Review of Ready Player One: Review without spoilers - The Happy Android

Voucher. I've finally seen it. I have taken advantage of this little Easter break to, among other things, go to the movies and see one of the best rated films of the moment, Ready Player One. Is it as good as they say?

Ready Player One is the new sci-fi film from director Steven Spielberg, where Wade watts, an adolescent who, like the rest of the world's population, spends most of his time Oasis. A virtual world in which everything is possible: the ideal place to escape from a sad and anodyne reality that is hopelessly approaching collapse.

Everything changes the day the creator of Oasis dies, leaving the fate of his multi-million dollar creation in the hands of whoever gets the 3 keys capable of unlocking the ultimate Easter egg. Will Wade be able to pull off such a feat?

I would like to begin by clarifying that I have left the room moderately satisfied. I expected quite little from RPO and the truth is that I was pleasantly surprised. There are some moments when the pace of the footage slows down, but usually you are always looking forward to what will come next.

This is mainly motivated by the incredible use of nostalgia throughout the film. Every frame, every scene, is full of references to comics, video games, anime and movies from the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Simply with the first scene of the car race you already have to draw up a list of no less than 20 pages: the Delorean of Parzival -Wade Watts-, Kaneda's motorcycle in Akira managed by Art3mis, the batmobile from the Adam West series, King kong, the T-Rex of Jurassic park, etc. Impossible to keep everything without stopping frame by frame the entire sequence.

They are actually gentlemen of 47 tacos plugged into a Doritos probe 24/7

But leaving this aside, the first thing that came to mind during the first minutes of the film was its incredible resemblance toSword Art Online, a very similar title that saw the light only a year before the Ready Player One book (the SAO novel came out in 2009), and with which it shares very similar plot lines. Today it is already a subgenre of manga and anime, "virtual worlds" and full immersion video games. It also seems to me that Ready Player One owes a lot to James Cameron's "Avatar", but Sword Art Online is a lot more blatant. Mind you, I also think Spielberg's movie tackles the plot much better and the story is more engaging than most of SAO.

Another aspect that we should comment on is that of the villain. In this case we have IOI, a kind of mega corporation whose sole objective is to take control of Oasis, and for this they will not hesitate to kill and go over whoever it takes. It's fun to meet a cartoonish baddie like Sorrento, the CEO of IOI: a complete lout and back, with an avatar that suspiciously resembles a certain journalist from the Daily Planet. Uncle Spielberg tells you, friends: corporatism is wrong and ugly. Flee from the big corporations.

Sorrento is nailed to Clark Kent, but with the cold gaze of Injustice's Superman

One of the weaknesses that without being too shameless does detract something of interest from the whole is the lack of chemistry between the 2 protagonists of the story, Parzival and Art3mis. The boy hardly needs a couple of crosses with her to decide that he is completely in love, but from what little we see on the screen it is difficult to make it credible to such an extent that we empathize with both protagonists. They could have left a little more time to evolve that relationship, but the movie already lasts almost 2 and a half hours, so the thing would have ended up getting too long ... In any case, there are no moments that get out of the pot unnecessarily or tearful moments without meaning , which is enough.

Come closer I'll give you a hug ...

Finally, I would like to know what is going through Hollywood's head in these types of blockbuster films, that all of them seem to be forced to introduce a massive fight like “The Lord of the Rings”. It seems that if there are not 3,000 CGI puppets fighting without quarter in a definitive face-to-face it seems that there is no show. Okay, some incredibly spectacular and somewhat surreal situations are generated, but are they really necessary?

In short, we are facing a great film that we will undoubtedly forget in a few days, but at least we can say that it is made with skill and affection. By the way, by a man who is already 71 years old, with a result probably much higher than what we would have expected from the indie or millennial director on duty.

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