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| Credit: Pixabay.com |
The problem with
many sci fi movies today, as they have been in most of movie history,
is that they are either made to amuse or they’re made to provoke
thought about important issues in life. Ready
Player One, however, does both.
Ready Player One
is based on Earnest Cline’s ‘80s novel of the same name. It’s
about a teenager, Wade Watts (played by Tye Sheridan) in a
near-future Earth who competes in a VR game set in a world called the
Oasis. He comes across the scheme of an evil corporate CEO
by the name of Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) who is trying to take
control of the Oasis in order to rule the real world. The Oasis is a
kind of open source fictional world where anyone can play any
character they want and anything can happen.
I have not read the
novel and so won’t try to compare it to the movie. But regardless
of how faithful it is to the book, Ready Player One was made
really good. Even though a certain segment of the film gets a little
too fairy tale-idealistic, most of the other elements out-weigh that
flaw. The characters along with the actors portraying them are
convincing and so is the setting of the Oasis. The characters are
sympathetic although Sorrento comes across as a bit too typical of a
corporate villain as much as you love to hate him. The
Oasis is convincing as the setting of a VR game in that many
characters within it are
pre-created and so come from existing franchises while
others are created by
the players and game
developers. For
example, while we are caught by surprise when we see characters in
the background such as Tim Burton’s black-costumed Batman, the
characters of Ready Player One create their own avatars such
as Wade’s Parzival.
The movie’s themes
are conveyed good without preaching them into the audience’s faces.
Some of these themes are reality versus fantasy (more specifically
reality versus virtual reality), pop cultural nostalgia and
humanitarianism versus profit. The producers of the movie capitalise
on today’s ‘80s nostalgia through Wade’s character who is into
the era yet the nostalgia in the Oasis is ecumenical: other eras are
also represented such as a ‘70s disco dance scene between Wade (as
Parzival) and his fellow gamer Art3mis (pronounced ‘Artemis’,
played by Olivia Cooke), and the ‘60s campy Batman television
show’s Batmobile is seen charging by in an auto race segment.
The theme of
humanitarianism versus profit is played out in the rebellious
characters’ fight to protect the open software-produced Oasis from
corporate conquest. This conflict suggests social commentary on
today’s net neutrality debate. The theme of reality versus fantasy
is seen in the characters trying to determine how much of virtual
reality is part of the real world, an attempt that includes the
question of how much of a person’s true personality is conveyed by
their game avatar.
As with any
blockbuster movie, Ready Player’s special effects and
cinematography are super! However, what distinguishes this movie from
most sci fi flicks is that it both gives audiences a fun time with
loads of action scenes and otherworldly settings while showing the
social impacts of technology and what can happen if it is abused. And
so this movie does what all
cyberpunk and any other kind of -punk
should do—warn and speak against future technological abuse.
Ready Player One
is directed by Steven Spielberg and screenwritten by Zak Pen.
Until next time . .
.
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