Set in a dystopian 2045, the world is crumbling and the internet has essentially evolved into a gargantuan virtual reality called the OASIS. Its late founder and owner James Halliday (Mark Rylance) left a game within the system and a series of clues that if solved and completed would give the winner ownership of the OASIS and all the power it entails. A teenage boy called Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) is determined to win, and with his online crew navigates the pop culture-infused challenges in order to get to the end before the minions of an evil businessman (Ben Mendelsohn) can.
Even for Spielberg, this is his most CGI-heavy movie to not actually be entirely animated, owing to large portions of the film taking place inside the OASIS with the characters’ avatars. The advantage for Ready Player One though is that this world and these characters are computer-generated imagery in the context of the movie, so it allows for less necessary visual cohesion, believable textures, and more creativity and range in designs. It’s meant to look like a video game and so it does. Yet the OASIS still looks muted and flat a lot of the time. It’s often got a pale atmosphere in spite of its vast array of divergent worlds and background characters, and one that’s only really used to the films’ advantage in the first race and the climactic battle. The world of the OASIS in general just leaves a lot to be desired as far as virtual reality internet allegories go, especially compared to richer, more creative examples like Ralph Breaks the Internet, Summer Wars, even the “Bicyclops Built For Two” episode of Futurama or those Cracked and CollegeHumor videos. I mean, the primary database they use is inspired by AskJeeves, not exactly the most relevant reference or the most clever personification that could have been used.
The OASIS however isn’t what this movie (or the book) wanted to impress people with, it was the sheer volume of pop media references. More than the story or characters, this was what the film wanted to emphasize. And ultimately it is very impressive just from a legal perspective, how the studio managed to get the rights to such a wide range of characters. There are gaps for sure -nothing owned by Disney makes an appearance, though Star Wars and Marvel properties are referenced; and despite directing the film Spielberg was, quite wisely in my opinion, careful not to include any of his own pop culture icons (a T-Rex appears looking an awful lot like the one from Jurassic Park though). But it is still cool for any nerd to see the likes of Freddy Krueger share the screen with Marvin the Martian and Chun-Li. And unlike other movies like Wreck-It Ralph which promoted a similar gimmick, the references do pay off. While most are consigned to the backgrounds of scenes, the DeLorean from Back to the Future is a consistent element, as is the Iron Giant (though he was still marketed too much), Adventure for the Atari 2600 is the key plot device of the third act, Chucky from Childs’ Play, the Holy Hand Grenade of Monty Python, MechaGodzilla and Gundam get notable moments, and of course the second challenge is one extended reference to The Shining -replacing a Blade Runner sequence from the book. This is the most interesting part of the movie, both as a display of Spielberg’s utter admiration for his late friend Stanley Kubrick in how meticulously he recreates the Overlook Hotel and the famous woman in the bathroom and elevator of blood scenes; and as a chaotic mindscape breaking apart the mood of that film almost to the point of parody.
Still, with all this, Spielberg keeps the focus on the principal story and characters, which may possibly have been a mistake, as those are the weakest elements of the film. The hero is not a likeable character, which isn’t all that surprising in a story that makes pop cultural obsession a virtue -and I say that as someone clearly relatively obsessed with pop culture myself. I believe Tye Sheridan’s doing as best as he can, but Wade still comes off mostly obnoxious and arrogant, as may be typical of a teenager who lives online. As realistic as it may be, it’s no excuse. His journey doesn’t feel compelling because we’ve got no stakes in him. Even after his aunt is killed, he still seems to treat the OASIS as a game and the attempts to skew otherwise are disingenuous. This character is a pure self-insert fantasy for teen boys and by the end he hasn’t learned much of a lesson. Probably the biggest problem for his character is his relationship with Samantha (Olivia Cooke) which like everything about him seems to be lifted from an 80s movie. And while she calls him out on idiotically telling her he loves her on their first date without considering he’s never met her in person, it doesn’t get a lot better. There seems to be little reason for Samantha to be interested in him apart from him being the protagonist. She’s just as if not more capable than he is, but circumstances of their own making force him to be the designated hero. Samantha is the outside revolutionary but mostly exists to make this point apparent to Wade and is little more than a trophy otherwise.
The rest of the characters don’t fare as badly though. Lena Waithe’s Aech is alright, and Hannah John-Kamen stands out from conventional henchwomen due to a seemingly natural fierceness she exudes. Even T.J. Miller’s not bad, though his boss is uninspired. Ben Mendelsohn’s Nolan Sorrento is Dean Wormer of Animal House, Walter Peck of Ghostbusters, and any number of John Hughes authority villains, most notably Principal Vernon of The Breakfast Club, whom he looks strikingly similar to. He’s the intolerant bad guy in a suit and there’s nothing more to it than that. Even Mendelsohn’s villain in Rogue One wasn’t as flat. But in contrast to Mendelsohn there’s Mark Rylance, once again playing a very different character for Spielberg than his thespianic background foreshadowed. As the socially averse geek god James Halliday, he manages to convey a silent tragedy, and you know that he lacked the understanding of how to amend the missed opportunities of his life. Though his message to Wade is lacking in every subtlety, it at the same time has meaningful nuances. His partner is played by Simon Pegg, which is neat, but Pegg just kind of exists in this movie.
Ready Player One is a smorgasbord of nerd culture, revolutionary and youth empowerment themes, and digital media commentary for good or bad. Yet the most interesting facet in all of this is the movies’ relationship with its director. It’s impossible to separate Ready Player One from Spielberg’s filmography and pop cultural status. The 1980s is often regarded as Spielberg’s greatest decade, if not as a director than as a Hollywood icon. That was the era in which he directed the Indiana Jones trilogy and E.T., and as a producer his name was attached to such 80s staples as Back to the Future, The Goonies, Poltergeist, Gremlins, An American Tail, The Land Before Time, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. And with that decade’s culture particularly restored to prominence alongside a pop culture that, to reiterate, arguably exists because of Spielberg’s influence, the filmmaker is engaged in an act of self-reflection here, coming to terms with the impact he’s had. And it’s curious to note the sense of distance. Apart from The Shining sequence, which to him is much like what everything else is to Cline, Spielberg seems a little detached from most of the references. Certainly not as big a deal is made of the pop culture ubiquity of this world as in the novel.
However Spielberg is interested in the central moral, relayed to Wade first through Samantha and eventually through Halliday: the importance of living in the real world. Perhaps this is a message a la the kind William Shatner and Mark Hamill have occasionally given, urging people, especially the young and impressionable, not to attach such importance to pop cultural relics. We’ve seen what happens when some make it a core part of their identity. I think Spielberg’s partly doing that, but with an emphasis more on the joys of life than the dismissal of nerd culture and fandom. Because he knows he’s as much a captive to nostalgia as the rest of us -otherwise his next movie wouldn’t be a remake of West Side Story. Maybe the message is for himself as well.
Ready Player One is a fitting place to end this Spielberg retrospective -I mean obviously, it’s the most recent movie he’s directed. And though it has its problematic lead character as well as a mostly derivative standard YA novel plot, it stands as a reminder of how far Spielberg has come. A movie that’s entirely CG for a lot of its runtime is a long way from the one-take carefully executed real explosion of the climax of Duel. A film that not only had a 175 million dollar budget affording to licence dozens of characters from other properties is a far cry from that relatively small scale shark movie made for 9 million (itself 5 million dollars over-budget). And yet, that movie is still the classic, while Ready Player One inevitably won’t be. But that of course has nothing to do with Spielberg’s capabilities as a filmmaker, which are still sharp. He has remained a good and modestly reliable director throughout an incredibly turbulent industry even if he’s not tapping into a public interest or feeling as often as he used to.
Last June, I asked how have Spielberg’s movies changed, what was it that made them special, and what is it he wants to convey? First, they’ve evolved with his style and focus. As he matured, he took on more grounded, dramatic projects partly I believe to prove he could, partly out of ambition, and partly not to be confined to the box he’d made himself. In this I think he’s mostly succeeded, as many of Spielberg’s “serious” films are incredibly good. Likewise has he changed his approach to material: he’s become a businessman, which has affected the choices he’s made, and on occasion he’s experimented in presentation. Having revolutionized it, he’s wholeheartedly embraced the new form of visual effects to both his strength and his detriment. He’s taken a few more risks in later years, from controversial stories like Munich to the creatively tenuous Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yet the core themes of his movies have remained the same: family, survival, and freedom being probably his most prominent. What made his movies special though, the ones that are, was his ability to express these and other themes in ways and against ideas we’d never seen before; as well as his understanding of what thrills and moves people in equal measure. He’s been criticized for this sometimes, but it works. Folks like Oscar Wilde famously mocked the death of Little Nell in Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, but only felt the need to do so because so many were emotionally impacted by it. The same can be said for Spielberg. Some may focus on the negative repercussions of his effect on the American film industry, the egregious amount of money being spent on blockbusters at the expense of smaller but no less creative movies for example, but one can’t ignore the positive outcomes they’ve had as well. Spielberg’s easy to dismiss due to his popularity, but he and his movies are popular for a reason. And in discussing why his movies are special, it’s vital to remember he surrounded himself in great collaborators: John Williams, Michael Kahn, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan, Melissa Mathison, Tom Stoppard, Michael Crichton, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren, Janusz Kaminski, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Jackson, Richard Curtis, and of course his casts of wonderfully talented actors. As for what he wants to convey, well it’s a lot of things through a lot of different movies. It’s wonder and fear and sadness and purpose and pleasure and joy. He wants movies to make you feel and to feel strongly, which is an exercise filmmakers have been attempting for over a century. Godard was wrong. There is artistic merit in Spielbergs’ films (as if any film could be devoid of such), and that artistry has profoundly touched audiences around the globe for decades. And Steven Spielberg himself has rightfully earned a place in the annals of cinematic history as one of the most important directors the medium has ever known.
Last June, I asked how have Spielberg’s movies changed, what was it that made them special, and what is it he wants to convey? First, they’ve evolved with his style and focus. As he matured, he took on more grounded, dramatic projects partly I believe to prove he could, partly out of ambition, and partly not to be confined to the box he’d made himself. In this I think he’s mostly succeeded, as many of Spielberg’s “serious” films are incredibly good. Likewise has he changed his approach to material: he’s become a businessman, which has affected the choices he’s made, and on occasion he’s experimented in presentation. Having revolutionized it, he’s wholeheartedly embraced the new form of visual effects to both his strength and his detriment. He’s taken a few more risks in later years, from controversial stories like Munich to the creatively tenuous Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Yet the core themes of his movies have remained the same: family, survival, and freedom being probably his most prominent. What made his movies special though, the ones that are, was his ability to express these and other themes in ways and against ideas we’d never seen before; as well as his understanding of what thrills and moves people in equal measure. He’s been criticized for this sometimes, but it works. Folks like Oscar Wilde famously mocked the death of Little Nell in Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, but only felt the need to do so because so many were emotionally impacted by it. The same can be said for Spielberg. Some may focus on the negative repercussions of his effect on the American film industry, the egregious amount of money being spent on blockbusters at the expense of smaller but no less creative movies for example, but one can’t ignore the positive outcomes they’ve had as well. Spielberg’s easy to dismiss due to his popularity, but he and his movies are popular for a reason. And in discussing why his movies are special, it’s vital to remember he surrounded himself in great collaborators: John Williams, Michael Kahn, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, George Lucas, Lawrence Kasdan, Melissa Mathison, Tom Stoppard, Michael Crichton, Stan Winston, Phil Tippett, Dennis Muren, Janusz Kaminski, Stanley Kubrick, Peter Jackson, Richard Curtis, and of course his casts of wonderfully talented actors. As for what he wants to convey, well it’s a lot of things through a lot of different movies. It’s wonder and fear and sadness and purpose and pleasure and joy. He wants movies to make you feel and to feel strongly, which is an exercise filmmakers have been attempting for over a century. Godard was wrong. There is artistic merit in Spielbergs’ films (as if any film could be devoid of such), and that artistry has profoundly touched audiences around the globe for decades. And Steven Spielberg himself has rightfully earned a place in the annals of cinematic history as one of the most important directors the medium has ever known.
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