Movie Review: Ready Player One

BY: Will Adeboyejo
Twitter: @YinkaAdeboyejo

Ready Player One, a film directed by legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg, is about a futuristic world set in Columbus, Oh.
In the film, the audience follows a teen named Wade who would rather spend his days in this virtual world called the Oasis. This world, the Oasis, was created by a genius who has recently passed, the creator leaves behind a challenge for all the Oasis users. If one user can find three keys that will lead to a golden egg, that will give the user official ownership over the virtual world.
Ready Player One succeeds in the same areas most Spielberg films do, the action sequences. Spielberg is one of the best when it comes to chase scenes or action in general, this shows in Ready Player One among other films. This film also does a really good job showing a vast amount of characters from different pop culture long enough for us, as viewers, to get the references and get excited to see the characters again.
Ready Player One is picking up on a trend that many media outlets are doing to be successful. Films like Deadpool and IT, as well as TV shows like Stranger Things, are popular because they pander to the need of reliving ones’ childhood. When people are spending their hard-earned money to go see a movie, and it does well, Hollywood takes notice and will try to replicate that. Ready Player One is not the first movie to do this and it won’t be the last: do all of the references in this film slow it down or make it cheap?
The character development of Wade is lacking to me and I wish the story would touch on why Wade does what he does. The film briefly shows his home life and how undesirable it is, but that is really it. The film also doesn’t dive in deep as to why all these people want to use Oasis so much and not be in their own lives.
Overall, I would give this film a three and a half stars out of five, it was visually pleasing and technically sound, but the story, I feel, was lacking.