Ready Player One

As you swim through this write-up, please bear in mind that Steven Spielberg was 71 at the time he made Ready Player One, while simultaneously having directed multiple Academy Award nominee, a genre that's 180 degree to this outing - The Post.

Taking place in 2045 Ohio where reality has become the most bitter bummer, the world has a common escape known as The Oasis. In a way, if you look closely, there's a satire undercurrent. We were dumped into the Stacks and we instantly saw why our protagonist wasn't happy as he waded through the garbage-like dwelling. Yes, his name too was Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), and without any hammering-home type reinforcement, we could guesstimate how much Oasis means for these helpless people living in grim, desolation and poverty, even without visiting the virtual reality platform yet! But once we've stepped into the realm, the little kid inside all of us was awoken!

The goal's straightforward and simple! Creator of Oasis James Halliday (Mark Rylance) has left behind this inheritance before his passing for the rightful heir who could find the Easter Egg hidden deep, deep inside. To do so, one has to go through 3 challenges which would yield distinct keys for upcoming levels. First person to get this egg will gain total control of the Oasis and of course, trillion US dollars! Now, we have a plot!

We were told necessary exposition and how basic gaming principles function in this universe effortlessly for the major portions through various creative storytelling methods. Camera guide across newspapers, voice narration by hero and the most impressive of all - Halliday's Journal! It was this brain archive that allowed the viewers to peek into the man's private, professional and personal lives, even if certain parts of it weren't too intriguing. Also, it aided us to see plus understand where did the antagonist's motivation stem from and collect crucial information to sift through the life-altering quest. Gaming elements such as termination resulting in coins, equipment gear purchases and extraction of belonging's miniature models for repair were ultimate gaming fantasies come true!

Zak Penn's and Ernest Cline's screenwriting was smooth, and Spielberg brought out the exact same essence on the tangible show! It's swift, catchy and brisk! Sure, the multiple van door openings at the end could have been shortened and the dance segment to Bee Gees' Stayin' Alive in The Distracted Globe could have been reduced by a bit too. Other than these two nitpicks, the entire runtime was alike sliding on a hairless, clean-shaven cheek! Twists and turns were pulled off efficiently, astonishingly, delightfully yet relevantly! Zemeckis Cube rewinding 60 seconds, hero trapping villain in the midst of Oasis-reality transit, rig hacking with clearly captured password memorization, Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) exterminating all players by activating the Cataclyst, reflection on chair, camouflaged test under agreement-signing, Easter Egg within Adventure, quarter from Curator turning out to be an Extra Life and Curator turning out to be the co-creator of Oasis were awesome revelations! Spielberg's signature monologues were the usual smart.

Plotting wise, it’s wise! The hero wasn't the only one who could crack the puzzles and figure out how and where to go next. Even though Wade Watts was a flat arc protagonist, his attachment and view towards Oasis grew stronger due to the inputs plus guidance he received via cyber crush Samantha / Art3mis (Olivia Cooke). Their bond had added weight because of this factor. As a result, the A and B stories complemented each other seamlessly. The significance of reality as it is the only thing that's real and Oasis' future in the right hands engendered the harmonious equilibrium. Real world transforming from a mundane and lifeless agenda to a riveting on the constant run thrill, virtual characters in the gaming planet coming out openly to introduce each other in the real world plus the vividly shown blurring of lines between virtual and reality reflected the story's controlling idea. As the narration travelled forward, circumstances rightfully so got worse for our main character, progressively. Conundrums became harder to solve as well.

Just when you thought the last clue was left out without us experiencing to decipher it, the screenplay carried us right to it! Army gathered for the battle royale had each Gunter's personal motives in it that prompted them to show up in the first place. Everyone's afraid of obliteration, as it would cost them all their credits, so there's that tension there. But by far, the best surprise came in the form of The Shining! This was an unexpected move from Spielberg and team! No one would have thought we would eventually revisit the Overlook Hotel in a feature about gaming! We witnessed these Ready Player One characters in the same backdrop as The Shining's twins, blood-spilling elevator, typewriter, script pages, lady in the bathtub, hallmark group photograph and the ice-soaked maze with Jack Torrance's figure chasing with his axe! Man! The kind of things you could only pull off thru filmmaking!

5 minutes into the game, sorry movie, you'd already get your money's worth! The road-bending, ball-wrecking, T-Rex terrorizing and King Kong stomping action-packed race to Central Park with Back to the Future's DeLorean and Akira's bike one-upping each other was jaw-droppingly fantastic! The backward race happening subsurface was even more engrossing, as we could see the concurrent events above at the same time! Climactic force field destruction epic scale war sequence at Planet Doom with Mechagodzilla rumbling on Gundam and Iron Giant, Art3mis trying to deactivate the Orb via a drone while trying not to be caught in real life was nail-biting! The same can be said about the actual car chase that prevented Wade from grabbing the key, fitting it into its lock and finally, not pressing the red button that would shut down the entire Oasis! Collapsing structure was nicely done. Any day, physical fisticuffs take the cake. When Parzival kicked the hell out of Nolan Sorrento's staggering avatar (Ben Mendelsohn), satisfaction filled our hearts!

Through what Halliday didn't do when he was alive, we saw the hero blossom in contrast. Yes, we didn’t feel anything for his aunt's death, but we knew he has lost something. Since our hero was a flat arc protagonist as aforementioned, all the supporting characters bounded with him. If you'd have noticed, every character was vulnerable, including the antagonist. They can win, but at the same time lose pretty badly too! Nothing was safe and secured. This was exactly why we saw a slight inner transformation within Nolan the baddie as he didn’t interrupt Wade from obtaining the Easter Egg, made possible by the potential to change teased here and there in the beginning. Mark Rylance was good and how could one ever forget i-R0k, the skull-bodied, contradictorily badass and stupid funny bounty hunter played by T.J. Miller? Aech (Lena Waithe), Sho (Phillip Zhao) and Daito (Win Morisaki) were cool allies.

Ready Player One was, without a doubt, one of those films with cent per cent technical perfection! Addictively electronic score, dexterous editing, flamboyant colors, prestigious lighting and class cinematography will make your day! The crisp digital computer graphics manufactured a motion picture with distinguished visual style that's so Spielberg! And the quality was unparalleled! Coning waves, snow pyramids, IOI drones, collapsing structure, vehicles, self-playing instruments gathering leaves to form Anorak in Central Park, Orb of Osuvox, steampunk pirate king, dismissal pixels, Curator, gold illuminating Easter egg, green skull gun and shape-shifting cityscape to the very minute pores on those gaming avatars were flames! Even the 3 keys were designed so beautifully!

Ready Player One's a pop culture holy grail, rightfully so since it's a flick about that precisely! Halo, Borderland, Harley Quinn, Chucky, Michael Jackson's Thriller, Duran Duran, Clark Kent disguise, Mortal Kombat's Goro, Joker, Batman, Batgirl, Deathstroke, Sonic the Hedgehog, Freddie Krueger, you name it! One would need to watch this movie for a thousand times at least to register all that were available! Although one may feel its overabundant presence or mention at places, no one be it nerds or otherwise can deny it was a gleefully blessed wet dream!

Even at said age, Steven Spielberg's able to deliver a grandiloquent orgasmic sci-fi magnum opus voyage that spellbinds every cell in our body with wonderful magic, sharing the same vein as Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, Jaws, Hook, The Adventures of Tintin, War of the Worlds, Duel, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, A.I., Minority Report and The BFG. We as cinema fans are gifted!