Spielberg Celebration: ‘Ready Player One’

Let him entertain you

Take the leap into the OASIS. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

I have never had the chance to ask him, but I would imagine that Steven Spielberg gets sent a lot of scripts. Being arguably the greatest director in history, and certainly one of its most successful, no doubt every budding author and screenwriter would want to see “Directed by Steven Spielberg” when the credits roll on their work. And so he can pick and choose from pretty much anything; when not writing his own script (like The Fabelmans), he can do pretty much whatever he wants.

To me this is important context when looking at his 2018 directorial effort, Ready Player One. Because to me this smacks of Spielberg kicking back at home, having a beer, and thinking “you know what, let’s put the Oscars aside this time; I’m going to have some fun.” And he does.

By way of background, Ready Player One was a novel by writer Ernest Cline, published in 2011. The book is set in two simultaneous locations: a poor, grimy, energy-starved doomed 2040’s USA, and then the colourful, boundless, escapist virtual world of the OASIS, created by tech wiz James Halliday. 18-year old Wade Watts adopts the OASIS avatar of Parzival, and goes into the game to find an Easter Egg hidden in the OASIS by a pre-death Halliday.

The prize is that the gamer that finds the egg will be able to control the OASIS going forward. As a virtual (in both senses) dream world the OASIS is so full of pop-culture references, shout-outs, competitions, re-runs as to make a geek never want to leave; which is, in the end, sort of the point. I have read the book, as well as its on-the-nose-titled sequel Ready Player Two, and they are the literary equivalent of drinking a pint of Diet Coke; at the time refreshing and fun, giving you a brief sugar high, only then to bring you crashing down again, and later ending up wondering whether it was worth it. Whole dialogues from 80’s films and songs are quoted verbatim, arcade games are recreated, and the whole thing reads as Fan Service: The Novel(s). It did not, to be truthful, scream “Spielberg”.

And yet he picked it up, read it, and said “yep, this is next.” And most of the world replied, “Huh?” But in Steven we trust, and I was in the cinema opening week to see what the great man could make of this. The key roles of Parzival and fellow gamer Artemis were played by young actors Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke, with some acting weight provided by Mark Rylance as Halliday, Simon Pegg as Halliday’s one time business partner Ogen Morrow, and Ben Mendelsohn giving his best snarling bad guy as Nolan Sorrento, the corporate overlord who wants to capture the OASIS for himself. The initial prologue in 2040s Ohio follows the book quite closely, then Wade-as-Parzival starts his quest in the OASIS, and things kick off.

Parzival joins the OASIS. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

If you have a story of a world that anybody can create anything, then you can fill the screen with every possible influence that you like. In doing so, this story makes much more sense on the screen than it does on the page, as you dive headlong into a metaverse so rich and deep it must have given Mark Zuckerberg nightmares. The first challenge is a race around meta-New York to win the first of three keys to unlock the fabled Easter Egg. Parzival races in a DeLorean straight out of Back to the Future (to enhance his geek status, Ernest Cline owns one in real life).

The race takes place at breakneck velocity, like a game of Mario Kart on speed but with better vehicles. As Parzival rockets around, there’s the A-Team van overtaking the Batmobile, Akira’s bike beats Speed Racer, Mad Max, and Smokey and the Bandit thrash it out, whilst Lara Croft stands at the start line. As they approach the finish past the Empire State Building, it is King Kong that climbs down and swats away cars that he doesn’t want to continue. This gives Spielberg the chance to direct a high-speed car chase, but without physical limitations and so allowing all the director’s tricks he can think of. Spinning cameras, roadside POVs, huge smashes between cars without fear, all get thrown at the camera with gusto.

King Kong stops the race. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Once we’ve calmed down from the car race, Parzival’s quest continues, as he tries to get inside Halliday’s mind to establish where the next keys may be. And this then allows Spielberg to pay respect to his favourite directors and films. There’s a ‘Zemeckis cube’, an Alien chest-burster, and Clark Kent-like glasses that hide your obvious identity whilst giving you a comb-over in the process. These respects are then ramped up in the middle of the film where Parzival realises that one key is hidden inside a location that held a lot of meaning for Halliday. A film location. A hotel film location. A hotel called the Overlook. Yes, that one.

Here’s…The Overlook. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

In the film’s best sequence (and notably different from the book, which uses Blade Runner) Spielberg genuflects at the feet of Stanley Kubrick by having Parzival and team go through all the key scenes of The Shining. Axes go through doors. There’s a run around a snowy maze. Halliday is in a New Year’s Eve black-tie group photo. One character evades the twins, only to set off the rivers of blood through the lift. To escape he takes refuge in…Room 237. It does not go well.

In this whole part of the film Spielberg takes the prompt “which film would I like to recreate?” and goes to town with barely-concealed glee, and this choice of film makes sense. This is a film for fans by a fan, by someone who’s cashing in his career-long directorial credit to purely have fun and give joy to an audience who love the same things he does. Let us not forget the filmmaker who made Jaws, the Indiana Jones films, and Jurassic Park; since his first amateur film made on an 8mm and shown in his local cinema, he just wants to entertain a crowd.

After some more key-egg-game shenanigans there is a final big battle at Castle Anorak (yes, really) where the good guys must get the thing to win the other thing to stop the bad guys from doing a bad thing, and it really doesn’t matter. In a frenetic battle its more references-a-go-go as the Iron Giant faces off against Mecha-Godzilla (and then does the T2 thumbs up as it dies a noble death), plasma rifles from Aliens are used to shoot Deadites from The Evil Dead, and all of the horror icons Jason, Freddy and Chuckie turn up to spread mayhem. This causes one soldier to amusingly drop the film’s one F-bomb, when he sees the crazed doll spring at him with a knife and shouts “It’s f***ing Chuckie!” Yes. Yes it is.

Battle Royale (which is probably in there somewhere). Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

After the battle, the film comes to a more sedate conclusion (spoilers: the guy gets the girl; the good guys win), and we can look back at how we got here. At the end it’s worth remembering that although James Cameron is the director famed for pushing technology boundaries through his career, Spielberg has form in this to. After all, Jurassic Park’s use of CGI for the dinosaurs was groundbreaking, and arguably set in motion much of the look of action films in the over 30 years since. Here in each of his creation of the virtual world, recreating a digital Overlook to allow for new camera positions within the existing locations, and filming all of the actors’ virtual scenes in mocap suits, he redefined what was possible. Spielberg was given a new sandbox to play in, and play he did. And then there’s even time for a subtle but important coda. In the film (but notably not the book) they close the OASIS two days a week to make people focus back in the real world. Imagine the riots if that happened to the internet these days.

Not all avatars are blue. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

In Spielberg’s career this is not a film that gets talked about very often and likely doesn’t even make his top 10. (Some might argue top 20.) But for me this is an absolute blast, from a director with no regrets. He sanded off the rough edges of a fizzy drink of a book, imagined his own world, and created a whole vision for everyone to enjoy and be a part of. Are you not entertained?