The plot: In the year 2045, most of the world has been become desolate and most of the population spends their time inside the OASIS, a virtual reality containing pretty much anything a person could want. However, with the death of OASIS co-creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance), a new game has been established. Before his death, Halliday placed hidden items within the OASIS. Whoever finds all of the items first not only gets major bragging rights, but also becomes the official owner of the OASIS itself. As adventurous teen Wade 'Parzival' Watts (Tye Sheridan) tries to hunt down the items, and corporate CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) sets out to seize the OASIS for himself, the race is on to find Halliday's Easter Egg and both the virtual world and the real world hang in the balance.
Honestly, of all the things to highlight about
this movie, the acting is probably the weakest of the elements here. Not that
it’s bad; just that not a lot of these performances really stand out, even from
our leads. Sheridan as the rebellious adventurer works out okay as our lead,
but beyond his place as our focal point and
the character who needs to understand the real-world implications of his
actions in the Oasis (bit on the nose for an audience avatar, but okay), he
lacks that lead-role charisma. Olivia Cooke turns out better in the long run, to the
point of becoming the ideal lead in the story given how well she wears her
priorities and her understanding of the film’s universe.
Mendelsohn as the villain fits in rather nicely, getting to
show off his proficiency with straight-up bad guys while also handling his
character’s very Corporate Commander capitalist tendencies very well. T.J.
Miller as the magical arms dealer i-R0k, aside from being pretty instantly
recognisable by voice, does alright with his scenes opposite Mendelsohn, Simon Pegg
brings his sci-fi comfort levels to his role to good effect, and Hannah
John-Kamen holds up as Mendelsohn’s right-hand mercenary. Honestly, best
performance here is from Mark Rylance, who absolutely nails Halliday’s socially-reclusive but quietly mischievous dramatic
beats. He nudges the stereotypical ‘nerd’ archetype but adds enough genuine
heart and wizened reflection to make it stick. Also, minor point, but having
Mckenna Grace and Lulu Wilson in the
same room together? What I would give to see that movie!
With Spielberg at the helm, his frequent DOP Janusz Kamiński
at the camera and Industrial Light & Magic at the effects lab, this
statement should be dead obvious but it bears mentioning: This looks absolutely
amazing. The motion-capture work manages to strike a nice balance between
recognisably human and digitally enhanced, all without venturing into the
Uncanny Valley for too long a time. It’s almost unavoidable when dealing with a
film that features this much mo-cap,
but credit to Spielberg and co. for keeping it to a solid minimum.
In bringing
the elements of the Oasis to life, from the locations to the myriad of pop
culture cameos to the action beats, this shows a lot of time and care being put
into making things fit. The designs for the locales are solid, like the
anti-gravity dance club and the interactive museum dedicated to Halliday’s
memories, the characters that occupy them make for some nice moments of “Hey, I
know who that is!” without it bogging down the story, and the action they take
part in is not only well-executed but shows some good variety as well. Whether
it’s disco-dancing, avoiding a giant axe-wielding ghoul in a hedge maze, or
speeding through one of the coolest race tracks ever put to film, it all lands
on solid ground, culminating in one hell of a fire-fight finale.
Of course, being good in surface details is one thing; if
this is going to be an all-out love letter to pop culture, it also needs to
show enough understanding of that culture to make it genuine. Well, on both
sides of the coin, Zak Penn and the source book’s author Ernest Cline
definitely get that across. We are shown the very rundown state of the real
world, complete with the oddly unnerving depiction of “The Stacks” that Wade
calls home, and how things have become so dire that pretty much everyone finds
escape in the Oasis. This so easily could have become a screed against geeks
for using pop culture as a means to avoid the responsibilities of the real
world, but between its showing of the true benefits of a digital existence and its acknowledgement of where the
digital world and the real world affect each other, it successfully avoids
insulting its own audience. That sounds like a weird thing to highlight, but
I’ve seen enough to know that that is an unfortunately easy pitfall to get
into.
It also shows a lot of savvy as far as the corporate side of the popular
media we consume through the operations of Sorrento's Innovative Online Industries, from its financial trapping of
people into indentured servitude to its ‘innovations’ in literally
commercialising that media. There’s a scene where Sorrento talks about his own
vision for the Oasis, one populated with countless pop-up ads (but only as many
as they can fit in without causing seizures in the viewer). With the increasing
popularity of VR gaming in the real world, keep in mind that this kind of
rampant cash-grabbing is a very real
possibility. Hell, between loot boxes and the continuing evolution of microtransactions in modern gaming, it might already be happening.
I could probably just spend the rest of this review rattling
off the numerous pop culture cameos this behemoth contains, spanning a good 50
years’ worth of geek history in a way that basically requires frame-by-frame
analysis to catch everything. But rather than talking about the quantity, I
want to go into the quality of these
little nods to the things we like. Or, more specifically, what the filmmakers
themselves like.
One of the more prominent bits of pop culture that gets
revisited is Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, with an entire set piece set within that film. The scene itself was originally
occupied by Blade Runner in the original novel, but since that property had already been
optioned for what would become a rather disappointing follow-up (don’t @ me, it really isn’t that good), it had to
be replaced. So Spielberg, who had been a long-time friend and collaborator
with Kubrick during his lifetime, used this moment to tip his hat to one of his
colleagues.
During the amazing vehicle race sequence, a cinema marquee briefly
shows up sporting “Schwarzenegger in Jack Slater III”. This is a reference to
Last Action Hero, co-writer Zak Penn’s first writing credit, and it was added
into the film at the request of Ernest Cline. Once again, a tip of the hat to a
colleague.
I bring both of these up because these moments end up
bolstering what the ultimate goal of this film is: Celebrating pop culture and
the reasons why we engage with it. It’s easy
enough in the age of Google to look countless quotes from famous films, shows
and games, but the ability to parrot them on command isn’t what makes them
special. Instead, they’re special because of their place within pop culture.
I’ve mentioned it enough times in this review, but here’s the thing: One of the
bigger aspects of pop culture that tends to be ignored is that, at its core, it
is a culture same as any other. One built on repetition, same as any other. One
built on focal points to add to the history, same as any other. One that has
the capacity to bring people together and shape how we view our world, same as
any other.
Like any culture, pop culture needs curators and adherents to keep it alive; traditions tend to die if no-one remembers them and carries
them on. We are what make this
culture what it is, just as much as the creators. Creators like Spielberg,
whose filmography has helped shape what we consider to be ‘cinema’ in the
modern age, and without whose clout this film likely never would have been able
to come to fruition. He may be a modest person, to the point of intentionally
removing as many references to his own films as possible, but being able to use
his place in the industry to become that curator for the culture is a very big
deal. He took a fanboy’s ode to all things geeky in Cline’s novel and turned it
into a 'Thank You' letter to everyone that keeps this culture thriving… and
singling out the money-grubbers who would want to change all that. Now that is real.
All in all, this marks another truly stunning milestone in
the career of an already-incredible filmmaker. While the acting may falter at
points and some of the effects work can be rather conspicuous, this is just too
damn fun for that to be much of a bother. It’s a great popcorn flick with
enough references to all things geek to keep the more studious busy, but it’s
also a much-appreciated showing of the highs, lows and power of pop culture
consumption. This is something that would not have been possible if it weren’t
for Steven Spielberg using his decades' worth of connections in the industry to
create this admission of the culture, and fans, that got him to that point in
the first place. It’s stuff like this that makes pop culture references into
more than just things to be acknowledged, and it’s sure to warm the hearts of
many a fanboy and fangirl.
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