Photo: Jaap Buitendijk/Jaap Buitendijk
Spoilers below for Ready Player One.
Ready Player One is the apotheosis of a rising trend in film that we might refer to as “recognition cinema” — the phenomenon of trying to please an audience by including brief references to other pieces of fiction. It’s common in — though by no means restricted to — superhero movies, which will commonly drop hints or include cameos that demonstrate a connection to elements the viewers might remember from comic-book source material or separate movies in the same shared universe.
Typically, such references are given some room to breathe so the crowd can go wild at the excitement of recognizing what the filmmakers are implying. Not so in Ready Player One. In Steven Spielberg’s latest picture, there are dozens upon dozens of pop-culture references in dialogue and mise-en-scène; so many that a single pair of human eyes is incapable of catching them all. Here, we’ve attempted to list as many of them as we could notice and scribble down in the darkened theater. Let us know in the comments if you find ones we missed, of which there are surely more than a few.
Minecraft: The popular video game is one the many worlds gamers in the film can visit as part of the OASIS virtual-reality system.
Batman: The protagonist, Wade Watts, tells us one can hang out with a virtual Batman inside OASIS, and we see him climbing Mount Everest. The Batmobile from the 1960s Batman TV show is seen in a virtual race.
The Joker: Wade’s virtual avatar is briefly modded to look like the Batman villain. Someone else in a Joker avatar hangs out in a virtual nightclub.
Harley Quinn: Seen in the virtual nightclub.
A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy Krueger seen as an avatar in a battle royale.
Friday the 13th: Jason Voorhees seen as an avatar in a battle royale.
Star Trek: OASIS creator James Halliday has a Star Trek–themed funeral. Later, we see a Klingon bat’leth weapon on a windowsill.
Street Fighter: Logo seen in a marketplace for gamers. Characters Ryu and Chun-Li make appearances as player avatars in fights. A character uses Ryu’s famed “hadouken” fireball to attack someone.
Speed Racer: Speed’s car, the Mach 5, is seen in a virtual race.
Bigfoot: The famous monster truck is seen in a virtual race.
Back to the Future: Wade drives a virtual DeLorean. A modified Rubik’s Cube called a Zemeckis Cube (named after Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis) allows a character to travel back in time.
Tron: A light-cycle is seen in a virtual race.
Akira: A motorcycle modeled after Kaneda’s is seen in a virtual race.
Jurassic Park: The T. rex is seen as an obstacle in a virtual race.
King Kong: Seen in as an obstacle in a virtual race.
Last Action Hero: Characters race past a marquee advertising a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character.
The Iron Giant: The titular robot is a weapon built by Wade’s friend Aech.
Battlestar Galactica: The 1970s version of the Galactica ship is seen as a virtual toy.
Alien: A chestburster is used by Wade’s love interest, Artemis.
Aliens: Space-marine spaceship the Sulaco is seen as a virtual toy.
Silent Running: Spaceship Valley Forge is seen as a virtual toy.
Dune: The planet Arrakis is mentioned as a virtual destination.
Goldeneye: The video game is mentioned as Halliday’s favorite. (He prefers the “slappers only” mode.)
Superman: Wade’s avatar is briefly modded to look like Clark Kent.
Spider-Man: Wade mentions that he was given an alliterative name to sound like Spidey’s alter ego Peter Parker or …
The Incredible Hulk: … the Hulk’s, Bruce Banner.
Looney Tunes: Young Halliday is seen near a Marvin the Martian toy.
Space Invaders: Halliday is repeatedly seen wearing a shirt advertising the game.
Asteroids: Mentioned by Halliday’s business partner, Ogden Morrow.
Galaga: Poster for the game seen in Halliday and Morrow’s offices.
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure: Halliday mentions the film.
Star Wars: Stormtroopers briefly seen as avatars in a battle royale. R2-D2 toy seen on a floor.
Borderlands: Unspecified game accoutrements available in a virtual marketplace.
Overwatch: Unspecified game accoutrements available in a virtual marketplace.
War of the Worlds: A crashed Martian ship is the site of a virtual meeting.
Tootsie Pop: A character mentions the candy as a metaphor.
Knight Rider: The car, KITT, is briefly seen.
Beetlejuice: Title character seen as someone’s avatar.
Mortal Kombat: Goro seen as someone’s avatar.
The Dark Crystal: Mentioned by Halliday.
Citizen Kane: Multiple references to Rosebud.
Purple Rain: Wade briefly dresses as Prince’s character.
Mad Max: Mentioned.
Gremlins: Graffiti related to the film briefly seen.
Christine: The titular car from the 1983 Stephen King adaptation is seen in a virtual race.
“Thriller” music video: Wade briefly dresses as Michael Jackson’s character.
Duran Duran: Wade briefly dresses as a band member.
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension: Wade dresses as the title character for an extended period of time.
Battletoads: Titular toads seen as avatars.
Saturday Night Fever: An extended dance sequence is based on the film, complete with Bee Gees soundtrack.
The Breakfast Club: Mentioned by the villain, Nolan Sorrento.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Mentioned by Sorrento.
Fast Times at Ridgemont High: Mentioned by Wade.
Animal House: Mentioned by Wade.
Robotron: Mentioned by Sorrento.
Joy Division: Band T-shirt seen on Art3mis’s real-life body.
Dungeons and Dragons: A virtual space is named after the role-playing game’s creator, Gary Gygax. A 20-sided die is briefly seen.
The Fly: The 1986 remake is mentioned as a film Halliday once saw.
Say Anything: Mentioned as a film Halliday once saw.
Simon: The classic toy is seen as a possession of Halliday’s.
Thundercats: Wade wears a belt referencing the show.
Hello Kitty: A sticker for the brand is seen on a motorcycle.
The Shining: An extended sequence is set in a replica of the Overlook Hotel.
Punk’d: Aech mentions “being punk’d.”
Nancy Drew: Mentioned by a character.
Atari 2600: Becomes a crucial plot point when it’s revealed that Halliday has hidden a key to beating OASIS in a virtual version of one of the antiquated system’s games.
Centipede: An Atari 2600 game mentioned by Sorrento’s underlings.
Pitfall: An Atari 2600 game mentioned by Sorrento’s underlings.
Swordquest: An Atari 2600 game mentioned by Sorrento’s underlings.
Motorcross: An Atari 2600 game mentioned by Sorrento’s underlings.
Adventure: An Atari 2600 game that is crucial to the ending.
Spawn: Seen as an avatar in a battle royale.
Child’s Play: Chucky is used as a weapon during a battle royale.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The versions of the characters from the recent film reboot are seen as avatars during a battle royale.
Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla: Sorrento morphs into Mechagodzilla during a battle royale.
Gundam: Wade’s ally Daito morphs into a Gundam robot during a battle royale.
Madballs: A madball is used as a weapon in a battle royale.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day: While sinking into a pit of lava, the Iron Giant gives a thumbs up.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Wade uses the Holy Hand Grenade in a virtual fight.
Mario Kart: Aech jokingly mentions the game during a car chase.
Joust: Poster for the game seen in Halliday’s childhood bedroom.
Raiders of the Lost Ark: Poster for the film seen in Halliday’s childhood bedroom.
Forbidden Planet: Toy robot from the film seen in Halliday’s childhood bedroom.
Pac-Man: Poster for the game seen in Halliday’s childhood bedroom.
2112: Poster for the Rush album is seen in Halliday’s childhood bedroom.
The A-Team: Van seen in a virtual race.
Halo: Soldiers seen as a group’s avatars.
Sonic the Hedgehog: Title character seen as someone’s avatar.
That material has issues of its own. Mr. Cline’s book — readable and amusing without being exactly good — is a hodgepodge of cleverness and cliché. Less than a decade after publication, it already feels a bit dated, partly because its dystopian vision seems unduly optimistic and partly because its vision of male geek rebellion has turned stale and sour.
In the film, set in 2045, Wade Watts (a young man played by the agreeably bland, blandly agreeable Tye Sheridan) lives in “the stacks,” a vertical pile of trailers where the poorer residents of Columbus, Ohio (Oklahoma City in the book), cling to hope, dignity and their VR gloves. Humanity has been ravaged by the usual political and ecological disasters (among them “bandwidth riots” referred to in Wade’s introductory voice-over), and most people seek refuge in a digital paradise called the Oasis.
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That world — less a game than a Jorge Luis Borges cosmos populated by wizards, robots and racecar drivers — is the creation of James Halliday (Mark Rylance). After Halliday’s death, his avatar revealed the existence of a series of Easter eggs, or secret digital treasures, the discovery of which would win a lucky player control of the Oasis. Wade is a “gunter” — short for “egg hunter” — determined to pursue this quest even after most of the other gamers have tired of it. Among his rivals are a few fellow believers and Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), the head of a company called IOI that wants to bring Halliday’s paradise under corporate control.
In the real world, IOI encourages Oasis fans to run up debts that it collects by forcing them into indentured servitude. Sorrento’s villainy sets up a battle on two fronts — clashes in the Oasis mirroring chases through the streets of Columbus — that inspires Mr. Spielberg to feats of crosscutting virtuosity. The action is so swift and engaging that some possibly literal-minded questions may be brushed aside. I, for one, didn’t quite understand why, given the global reach of the Oasis, all the relevant players were so conveniently clustered in Ohio. (If anyone wants to explain, please find me on Twitter so I can mute you.)
But, of course, Columbus and the Oasis do not represent actual or virtual realities, but rather two different modalities of fantasy. Wade’s avatar, Parzival, collects a posse of fighters: Sho, Daito, Aech and Art3mis, who is also his love interest. When the people attached to these identities meet up in Columbus, they are not exactly as they are in the game. Aech, large and male in the Oasis, is played by Lena Waithe. But the fluidity of online identity remains an underexploited possibility. In and out of the Oasis, Art3mis (also known as Samantha, and portrayed by Olivia Cooke) is a male fantasy of female badassery. Sho (Philip Zhao) and Daito (Win Morisaki) are relegated to sidekick duty. The multiplayer, self-inventing ethos of gaming might have offered a chance for a less conventional division of heroic labor, but the writers and filmmakers lacked the imagination to take advantage of it.
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The most fun part of “Ready Player One” is its exuberant and generous handing out of pop-cultural goodies. Tribute is paid to Mr. Spielberg’s departed colleagues John Hughes and Stanley Kubrick. The visual and musical allusions are eclectic enough that nobody is likely to feel left out, and everybody is likely to feel a little lost from time to time.
Nostalgia? Sure, but what really animates the movie is a sense of history. The Easter egg hunt takes Parzival and his crew back into Halliday’s biography — his ill-starred partnership with Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg), his thwarted attempts at romance — and also through the evolution of video games and related pursuits. The history is instructive and also sentimental in familiar ways, positing a struggle for control between idealistic, artistic entrepreneurs (and their legions of fans) and soulless corporate greedheads.
Halliday is a sweet, shaggy nerd with a guileless Northern California drawl and a deeply awkward manner, especially around women. Sorrento is an autocratic bean counter, a would-be master of the universe who doesn’t even like video games. These characters are clichés, but they are also allegorical figures.
In the movie, they represent opposing principles, but in our world, they are pretty much the same guy. A lot of the starry-eyed do-it-yourselfers tinkering in their garages and giving life to their boyish dreams back in the ’70s and ’80s turned out to be harboring superman fantasies of global domination all along. They shared their wondrous creations and played the rest of us for suckers, collecting our admiration, our attention and our data as profit and feudal tribute.
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Mr. Spielberg incarnates this duality as perfectly as any man alive. He is the peer of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and a Gandalf for the elves and hobbits who made Google, Facebook and the other components of our present-day Oasis. He has been man-child and mogul, wide-eyed artist and cold-eyed businessman, praised for making so many wonderful things and blamed for ruining everything. His career has been a splendid enactment of the cultural contradictions of capitalism, and at the same time a series of deeply personal meditations on love, loss and imagination. All of that is also true of Halliday’s Oasis. “Ready Player One” is far from a masterpiece, but as the fanboys say, it’s canon.
With the official summer box office season fast approaching, the current spring of tentpole contenders continues apace with the arrival of cinema's grand master of blockbuster franchise filmmaking. Steven Spielberg returns to theaters with Ready Player One, the sort of big-budget action-adventure extravaganza that turned the director into one of the most successful, beloved, and acclaimed filmmakers of all time. Can he work his magic again after many years away from the tentpole game?
Source: Warner Bros.
With Ready Player One's domestic opening weekend shaping up for $40-50 million, international markets will provide a welcome boost expected to exceed $100+ million over the Easter holiday. Some tracking suggests interest in the film is slowing a bit as we head into the weekend, but don't be surprised if the numbers tick upward as the weekend progresses.
An average run would see a $150+ million global bow translate into perhaps $300-350 million range. If word of mouth is strong, however, then the initial relatively modest opening numbers (particularly in North America) could give way to solid holds and long legs that carry the film toward $400+ million territory.
With terrific critical reviews pushing it over 80+% at Rotten Tomatoes, a best selling novel to provide branding, Spielberg's name recognition, and the story's mix of video games and '80s-90s nostalgia, there's good reason to expect audience word of mouth to drive attendance for Ready Player One. It lacks any big-name stars who could attract an additional fanbase, but these days only a few performers really deliver that sort of star power anyway.
Source: Warner Bros.
I'm guessing it opens in the $45+ million range, and perhaps -- if buzz from the Wednesday and Thursday screenings is good enough -- $50 million territory. This is based on the strength of the film (which I'll get to momentarily in my full review), so watch the audience grade at Cinemascore for an idea of how well it will perform in the weeks ahead. My bet is a final domestic tally of $120-150 million, and foreign receipts topping $300+ million.
Spielberg used to be the poster boy for blockbuster box office results, as his films through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s regularly racking up several hundred million bucks apiece. After the turn of the century, Spielberg slowly turned his focus away from franchises and big mainstream crowdpleasers, and toward more serious dramatic fare. As a result, the box office revenue from his pictures declined significantly -- which, of course, is fine for movies made without need for massive box office results and merchandising potential.
Over the previous seven years, Spielberg directed five new films, only one of which (Lincoln, with $$275 million) took more than $200 million at the worldwide box office. The other four films -- War Horse, Bridge of Spies, The BFG, and The Post -- all scored an average global performance of about $173 million apiece. But most of those films had budgets far below $100 million, including Lincoln, so their more modest receipts were more acceptable in that context. to mention the fact all of those five most recent pictures except The BFG received an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. Spielberg was also nominated for Best Director for three of these movies -- Lincoln, Bridge of Spies, and The Post.
Source: Warner Bros.
Ready Player One will be Spielberg's highest-grossing movie since at least The Adventures of Tintin, and more likely his biggest box office success since Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It's also one of only six of his post-2000 films to top 80% at Rotten Tomatoes, out of 13 total pictures he's directed during that 18 year period. It could also become his second-best domestic performer in a decade, possibly behind only Lincoln, which took $182 million stateside).
So, why do I think audiences will reward Ready Player One with good word of mouth and long box office legs? Read on and find out...
I grew up on Steven Spielberg movies. Along with George Lucas, Richard Donner, Martin Scorsese, and Roger Ebert, Spielberg helped turn me into a lover of movies and defined my childhood relationship with cinema. My favorite movie of all time is Jaws, which I also consider among the best films ever made (alongside some of Spielberg's other work, such as Schindler's List). Even some of his less popular work is near and dear to my heart -- most notably 1941, a film most critics and movie fans hate, but which I think is terrific and hilarious.
Source: Warner Bros.
My childhood love of his work was defined by big mainstream blockbusters like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. As I grew up, I became enthralled by his turn toward more purely dramatic productions like Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan that still attained big, bold storytelling of the "event cinema" sort and taking in blockbuster revenue around the world.
Nowadays, I also like and respect his recent films, which dial back the sense of large-scale production and blockbuster filmmaking, seeking and finding a comfortably restrained approach to grounded true stories or stories inspired by real events (seven of his last eleven pictures are this sort of storytelling). There are only two Spielberg feature films (out of 31 he's directed) I'm not a fan of -- The BFG and A.I., but I understand why other people like them and I see much to appreciate in both of them.
It's been a long while since Spielberg released a film of the scale, tone, and action-adventure escapism found in Ready Player One. So while I like almost everything he's made and have faith in his ability to deliver the goods when it comes to a wide range of filmmaking approaches, I wondered if so many years away from helming a big-budget popcorn production of this size and import might make him a tad rusty, or if his recent primary focus on restrained adult mid-range dramatic storytelling would diminish his ability to get back into the mindset of making popcorn fun that wins our hearts with a combination of sympathetic characters and sheer thrill-ride entertainment.
Source: Warner Bros.
Well have no fear, dear readers, because Spielberg quickly brushed aside any such concerns and delivered his best movie in at least a decade.
When I say that, I don't mean it's necessarily got better acting than some other film you might mention, or that the cinematography is better than another recent film, and so on. I mean all around and pound for pound, Ready Player One is a brilliant parade of Spielberg's finest skills and talents as a storyteller, a joyous declaration that the master is back in town to remind us he helped invent blockbuster tentpole cinema in the first place. This is a filmmaker remembering what it's like to be a kid again, having fun applying the latest advances in cinema to his traditional approach and feeling that sense of discovery that shines through in his very best work.
I saw Ready Player One at the red carpet premiere in Los Angeles, at the historic Dolby Theatre. I'll speak more about the visual particulars in a few moments, but to start off let me just say a premiere experience is always my favorite way to see these types of films -- the energy in the room, the enthusiasm, the giant screen and beauty of the classic theatrical setting at Dolby, and of course the visual and audio quality always combine to turn a premiere screening into a magical event.
It always ultimately depends on the movie delivering the goods, of course; but when the film is great, a premiere can wash away all of the business trappings and other external considerations or sentiments that get in the way of being transported by cinema and just giving yourself over to the glory of moviemaking. A premiere is sort of an idealized fantasy version of what the theatrical experience should be, timeless and focused entirely on celebrating the arrival of a new artistic creation. The Ready Player One premiere was, then, a perfect party announcing the arrival of Steven Spielberg's homage to the cinematic era that spawned his career and which he in turn helped define.
Source: Warner Bros.
If you're looking for a comparison to Spielberg's previous work, Ready Player One is probably close to Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Catch Me If You Can. They (and other of his films) share a sense of wonder, of a director pushing the boundaries of what's possible to find new ways to surprise us, of an artist giving us experiences unlike anything we've seen before. So, too, does Ready Player One.
I won't spend a lot of time on the whole nostalgia angle, since it's obvious the movie is stuffed to the gills with 1980s and 1990s pop culture references, including movies and video games from what could perhaps be called the "golden era" of Spielberg's filmmaking. So there's plenty of appeal for older viewers who remember those decades, and younger viewers who are obsessed with the retro coolness of such things. It's eye-popping and mind-blowing to see how many little references, Easter eggs, and other hidden gems populate every scene of Ready Player One. I'm sure people will be discovering previously-unrevealed examples of them for years to come, after the film releases on home entertainment and fans can spend days scanning every single frame.
But you don't actually need familiarity with those things to appreciate and understand Ready Player One, or to relate to the various characters and their arcs. Think about The Matrix for a moment, and imagine if it was real but everybody had the option to log into it or not whenever they wanted, and we all knew how to bend or break the rules the way Neo and his crew did. We don't even need a dystopian future setting to make that sound instantly exciting and desirable, right?
Source: Warner Bros.
Now imagine if you lived in a rundown trailer park, the world was running out of food and water and resources. Escaping into a "Matrix" world where anything is possible, where you can be anyone you want and compete for money and gifts and endless entertainment, becomes all the more enticing.
In our age of mobile devices, augmented reality and virtual reality, streaming services, and rising fears of authoritarianism and climate change and possible nuclear warfare, we don't need a background in 1980s video games and movies to appreciate why the characters in Ready Player One behave as they do, or to enjoy watching their stories.
We are all seeking a balance between our real lives and our virtual selves, so to speak. How do we translate success and knowledge found online into real-world value, into meaningful relationships, into real social change? Even while Ready Player One immerses us in dazzling visual effects, action, and jokes, it doesn't lose sight of that question, since it's what makes the story relevant and resonant to all of us. Why are these characters in the Oasis (the virtual world of the film), how does it affect their everyday lives, and why do they need to turn their virtual experiences into concrete victories in the real world?
The cast do an exceptional job, with Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Lena Waithe, Mark Rylance, and Ben Mendelsohn providing the film's definitive performances and arcs. They each have their own particular pain and self-doubts they're trying to escape, their own hope that somehow they can make their imaginary successes into meaningful real-life happiness. That universal longing and fear, and how it all comes down to finding a way to truly connect with other people through love and trust and friendship, is consistently at the heart of Spielberg's work, and a big part of why he's so successful.
Source: Warner Bros.
By the way, Sheridan kept reminding me of a young Harrison Ford, and I found myself wondering if this realization was going to affect me later this year when I see Solo: A Star Wars Story. I hope not, and I still have faith in Alden Ehrenreich's ability to deliver the goods (for years before he was cast, Ehrenreich was my stated pick to play the son of Han and Leia, and having seen him in the trailers for Solo he reminds me of a young Dennis Quaid, whom I've always said could've been a good alternate choice to play Han Solo in the original Star Wars pictures). But after seeing him in Ready Player One, Sheridan definitely made me consider the "what if" scenario of him as young Han Solo.
There's definitely some subtext about the way a virtual world allows people to transcend assumptions and expectations of sex, gender, race, age, and economic class that otherwise dominate so much of our social interactions and cultural conditioning. However, the film touches on this and puts the points out there, while not really following up on it afterward.
It would've been nice to see more attention to those concepts, and early on I expected the film would eventually pull the rug out from under us with surprise reveals and outcomes related to Cooke's and Waithe's characters. Alas, the film isn't quite subversive enough to take those risks. It still works perfectly well as-is, but I have to admit I think it would've benefitted from further exploration of those themes.
Source: Warner Bros.
Visually, Ready Player One is a revelation. I'm lucky I saw it first in Dolby Vision and with Dolby Atmos at the LA premiere, where the gorgeous colors, complex sounds, nuanced little details in the visual effects, and lovely cinematography can be experienced in all of their glory.
There's a need to distinguish between the heightened color and intensity of the virtual world, and all of its various wild imagery, and the natural world the characters inhabit in their regular lives. Both worlds are expansive, vivid, and benefit from the unparalleled range of color and clarity Dolby Vision provides. I talk often about image fidelity because it's an obsession with me when it comes to watching movies and TV, and as someone with color blindness I'm highly motivated to seek out the best color and image clarity to enhance my viewing experience.
Likewise, in a virtual world of perpetual massive battles, chases, blaring rock music, and an endless array of characters engaged in an equally endless array of conversations and missions, having Atmos place the sounds in exact locations in the air around you creates an added depth of immersion important not just for general theatrical viewing, but especially relevant in a movie about the blurring of lines between imaginary entertainment viewing and real life. There are 215 speakers in the Dolby Theatre, to give you an idea of how powerful the Atmos sound experience is there, and Ready Player One put all of those speakers to optimum use.
(Here's a quick video courtesy of Dolby, with Spielberg and other members of the crew briefly discussing using Dolby Vision and Atmos in making Ready Player One...)
I haven't been this excited by a Spielberg movie since War of the Worlds (I loved the book and original 1953 film since childhood, and feel Spielberg's adaptation is wonderful) or perhaps even Saving Private Ryan. Leaving the theater after Ready Player One, a wide grin plastered on my face, I was anxious to talk to other people and find out if they had the same enthusiastic reaction I had. I wanted to call my siblings and tell them to buy their tickets for opening night. I wanted to go back into the theater and watch it again, right away.
And therein lies a particularly helpful fact -- Ready Player One is so cool, fun, fast-paced, and emotionally satisfying, that it demands a second and even third viewing. It's 2 hour 19 minute runtime seems to fly by, and your eyeballs aren't fast enough to take in all of the scrumptious sights and sounds filled with overt and hidden references to bygone eras. Being so rewatchable will make it easier for those tempted to go back for another helping of "spot that '80s reference" to do so.
Source: Warner Bros.
Ready Player One is Steven Spielberg at the top of his game, a heaping helping of exhilarating summer popcorn spectacle delivered ahead of schedule for springtime. The director reminds us once more why he is recognized as one of the all-time greatest filmmakers, and an original founder of blockbuster cinema.
Box office figures and tallies based on data via Box Office Mojo , Rentrak, and TheNumbers.
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From filmmaker Steven Spielberg and adapted from the book by Ernest Cline, the sci-fi action adventure epic Ready Player One is set in the year 2045 and follows Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), as he escapes in the OASIS, an immersive virtual universe where most of humanity spends their days, living as any avatar they so choose and with only your own imagination as a limitation. When the OASIS was created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance), he embedded a three-part contest into it to find a worthy heir for his immense fortune and total control of this virtual world, and as Wade and his friends, called the High Five, take on the challenge, they put themselves directly into the path of danger.
At a conference at the film’s Los Angeles press junket, director Steven Spielberg talked about why he wanted to make Ready Player One into a movie, the challenges of telling this story, feeding off the passion of the cast, working in such an abstract way that they wore virtual reality goggles on set to fully understand what the world would look like, why this movie was such a great escape, the enormous task of getting all of the pop culture rights, why he’d never go back and rework any of his own movies (after that E.T. disaster), and the role nostalgia plays in his own life.
What was it about this story and these characters that made you want to make Ready Player One?
STEVEN SPIELBERG: I think anybody who read the book, who was connected, at all, with the movie industry, would have loved to have made this into a movie. The book had seven movies in it, maybe twelve. It was just a matter of trying to figure out how to tell the story about this competition, in both of these worlds, and to make it an express train, racing toward the third act and, at the same time, make it a cautionary tale about leaving us the choice of where we want to exist. Do we want to exist in reality, or do we want to exist in an escapist universe? Those themes were so profound for me. That theme is consistent throughout the whole book, but there are so many places we could have taken the book.
Why was this a film you were so passionate about making?
SPIELBERG: I had a passionate and amazing cast, and I fed off that energy. I’d come to work into work and Olivia [Cooke] would be, “Okay, what do we do now? I can’t wait!” And Lena [Waithe] would say, ‘”Throw anything at me. I’m ready for it!” Every cast member was like that. Ernie [Cline] gave us a playground to basically become kids again, and we did. We made the movie on an abstract set. The only way the cast could understand where they were is that we all had virtual reality Oculus goggles. Inside the goggles was a complete build of the set that you see when you see the movie, but when you took the goggles off, it was a big white space. It was a 4,000 square foot, white, empty space called a Volume. When you put the goggles on, it was Aech’s basement or Aech’s workshop or the Distracted Globe. The actors had a chance to say, “Okay, if I walk over there, there’s the door and there’s the DJ.” It was really an out of body experience to make this movie, and it’s very hard to express what that was like.
