Ready Player One review: Mesmerising, engaging, magical

Director: Steven Spielberg

Written by: Zak Penn and Ernest Cline

Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance

Rating: 5/5

Oh, Steven Spielberg, you just don't know where to stop raising the bar, do you? It's barely been 3 months since The Post released and you're here again, with another adventure too big to ignore and yet managing to remain human and relatable.

But then again, this would not be Ready Player One if it wasn't Spielberg; featuring all his classic trademarks: Boldness in both storytelling and visuals that have, without fail, stood the test of time.

The film follows Wade Watts, who by his own admission, was named so because his father thought it could be like the alter ego of a superhero like Peter Parker and Bruce Banner. Unfortunately for him, though, Wade was never quite that. He was like the billions on a damaged Earth: Looking for an escape, which he, like many others found in the OASIS; a massive virtual reality game and the brainchild of James Halliday.

Halliday, celebrated as the most brilliant man of his age, died and left behind 3 tests to see who would be worthy of inheriting the OASIS. Of course, these are no ordinary tests and require a great deal of pop culture knowledge to crack. Given the reward would make the winner the richest and quite possibly the most powerful person in the world, everyone is bent on finding and winning the challenges, but none show themselves as committed to it from the very start as much as Art3mis, called the 'Sixer Fixer' and the IOI, run by a former intern of Halliday, a relatively competent villain in Nolan Sorrento and his army of employees called 'Sixers'. Unsurprisingly, Wade, known as Parzival in the OASIS, finds himself thrown into the mix when he meets Art3mis on the field and soon learns that his lofty goal may not be the right one as he, Aech, Daito, Shoto and Art3mis unofficially 'clan up' to solve the puzzles.

The film relies very heavily on exposition from Wade's point of view to 'tell' the story, not unlike a book, but also balances it with an equal amount of 'show', creating an exhilarating mix of both storytelling elements that never feel out of place and only further absorbs into the dangerously fascinating virtual world where there are no real consequences because everything is based on skill; but there are consequences to doing and saying things in the real world and the film makes a point of showing us that.

The film is loaded with a chock-full of pop culture references, all of which, surprisingly, help drive the plot forward as opposed to being there for the sake of being there. Be it Kaneda's bike from Akira, the original King Kong, The Shining or even Mechagodzilla, the film wastes no pop culture reference it actively employs with every single one of them and their players getting their time to shine. It is also elevated by its exceptional technical brilliance because making a virtual world that we can say "yeah, this could exist in the real world someday in my lifetime" and managing to ensure all the pop culture references stand out in a battle royale-style third act is no mean feat.

Ready Player One is, for the lack of a better term, the sum total of the era we currently exist in and have grown up on. It is a masterful film, not only for those who are masters of pop culture but also for those who only skim the surface. This is Steven Spielberg at his greatest, most magical, uncompromising and most effective, barring none.