OVP: Ready Player One (2018)

Film: Ready Player One (2018)
Stars: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, TJ Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance
Director: Steven Spielberg
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

There are limited times as a film-viewer where I feel like a proper Millennial.  This is because there are few things in the world that make me feel less like a Millennial than when I'm watching movies.  I have been watching films since before I can remember (literally), but most of my formative cinema years were spent watching the likes of All About Eve and The Manchurian Candidate, pictures that came out decades before I was born.  But while watching Ready Player One, I was reminded of the fact that I didn't grow up with Steven Spielberg in the way that Gen X-ers did.  By the time I was old enough to see Spielberg's films on the big screen, he had largely graduated past his "childhood classics" phase.  I didn't see ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jaws, or even Jurassic Park in a darkened theater, and so (with the possible exception of Hook-can't remember where I caught that first), I think the first time I saw a Spielberg film outside the comfort of a living room was The Lost World.  Spielberg's 80's films, therefore, are something I subconsciously lump into the same camp as the films of Francis Ford Coppola, Arthur Penn, and David Lean.  In terms of my immediate, in-theater tastes, he's either the maker of serious biopics, a twin pair of Sci-Fi masterpieces (AI and Minority Report), or trying to retread upon his 80's classics in an era that seems to have moved beyond them.

(Spoilers Ahead) This never really mattered to me until I saw Ready Player One, his latest big-screen adventure and a picture that is clearly trying to recapture the magic of his 80's classics.  Based on the controversial novel by Ernest Cline, the film tells the tale of Wade (Sheridan), who is more commonly known by his avatar identity Parzival, an ace player in the Oasis, a multi-player virtual reality game that allows you to indulge in online gaming, debauchery, and fun.  It's basically a cross between Blade Runner 2049 and The Hunger Games, with just enough Wreck-It Ralph thrown in to make it Spielberg-family-wholesome.  The film unfolds with Wade trying to solve the riddles of a long-lost (clearly inspired by Steve Jobs, and a teensy bit George Lucas) billionaire named James Halliday (Rylance), who has died, but left his half-a-trillion-dollar empire behind as a Willy Wonka-like incentive for the players of his game to continue playing.

You may have noticed I referenced a number of movies there, which is normally shorthand for a bad review (X meets Y is lazy writing, imho), but it suits Ready Player One.  The film and your patience/love for it is entirely dependent on your tolerance for references & nostalgia.  Initially I thought it was just my imagination (one has to wonder how much money it cost Spielberg to be able to get all of the imaging rights for these movies), but nearly every corner of this film is covered in references to past cinema, including Spielberg's own Jurassic Park.  Most of the film's movie, music, and video game references (it's weirdly devoid of television) come from the 1980's, though not all (more recent references include Minecraft and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn), and you could probably have a decent afternoon watching this on your TV with friends seeing who can spot the most pop culture touchstones.

But that doesn't mean it's a great movie, and where the film gets lost for me is that the pop culture eventually drowns the picture, to the point where it seems downright absurd and obscene.  For starters, it's 2045 in the film, and here is where the "I'm a Millennial" card gets played.  The film is littered with references to pictures like Say Anything or really the entire John Hughes canon, but talk to most Millennials, and they will appreciate Hughes' films in (at best) a kitschy, nostalgic way.  They might not realize that movies like Mean Girls or Love Simon are deeply reliant on the ground that Hughes trod, but they aren't carrying a boombox over their shoulders, and if most Millennials/Gen Z don't really feel these references, it's silly to think that this would be a relevant and important part of your pop culture knowledge for people decades from now.  Say Anything will be about as important in thirty years as the Tammy or Gidget films are to our current generation (ie not important at all).  It's preposterous to think that the basis for a pop culture game made thirty years from now would be centered entirely on current pop culture, or really pop culture that already felt nostalgic when we were still worrying about Y2K, and yet Spielberg doesn't age the film, clearly assuming that audiences in thirty years will care about Adventure or Child's Play or Back to the Future.

As a result, the film didn't connect for me.  There were moments I liked (the entire sequence where they go into the hotel from The Shining was marvelous...and allowed for perhaps the first clearly gay scene in a blockbuster of this nature, albeit one that we don't put together until later that it's gay), but the movie is weighted down by its love of references, and when you strip the film of that, you're left with a pretty generic picture.  Sheridan is lovely as the lead, and brings an earnest attractiveness that obviously spoke to Spielberg, but the supporting cast is basically a who's who of 2-dimensional characterizations, which is a pity considering Ben Mendelsohn & Lena Waithe are capable of much more.  Alan Silvestri's score is fun and the VFX were jaw-dropping but that doesn't make up for the film glossing over its harder edges (we're essentially trying to save a reprieve from poverty the entire picture).  I will say that I loved the film's cinematography in 70mm, and god bless my local theater for leaning hard into this angle (they had classic John Williams scores playing in an already-darkened theater with the curtain down before it rose up with a trailer to the 2001 re-release), but this was a dud for me.  It's not exactly a bad movie (and probably one a lot of people are going to ignore if they can feel the nostalgia), but it wasn't on my wavelength so I'm out...if I want Spielberg-nostalgia, I'll just watch ET again.