The year is 2045 in Columbus, Ohio. Overpopulation has made housing space so limited people live in “The Stacks,” a labyrinth of trailers and cars stacked on top of each other – looking somewhat like a skyscraper junkyard. To escape their humdrum lives, everyone spends as much time as possible in The OASIS a virtual reality universe. The co-creator of this multimillion dollar world (Mark Rylance, as always, a wonderful addition to any movie) has died, but has left his fortune to the winner of a contest who can enter the OASIS and successfully solve three challenges to win the keys to the prize. (There’s a but in the challenge and prize…think of Willie Wonka). The evil CEO of IOI, an evil company, wants to win the prize and gain control of the OASIS and it’s incredible wealth. A teenage gamer named Wade (Tye Sheridan) and his band of on-line friends race the clock to win the prize and beat the evil CEO, who will stop at nothing to win the game. The story plays out in a virtual world of amazing diversity and a wealth of tidbits that will have anyone who’s lived since Atari first started video games remembering when. How can you not love a movie that is chock full of cultural references from the 1970s and 1980s? You will need to see this movie several times to catch them all including The Shining, Duran Duran, Say Anthing, The Iron Giant, Krull, the Bee Gees, Chucky and Back to the Future. The movie is visualy stunning and the sequences in the virtual world seem very real. Simon Pegg makes an appearance as a surprise character that I quite enjoyed. Steven Speilberg does a great job with Ernest Cline’s best seller and has created a wonderful movie experience. After a sreies of not-so-impressive movies, it’s nice to see one I can recommend to everyone!
Ready Player One
Apple Rating:
Thank for the review. I really enjoyed the book and was trying to decide if I should see the movie. From what you wrote here, I am going to go see it.
I spoke with someone else who read the book and he really liked the movie too. Of course, a movie never lives up to our imagined characters and scenes as we read, but Spielberg did a great job of recreating the world of The Oasis. If you go, let me know what you think. i would love to hear.