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(film review) - Ready Player One

If I'm going to be perfectly honest with you, I've not seen a Steven Spielberg movie in a while.  Well directed by anyway, as he does produce a lot of movies.  The last directed movie I saw was The Adventures of Tintin and the last produced movie, well executive produced anyway, Transformers: The Last Knight.  While I fell asleep watching Tintin (but I did like it, I was just exhausted), I can say I didn't really like Transformers: The Last Knight because although it was the usual Transformers fun, it was essentially not that great.  So, seeing the trailer for this movie and all the easter eggs, I knew this was going to have, made for a really interesting watch.  And having seen the movie, I can tell you exactly how it was.

In the real world 18 year old Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), otherwise known as his avatar handle Parzival in the virtual world is known as a Gunter.  He lives in Columbus Ohio with his Aunt and does what most people do in their living conditions, escape reality to enter the virtual world of the Oasis.  The Oasis (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation) created by James Halliday and Ogden Morrow is a place where you can do whatever you want, go wherever you want and be whomever you want to be.  Wade aka Parzival is an avid gift hunter and spends his time tracking gifts and collecting coins, but when James Halliday dies, a prerecorded message went out to all users enabling them to own and control the Oasis if they are able to find the 3 keys hidden in the Oasis.  But with power, comes corruption and corporate.  Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), the CEO of Innovative Online Industries also wants to seek out the 3 hidden keys to control the Oasis himself, so the ultimate hunt and a game of cat and mouse ensues as everyone in the Oasis tries to track down all the clues to finding the hidden keys with a powerful and hungry Nolan who will stop at nothing, even if it means real world crime, just to achieve his goal.

I tried not to spoil this movie by giving too much away, but with that said, the plot it straight forward, but the fun comes with the chase, the tension and of course, the many many many easter eggs littered throughout the movie.  An Easter Egg is a item/object that represents real life or universal pop culture.  It is a message, image, or feature hidden in a video game, film, or other, usually electronic, medium and it's sole purpose is to be found but may represent, ie. real life or pop culture.  A lot of films will do this, but if you are still unsure and you have played video games or have watched TV/Movies over the years and still do not know what an Easter Egg is, THIS movie will DEFINITELY have you understand what one is before the movie is even quarter of it's way through.  Another reason as to what makes this movie fun to watch is EXACTLY this and how many you can find.  Steven Spielberg (and just like the book this movie is based on) uses all the references he possibly can grabbing from past directing work, games and Warner Bros. content.  This means that, not only is the DeLorean time machine from the film Back to the Future franchise directed by Robert Zemeckis in it, a film which is under Steven Spielberg's production company and Spielberg being the mentor of Robert, but there is a very brief Batman cameo, a Warner Bros intellectual Property and a prominent Iron Giant cameo among many many more.  Not to give too much away but you will see popular game characters and as we are in the world of gaming, a lot of things you will come to recognise as a gamer, like a lot of things you'd come to recognise as a watcher of movies.  Wreck it Ralph did something similar.

Spielberg will have you rewatching this movie over and over again because not only is it fun, but the easter eggs alone will keep you busy.  The acting is superb although cheesy in some places and if i'm honest, I didn't realise the film would have more than a few curse words, but if you are a gamer, curse words are apart of your vocabulary.  Although I had only seen Tye as Cyclops of the recent X-Men franchise at this point, he was very good in this movie and acting along side Ben, made for good tension and drama.  It was also nice to see, Hannah John-Kamen, who I had recently seen in Tomb Raider and is in the up and coming Ant-Man and the Wasp.

If you like Nostalgia, movies, gaming and that classic Steven Spielberg directed movies such as Batteries Not Included or anything else you found fun in the 80's, this movie is definitely for you!  Plus, there is no way you will see EVERY Easter Egg in one viewing, have a re-watch.




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