Review of Ready Player One (2018) by Michael M — 02 Sep 2018

Many will argue that Ready Player One is just fanservice and popcorn entertainment, and really I can't argue with them. Its plot of the little guy versus the mega corporation and following your dreams and whatever yeah it's been done a million times before.

Somehow though, I really didn't mind it. I don't know, maybe it's from Spielberg's directing, maybe the rest of the movie was just so fun I was able to ignore it, I'm not sure but whatever the case I really didn't care.

The only parts of the plot that did bother me were a reveal with the female lead that felt really cheap, a way-to-quick romance, and a message of living in the real world at the end that while honorable felt cheapened by the rest of the film and frankly tacked on.

The rest of the stuff, damnit all the movie is just too much godamn fun! Yes I'm a sucker for the references, sure I geeked out when I saw a Gundam fighting MechaGodzilla, but not just that it was how they presented these things.

The Oasis world looks great, and it was tons of fun to just be there and be part of that experience. On top of that do I even need to say the directing is amazing? The thing about a movie like this is you kind of know how it's going to play out, but Spielberg manages to direct it in a way that the sequences where the team is trying to accomplish something are still genuinely tense even though you know by all laws of cinema of course they're going to accomplish it.

I'm even going to go back on an early statement here and say, hey, I don't mind that the story is a little cookie cutter. The story brought me back to the feeling of these types of adventure films of the 80s, often Spielberg produced, and even though it was familiar it was still a ton of fun.

You can pick this movie apart if you want to, and I won't stop you. For me, it was just too much fun.