Director – Steven Spielberg – 2018 – US – 12a – 140m
*****
Get your game on. Spielberg heads back to the future using Tye Sheridan as his avatar inside a visually lavish virtual world stuffed with 80s pop culture references and dirtylicious resonances – now on Netflix
Spielberg has long been happy to move between big-budget spectaculars like Jurassic Park (1993) which push the boundaries of what’s possible in film and culturally significant stories like Schindler’s List (1993) which rely less on special effects or reshaping the blockbuster medium. Following Bridge Of Spies (2015) and The Post (2017), Spielberg now brings audiences Ready Player One which represents something he’s been trying to make for years – a movie which gets into the heads of gamers.
Among his earlier forays, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) felt like a funny mixture of a sequel and an attempt at realising the gamer world (think: racing through fields in vehicles surrounded by numerous running dinosaurs). Subsequent films A.I. (2001) and Minority Report (2002) both boast futuristic environments that might not look out of place in a state of the art video game. Further, the experience of watching The Adventures Of Tintin (2011) recalls the process of actually playing a computer game. Ready Player One is, however, Spielberg’s first film to use gaming and Virtual Reality as its primary subject matter. Here, he finally puts his long-gestating gamer flirtation onto the big screen in all its virtual glory… [read more]
Ready Player One is out in the UK on Thursday, March 29th 2018. It’s available on digital streaming on Monday, August 6th. On Netflix since October (2020).
Full review on DMovies.org.