Ready Player One | Movie Review

Author: Ernest Cline.

Published: 2011

Movie adaptation: 2018

Director: Steven Spielberg

I know this website is for games but seeing as this movie is based on video games and has so many different elements of gaming I thought I would include it on the site. When Ready Player One was announced there were a lot of conflicting feelings towards it, not from me though, I choose to base my opinion on the movie once I had seen it because following the crowd and listening to what they think isn't always the best option especially when we all have different taste. I stopped myself from reading any of the reviews and my partner and I finally watched it, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the movie was directed by Steven Spielberg as I'm a big fan of his, he has a great vision when it comes to movies. Ready Player One started life as a book and the movie isn't true to the book but has a lot of aspects that they used in the book, which was only brought out back in 2011.

Ready Player One is based in the year 2045 where the world has been taken over by Virtual Reality, people are choosing to escape their problems for a more fun world filled with lots of possibilities, the real world is a mess people live in crowded homes and using virtual reality helps them forget that they live in the slums for a little while. What I find interesting about our current year is that virtual Reality is becoming more and more popular so it could be possible that something similar to this could happen in the future, sure we were meant to have flying cars and hoverboards by now but you never know, someone could be developing them as I type this. Back to the movie, the world in which people enter when using their VR is called Oasis.

A lot of work has gone into this movie, the CGI is noticeable due to the fact most of the movie is set inside of the Oasis but it's not tacky nor are is the CGI bad it works well perfectly with real-world scenes. The main character Wade (Avatar Parzival) comes from a poor background, he doesn't have a lot and makes the most of what he does have by fixing equipment used to enter the Oasis, even if he has to steal some of it from his aunt making her deadbeat partner angry, I hated that guy. For years now, players have been trying to find the Easter Egg inside the Oasis, the co-founder of it James Halliday AKA Anorak announced the contest years ago, he stated that the gate to the easter egg requires three hidden keys which are somewhere inside the Oasis, the winner would receive ownership and control of the Oasis. Wade amongst others have been studying all there is to know about Anorak in order to get closer to the keys, Wade was the one to figure out how to win the race in order to get the first key and his 2 friends and a mysterious girl soon worked it out and were able to get hold of a key each and make their way on to the leaderboards.

An organisation called the Sixers who were hired by a man named Nolan Sorrento who want's ownership of the Oasis and will stop at nothing to try and get it even if that means finding and killing Wade and his friends, throughout the game you will recognise a lot of old school games and characters as well as new ones, the book obviously doesn't include newer games but they were added for the movie such as Overwatch. When inside the Oasis players can be destroyed and when this happens they lose everything they have collected so some players won't even risk trying to get the keys but for others, it's worth the risk, wade, however, seems to know his stuff and tries his best to be as careful as he can because he can't risk losing it all, if he does he loses the key too. When each key is found and collected Wade is putting his and his friends and aunts life at risk, the Sixers will do anything they can in order to destroy Wade even if that means killing innocent people in the process, I think the age rating they gave this is fair although with the elements of violence within the video games that take place in the Oasis and if it was an actual game it would be probably rated higher than a 12A.

If you're like me and love pop culture this movie will entice you, they are used really well when it comes to solving where players must find the keys especially when players are able to enter a museum and see life recordings of Anorak to work out any clues to find out how to get to the next keys, each element of the game has a place and works in Wade's favour in one way or another and kind of reminded me of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because of the storyline where someone needs to take over the company and I think this is why I liked the movie so much, it relies has faith on another person, the right person to take over the company.

The movie doesn't just include video game characters, one of the most memorable ones is the Iron Giant, I'm a huge fan of the movie and it's always been top of my underrated movies and watching him brought back to life in another movie was like living my childhood again. As a whole I loved this movie, it's brought to life wonderfully and takes you on a journey into a virtual world which I'm more than happy to be taken on, the ending of the movie leaves a lot of room for a sequel which I would welcome wholeheartedly and the movie is much like a glimpse of that could possibly happen in the real world in terms of how far VR could come, although I would be useless at it as I get bad motion sickness when I play the VR! I give this movie 4/5 the only thing I would probably change was how long the movie was, it did seem a little dragged out at times but the movie overall was a fun adventure game into the world of Virtual Reality.