140 Character Movie Review – #140RVW
Ready Player One (2018)
Probably a lot better if you haven’t read the excellent source novel, Recognizing Things: The Movie is exactly OK. Curiously non-engaging…
Spoiler-free Movie Review of Ready Player One (2018):
Meant for this to be a lightning-fast review, as I have other things to do today, but I still wanted to get this out on opening day (not only the film’s opening, but also baseball – starting the season in March? What’s up with that?). I failed miserably, because I have such mixed feelings about the film version of Ready Player One that it took me a long time and a lot of words to not necessarily resolve.
I wanted to love it. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t even dislike it. I guess I’d say I liked it.
If that sounds damning with faint praise, I think that’s my point.
I’m not going to whine that the book was better, because of course it was. I’m not going to pontificate about the obsession with the 1980’s or why nostalgia is culturally stunting, or the backlash against the book and film, or Gamergate, or gamer culture in general, or how The Iron Giant is misrepresented, or the dumb promo posters, or why the remembering things/recognizing things memes are both hysterical and accurate. There are other, better writers out there, writing more detailed thinkpieces. You’ve likely got your own thoughts about all of this and more.
Here’s what I will say:
- My instinct is that if you didn’t read the book, and don’t have a knee-jerk reaction to obsessive geek nostalgia, you will probably enjoy Ready Player One. Spielberg is one of the all time great directors and storytellers and he seldom puts a step too far wrong in his movies, so you’re reasonably likely to enjoy the picture that arrived with your popcorn.
- If you did read the book, and are both expectant and ok with the idea that the film version is going to be necessarily radically different, but are just looking to have fun with a movie that more or less echoes the feel and basic plot of the book, you will probably enjoy Ready Player One. The screenplay was written by the author Ernie Cline and veteran Zak Penn and so keeps most of the feel of the source material, which was a great premise for a movie to begin with.
- If you did read the book, but are not ok with Spielberg and his ruthless faithlessness to beloved source material, you’re in for a long night…
Personally, I fall somewhere between 1 and 2. I went in with an open mind and the objective of trying to enjoy myself. I knew it was going to be totally different and just hoped that the adaptation would get the feel right and not do anything atonal. In the end, I guess I can say that it was a success on that score, even if Spielberg’s fast and loose approach bothered me more than I wanted to let it.
Because while I love so much about the director’s work, I kind of hate it in equal measure. For all of the talk about him being a unique talent and fresh face when he came in with the 1970’s film auteur movement, I’ve always considered him an incredibly traditional filmmaker – a throwback to the autocrats of the studio system. When he goes to adapt something, original story or previously published work, he has an old-school single-mindedness. He takes a quick look at the treatment, grabs the first couple of interesting things that catch his eye, and then proceeds to make whatever picture he’s already decided he wants to make. He wouldn’t have been out of place sitting next to Louis B. Mayer or the hacks who couldn’t be bothered to read the books they were adapting. If you are familiar with the original story he’s set his sights on, you can practically visualize him ripping out pages by the handful.
This attribute is a strength and weakness in equal measure. After all, you have to make hard choices when taking a story to a different medium and have the discipline to realize what will make for a compelling movie. The cinematic landscape is littered with ponderous adaptations that slavishly tried to reproduce their source material, only to collapse under their own weight. I’ve praised filmmakers who can identify the main threads of a narrative and recognize how to support and enhance that one strand they determine will make for the best picture.
But you can go very wrong with this approach; you have to have great judgment – and for all of the great filmmaking moments he deserves credit for, I simply do not trust Spielberg’s judgment. His oversimplification, his tendency to always push for “bigger, more, faster”, his adolescent fascination with creepy crawlies and jump-scares – these homogenize his movies at the expense of their stories.
Ready Player One reminded me of nothing as much as The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which sounds like a bigger dig than it is. If you read my review of that film, you’ll see that this is something of a long-time bone of contention of mine with Spielberg. He just seems to approach these things like a salad bar, picking and choosing whatever strikes his fancy and then throwing in new ideas he hastily comes up with to fill in the gaps he just created. He seems to relish solving problems, but these are problems of his own making. In The Lost World, he created poor new characters to make up for the book characters he cut out of the film. In Ready Player One, he creates huge action scenes in order to introduce dramatic tension that was lost when he cut other, better scenes.
For the main problem I had with Ready Player One isn’t that they made a lot of changes – it’s that I dislike and disagree with the changes. I’d argue that the largely poor choices made by the filmmakers (particularly regarding exposition and explanation of the setting, the changing of storylines, and the diminishing of characters) led to a non-engaging film lacking excitement or emotional investment. That’s really what it all comes down to; there were things I liked, there were things I disliked, but ultimately I didn’t really care too much either way. I was oddly detached throughout the whole movie. I could have been watching one of the joyless, cold DC Comics movies that keep escaping.
And that is a real problem for me; for while there are certainly valid criticisms of the original novel (obsessions of the author and characters, male-centric focus, objectification and reduction of female characters), IT WAS FUN. I love the novel – I’ve seldom had so much fun reading a book not set in Discworld. I liked it so much I reviewed it twice. As I noted in the review of the book (not to be confused with the audiobook), I had a great time following along the story of the treasure hunt. I guess it played a little more effectively six or seven years ago, before it became obvious how toxic gamer culture was; it felt like more of an escapist lark. But it was truly enjoyable. And that’s what’s missing from the film.
Above anything else, I think the joy of the hunt for Halliday’s easter egg is lost in the face of the choices made by the filmmakers. I am truly curious to see what people who didn’t read the book think about the film; did you follow it? Was it clear why the hunt was important? Did you understand what the Oasis really was and how omnipresent it was? Did you know who all of the characters were and what they were there for? Because I don’t think it was made at all clear. And with a 200 minute run-time, there really was no reason for the exposition to be so weak.
I do want very much to re-watch Ready Player One. History has shown that I generally can enjoy these things better for what they are after making peace with what they are not. I’m sure that once the pressure of hoping that things turn out differently passes, I’ll be able to enjoy the gorgeous battles and appreciate the new challenges the film has the characters undertake in order to obtain the keys (even while lamenting how poor they are in comparison to the book).
I want to enjoy this movie – I always did – and it’s more good than bad, for certain. The fact that Ready Player One represents a missed opportunity to promote virtual reality, create a new Spielberg classic, and capture the excitement of Ernie Cline’s fun read, does not mean that it is a bad film. It’s good-looking, with great music, geeky-fun subject matter, and retains the bones and some of the touches from a great source story. It just could have been so much more…
Poster:
Trailer:
Bechdel Test:
Fail
The Representation Test Score: C (either 4 or 5 pts – not sure if celebrating geek cultural stereotypes counts as “offensive”)
(http://therepresentationproject.org/grading-hollywood-the-representation-test/)
