‘Let the hunt for Halliday’s Easter Egg, begin!’
The book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is compelling and infinitely readable, but it is also deeply flawed. Clumsy pop culture references, unlikable characters and plodding action set pieces ensured that Cline’s debut novel would require some serious work before being converted into a feature film. Fortunately, there is nobody you would rather have to bring something up to scratch than Steven Spielberg, and he does a brilliant job here.
Spielberg streamlines the source material, trimming the fat and leaving everything that made the novel such a hit intact. The OASIS is a virtual world created by the socially awkward genius Halliday (Mark Rylance). Upon his death, he unleashes an Easter Egg in the game that has gamers and business men alike scrambling. Parzival (Tye Sheridan) is a low level gamer who attempts to uses his knowledge and expertise to crack the code to discover the Egg. By his side are Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), Aech (Lena Waithe) and half the gaming community. On the other side of the screen is the evil Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) and the bumbling I-R0k (T.J. Miller).
One of the problems with Cline’s novel is that Parzival is a bit of a dick and Sorrento is a stock villain with no discernible identity. Spielberg rights those wrongs with the help of an impressive performance from Tye Sheridan and an excellent turn from Ben Mendelsohn. Elsewhere, T.J. Miller provides some comic relief and Olivia Cooke delivers as the thinly drawn Art3mis, admirably managing to make the character her own.
Ready Player One is a celebration of popular culture while still being a compelling and high octane race through many genres and styles. The scenes that pay homage to The Shining are jaw-droppingly well rendered and the constant supply of blink-and-you’ll-miss-’em pop culture references are most welcome after Cline’s much less subtle Easter Eggs in the book. Spielberg has confirmed that a blockbuster needn’t be sourced from a comic book to be successful and, hopefully, this film will go someway to releasing Marvel’s stranglehold on the Hollywood blockbuster, something that has almost become a monopoly in recent years.
After a number of very serious films (The Post, Bride of Spies, Lincoln), it is extremely satisfying to see Spielberg returning to his blockbuster roots. He can still do it better than any other director out there. I just hope we don’t have to wait ten more years for another one.