Steven Spielberg has never made
an out-and-out bad film. I’m not sure the celebrated filmmaker is capable of
that. I’ve certainly seen plenty of his films that don’t agree with me, ranging
from the newer (War Horse) to his
classics (I’ve given Close Encounters of
a Third Kind so many chances), but I’ll never say they’re poorly made or
seem workmanship in their presentation. While I’m not about to drop the
internet-douchey slam of “worst Spielberg film ever,” I will say Ready Player One is probably the
director’s emptiest — one that embodies the same kind of spectacle and
world-building that many of his previous films sought and achieved, but with
very little of its heart, or even over-sentimentalism that he’s been accused of
in the past. Though one might argue Ready Player One’s entire construct is
based on over-sentimentalism, given that it’s entirely an ode to ‘80s pop
culture bent on nostalgia, this same kind of warmth doesn’t really come through
any other aspect.
Ready Player One crams every possible ‘80s reference into its
running time (at least, I’m assuming, the ones Warner Bros. had legal ownership
of or access to — the nerdiest of you may have noticed that Friday the 13th’s
Jason Voorhees appeared as his Freddy vs. Jason iteration, which is a film
owned by Warner Bros. and not current franchise rights holders Paramount
Pictures). And while it’s neat to see your lead hero (Tye Sheridan) driving the
DeLorean from Back to the Future and
later lovingly homaging its director by obtaining “the Zemeckis cube,” these
feelings of awww just don’t last. Nostalgia is great for luring in an audience,
but it’s not enough for telling a standalone story.
The nostalgic bits — the
appearance of the aforementioned Jason and his colleagues Freddy and Chucky,
along with Robocop, King Kong, Duke Nukem, and so many more — work on that
reactionary fanboy level. And the much ballyhooed sequence set in the Overlook
Hotel from The Shining works in the
same way. Once that familiar Penderecki soundtrack creeps in, and our
characters start traversing the very faithfully recreated hotel, it’s easy to
want to squee. Jack Torrance’s typewriter! The bloody elevator! ♫Midnight,
the Stars, and You!♫ But once Spielberg and
screenwriters Zak Penn and Ernest Cline (also the source novel’s author) put an
axe in the hand of the suddenly leaping Room 237 bathtub ghost and CGI starts
demonically morphing her face, you also get the notion of just how wrong it all
feels. Now, I’d never claim to be an authority on what Kubrick would or would
not have approved. Spielberg and Kubrick were friends in real life, whereas
“all I know is what’s on the internet” (Trump, 2016), and the Beard believes
Kubrick would have good-naturedly approved the homage. Still, he skirts his
faith in that belief by having Olivia Cooke’s Artemis say, “That’s the point.
It’s not supposed to be exactly like the thing you like so much.” I’m not quite
buying that, and the feeling of wrongness remains.
Ready Player One isn’t a terrible film by any stretch; in fact,
it’s a light, fun, and breezy way to kill 90 minutes. But once the spectacle of
the whole affair wears off, you’re struck with the realization that you could
have skipped watching it and gotten the same experience simply by sifting through
the film’s IMDB Trivia page for all the references the film contains.
Bonus! Some screengrabs from the flick featuring our favorite horror villains are below:
Bonus! Some screengrabs from the flick featuring our favorite horror villains are below:
