an extra life token that disappears. Parzival begins playing Adventure and finds the hidden dot that allows him into the secret room where game designer Warren Robinett had hidden his name. All OASIS players are shown Parzival’s winning of the final key. In real life, Sorrento heads to the Stacks, having seen Aech’s van heading that way. Parzival meets Anorak (Halliday’s magical avatar), who offers him a contract to sign to take ownership of the OASIS. Wade pauses and then refuses, believing that the real Halliday regretted signing away his creations. That triggers the real final prize, where Parzival enters a recreation of Halliday’s childhood bedroom and is given the Golden Egg. Sorrento arrives at the Stacks and threatens to shoot Wade, but the police arrive, stopping him. Ogden Morrow arrives and congratulates Wade and his team, revealing he helped a bit as the mysterious Curator. In the end, Wade and his friends decide to make the OASIS a better place and shut it down on Tuesdays and Thursdays so people remember to spend time in the real world.

“A real gunter would risk everything to save the OASIS from IOI.” – Art3mis

History in the Making

Ready Player One is the film adaptation that many thought would never be realized. Based on an original 2011 novel by Fanboys screenwriter Ernest Cline, the book was rife with pop culture references that covered the gamut of 70s and 80s franchises. Anyone attempting to make the novel into a film would need to be able to get the approval of dozens of companies, many of whom would be competitors to the studio releasing the film. It seemed like a futile task because the book absolutely cried out to exist in a visual medium. Ready Player One was a love letter to the creators and visionaries that Cline and many other Gen Xers grew up with. Obviously, it was eventually made into a film which included a multitude of easter eggs and references to films, comics, television shows, video games, and pop culture. Warner Bros. ended up buying the rights to the film in 2010, one year before the release of the book. Cline ended up writing the first draft of the movie, with Zak Penn eventually being brought in to write the final draft. Penn’s credits include several popular superhero films, including X2, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Incredible Hulk, and The Avengers. An appropriate director was being sought out, including directors behind some of the referenced franchises in the book, including Peter Jackson and Robert Zemeckis. Eventually, Steven Spielberg signed on to direct the film, delighting fans everywhere.

If any director in the last 40 years could make the best adaptation of Ready Player One, Spielberg was it. He was responsible for a majority of the content referenced in the book (having either directed or produced films directly mentioned), and had served as an executive producer for Robert Zemeckis’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, another film that drew together characters from a myriad of rights holders. He was (and still is) an extremely respected creator in Hollywood, and one who would be able to pull together the myriad of elements, from acting to visual effects, needed to make this film as successful as it could be. It was the 33rd film for Spielberg, and his 7th science-fiction film after such classics as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, and Minority Report. Ready Player One fit into Spielberg’s wheelhouse of optimistic family entertainment because it was crafted after so many of his films from the 1980s (even if he chose to remove many references to his works), with Cline having used them as templates for the clearly crafted good guys versus bad guys story. As with the book, the film is a love letter to the creators of so many elements of pop culture over the past five decades, and a film that is so jam-packed with cameos and easter eggs that fans are still finding references almost 10 years later.

Genre-fication

Ready Player One is pure genre. Which makes it a difficult film to discuss without just looking like a meme of Leonardo DiCaprio pointing at the television. Many critics of the film (and the book before it) point out that it’s not much more than a bunch of characters referencing a collection of pop culture events in a “wink-wink” internet kind of way. People in the know and familiar with the references can get much enjoyment from them, while someone who may not know anything about the origins of the characters or referenced work may be unenthused. There is something to that, especially with the book, which feels a bit inside baseball when it comes to discussing esoteric elements of song lyrics, Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, and video game strategy. But the film acts more as a lens, amplifying a view of the 1980s from a point thirty years in the future. It becomes a futuristic dystopia that has fallen in love (or in obsession) with a technology created by a man who was in love with the time of his upbringing. It’s a meta reference to a meta meta work. It’s a 21st-century version of the 1973 Gene Wilder film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, which replaces candy with comic books and movies.

Fans of the novel might find the film lacking in the depths that it goes to, especially regarding the Key challenges. Cline’s original story got much deeper into the events, having both the characters complete a challenge for each key, and then performing an additional task to enter the gate for that key. Spielberg knew that audiences would not be as interested in some of these extremely esoteric tasks, which read much better than they would appear on screen. That’s why things are kept relatively simple in the movie, with a riddle being answered and a challenge being met to garner the key. As examples, the book’s Copper Key was found by completing the Tomb of Horrors D&D adventure and besting the Demi-Lich Acererak at the video game Joust. Wade then had to complete a Flicksync for WarGames by acting out all the dialogue for the 1983 film. In the movie version, he only needs to win the race by driving backwards, underneath the race course, to the finish line in Central Park. In the novel, The Jade Key and Gate required Wade to complete the computer text adventure game Zork, and then beat the Black Tiger arcade game inside the Tyrell building from Blade Runner. The film chooses to have the characters enter the Overlook Mansion from The Shining and complete the zombie circle task from the fictional game Mayhem Mansion. The final key in the book was the most challenging, requiring players to play a guitar solo from Rush’s epic song 2112, play the arcade game Tempest, complete a Flicksync for Monty Python and the Holy Grail, before finding the original easter egg in Atari’s Adventure. In the film, Wade and his team just had to get into the Castle and complete Adventure, which was already revealed as one of hundreds of games that should be played.

Still, the film owes the basis of its storyline to the works of the past. Its plot is also something that references other works, in that it’s a group of youngsters who are trying to live their truth, and eventually defeat the evil corporation that threatens their livelihood, and others. It’s like The Goonies, Star Wars, The Last Starfighter, or dozens of other films from the latter portion of the 20th Century. It makes overt homages to Back to the Future, Buckaroo Banzai, and The Iron Giant, while offering nods to comic books, video games, and TV shows. The OG Gundam, RX-78-2, makes an appearance fighting Mechagodzilla. Chucky from Child’s Play and King Kong are nemeses attacking players, zeroing them out. The planet of Arrakis from Dune and familiar quotes from a myriad of films, including Superman and It’s A Wonderful Life, pepper the film. It’s truly a celebration of pop culture, but wrapped up within the sci-fi world of a dystopian future. Even without these references, Ready Player One sets up the familiar, and sometimes basic, story of good guys against a nearly insurmountable enemy.

Societal Commentary

Some sci-fi movies are created as a guise to discuss the horrors and tragedies of the modern world. Ready Player One, not so much. The film is really about fighting for what’s right and loving what you love, unapologetically. And because the film deals with pop culture and entertainment properties, many might consider it something less important than overpopulation, world wars, and fascism. But should it be? Escapism is an important aspect of the world as well. Sometimes you have to say, “They won’t take me, they won’t break me.” The attitude that has permeated media culture and online discourse throughout the 21st Century has been the idea that it’s cool to hate on things. Like being the first post, “This is crap!” Or making fun of the 40-year-old who likes My Little Pony. Being online makes it seem like this is what’s cool. But don’t be fooled, it’s not. It’s toxic negativity that rots you from the inside out. Ready Player One celebrates the love of all things geeky without apology. In a future that has no culture of its own, at least any that is shown, the world escapes into the OASIS, a world of nostalgia for a past that many users never experienced in the first place. Wade knows nothing of Halliday’s favorite characters and movies firsthand. He was born in 2027, two years after the OASIS went online, and decades after the majority of this media was created. Yet, his need to escape and potentially win the contest to move himself out of the Stacks is so great that he consumes everything related to Halliday, keeping the past alive for future generations.

Ready Player One also has some great tips for online safety in these dangerous times. The main one is, the hot girl you’re chatting with online “could actually be a 300-pound dude who lives in his mama’s basement in suburban Detroit. And her name is Chuck.” But more importantly, it’s good to unplug once in a while and create real, meaningful relations. Reality can be a terrifying and painful place, but it’s okay to have places, like the OASIS, to retreat into. Your life in reality is also the only one you’ll ever have. It’s not a game. It’s real. And so are your friends. As someone who has been able to formulate real relationships over the internet, translating them to relationships in the real world, this may be one of the film’s best themes. It seems so simple, too. Play in your own OASIS, but make sure to live in the real world, as well. It’s something that a lot of people forget. Especially, as life in our virtual worlds finds further ways of intruding into the real world, often with real consequences too.

The Science in The Fiction

Ready Player One is a “what if” story about the future of social media and the internet. It’s a possible evolution of the interconnected landscape of the modern World Wide Web. Instead of standard keyboard entry in virtual town squares, the OASIS (the Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation) contains a massive open-world video game built on petaflops of data, as the most massive MMORPG ever conceived. It’s also a world where trademarks seemingly no longer matter, as characters and situations from books, movies, games, and songs are readily available for all. The technology has evolved into more of a gamer culture, no longer limited to a niche group of society. Aunt Alice and the old lady next door all own virtual reality goggles, haptic gloves, and interface with the OASIS on a daily basis. Many people’s jobs are built inside the OASIS (including some virtual indentured servitude of the IOI Loyalty Centers). Fans of technological advancements in gaming can only drool about the creation of an X1 haptic bootsuit with “microfiber crotch inlay.” Such a suit, which allows for the physical body to feel the sensations of the virtual avatar, would be an incredible creation. Along with an easy-to-use 360° treadmill, along the user to “run” virtually anywhere, the technological advancements have all skewed towards entertainment rather than war. In that way, this future is the antithesis of Spielberg’s Minority Report, which focuses the technological energy on police enforcement rather than leisure activities.

The Final Frontier

Two years after the release of this film, and nine years after the original novel, Cline released his first sequel, plainly called Ready Player Two. Its plot follows Wade and the rest of the High Five as they must team up with new allies to stop an even stronger, yet previously unknown threat. It follows the same basic premise and steps of the original, as it works through a series of pop culture-laced tasks, this time with the goal of stopping a rogue AI. It’s an interesting premise, but proves to be reductive of the original, returning to the same virtual well again and again. Spielberg has expressed interest in adapting the film, but at this time, no further announcements have been made.

The film version of Ready Player One was positively received for the most part. Spielberg was able to soften the rough edges from the novel, mostly created by Cline’s ability to delve into arcane trivia and factoids regarding pop culture. In that way, the book feels like the author’s establishment of geek cred, while the film becomes a more inclusive appreciation of the nostalgia, rather than an adolescent wish-fulfillment fantasy. While some people argue that the overabundance of easter eggs and appearances is an ADHD nightmare, the film doesn’t alienate audiences as much as show a love for these things, hopefully making them want to seek out more information about them. Maybe the sight of a Gundam battling Mechagodzilla while The Iron Giant watches will inspire someone to seek out more details. Either way, Ready Player One is a fun film that doesn’t take itself too seriously, while celebrating the history and nostalgia of the culture that inspired so many of today’s creators.

Coming Next