Review: Ready Player One (UK Cert 12A)

Ernest Cline's debut novel Ready Player One was released in 2011 and critics were impressed by the , with one reviewer calling it 'the grown-up's Harry Potter'. Unsurprisingly, a film adaptation was commissioned almost as soon as the book was published. Now, it comes to the big screen, under the direction of Steven Spielberg (The Post, Lincoln), with a screenplay by Cline and Zak Penn. 

In 2045, the world has become desolate. To escape these harsh realities, people spend most of their time in the OASIS, a virtual universe where anything is possible. OASIS was created by the brilliant James Donovan Halliday, a 1980s pop culture aficionado. When Halliday died, he released a video announcing a treasure hunt through the OASIS, looking for the three keys that would unlock an Easter Egg which would give the winner Halliday's vast fortune... and total control over the OASIS. 

In the five years since Halliday's death, despite many attempts, nobody has completed the first task- a high-octane road-race- to get the key. That is until a young man called Wade Watts, who lives in Columbus. Ohio, and goes by the online name of Parzifal, works out how to beat the race. The contest is then on to find the other two keys- but Parzifal's victory puts him in the sights of Innovative Online Industries (IOI), a multinational corporation who seek to control OASIS for their own profit. 

First off, I haven't read the book, so I can't tell you how faithful an adaptation this is. But what I can tell you is that I now want to go and read the book- and I really feel I need to see the film again. It's just superb. 

Produced under the Amblin banner (who brought us the 1980s delights of ET, The Goonies, and Back To The Future, amongst others), the film is a loving tribute to geek culture in all its forms. There's been a bit of updating since the book was first published- there's references to 'Twitch streams' and one of the first places you see in the OASIS is a Minecraft world- but there are still references to classic Atari games, Dungeons & Dragons, John Hughes movies, The Iron Giant, anime, and so much more. In a way, it's almost overwhelming how much has been put on the screen; things like the scene in the Distracted Globe nightclub and the climactic end battle feature so many little easter eggs and references that repeated viewing would be needed to get them all. 

In the same kind of way that Avatar blended real world with fantasy, the film does a great job of differentiating between the two. Wade's real world in 'The Stacks'- mobile homes piled high on one another- looks drab and grim and gritty, whilst the OASIS looks bright and sumptuous. The CGI on the avatars looks great, and the worlds created in the OASIS all look amazing- even a note-perfect version of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining! 

So, visually, it's stunning- no surprise there. But Ready Player One also has substance beneath the sheen. There's some pointed social commentary on the use of technology to escape reality, the nefarious plans of corporations to monetise and control people, how the real world compares to the fantasy world created online, even down to making the simple point that you may know people online but how much do you really know them? There's a lot to think about. Plus there's also the quest narrative (something I particularly enjoy) to get invested in. 

Performances are strong across the board with Tye Sheridan (Cyclops in X-Men: Apocalypse) taking the lead role of Wade/Parzifal. He's great as the hero, a young man whose real world experiences are dreadful and seeks refuge in the OASIS, only to find the actions of the online world having real-world consequences. He's a geeky obsessive but one with social skills, and you really get behind him as he progresses through the egg hunt. Olivia Cooke plays Art3mis, another participant in the egg hunt whom Parzifal has an attraction to. Their relationship blossoms in both the real world and in the OASIS. Lena Waithe is superb as Aech, Parzifal's friend in the OASIS, who turns out to be someone very different in the real world. Win Morisaki and Philip Zhao complete the motley crew known as the Hi-5 as players Daito and Shoto respectively, with Zhao getting a lot of the laughs when his real-world identity is revealed. 

Ben Mendelsohn is great as Nolan Sorrento, the weaselly yet powerful head of operations for IOI. His attempts to manipulate the game in order for IOI to win are particularly villainous, which really gives you something to root against. Even when he tries to pass himself off as not just a corporate suit, he's just so supercilious and unpleasant that you can't wait to see him fall. He's provided with great support by Hannah John-Kamen as F'Nale, a handler for IOI who does the dirty work in the real world, and by T.J. Miller who voices an OASIS character called i-R0k, who does his dirty work in the virtual world. Miller riffs on his Deadpool character as the snarky support and also gets a few laughs.  

One other performance to note is that of Simon Pegg, who appears as Halliday's former business partner Ogden Morrow. Pegg makes the most of limited screen time to provide some heart to the situation. He also makes an uncredited cameo elsewhere in the film which is particularly nice when it's revealed. Finally, Mark Rylance reunites with Spielberg after Bridge Of Spies and The BFG to play Halliday. Halliday is a shuffling eccentric who finds the real world just that little bit too difficult to navigate, hence why he built the OASIS. It's a lovely supporting performance by Rylance, who also provides the voice of Halliday's avatar in the OASIS- a wizard with the rather lovely name of Anorak.

I cannot recommend Ready Player One highly enough. Chockfull of geeky references to keep even the most avid trivia buff busy, it's also got a lot of heart, a lot of adventure and more than enough going on to make the running time of 140 minutes disappear in the blink of an eye. Superb stuff.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Tez

Ready Player One is on general release from 29th March 2018.

Review: Star Trek Beyond (UK Cert 12A)

It's a banner year for the Star Trek franchise as it celebrates 50 years since the original TV show started airing. So how better to commemorate this than to release another Star Trek movie?

The crew of the Enterprise are well into their five-year mission, but Captain James T. Kirk is starting to feel a little disillusioned and is thinking of moving on. When they dock on Starbase Yorktown, an unknown alien ship in distress hails the base. Their crew has been taken to a nearby planet by the villainous Krall and the Enterprise is the only ship that can make it through an unstable nebula to help rescue them. But things are never quite what they seem and the planet- and Krall- are more dangerous than the crew could imagine...

Written by Simon Pegg (also reprising the role of Scotty and therefore giving himself a bigger part) and Doug Jung (who cameos as Sulu's husband Ben- more of that later) and directed by Justin Lin (the Fast and Furious franchise), Star Trek Beyond is big, bombastic and a lot of fun. It makes for very easy watching.

Lin is very much at home with the action sequences- including a very stylish distraction involving Kirk and a vintage motorcycle- although there's an over-reliance on shakycam which is annoying and, yet again, a major Hollywood blockbuster skimps on the lighting budget to its detriment with some scenes (noticeably one fight scene between Jaylah and Krall's minion Manas) almost bordering on the unwatchable. One thing to Lin's credit, however- there's minimal lens flare. A few lighting and camera issues aside, the visual effects are- as you would expect- superb with the reveal and exploration of Starbase Yorktown particularly stunning.

Performance-wise, it's all pretty solid. The main returning cast all fit back into their roles well (although having Scotty call Jaylah 'lassie' every few minutes got annoying really quickly). They know these characters well by now so there's no questions there. What the script does, which is interesting, is play around with the usual dynamics by splitting the Enterprise team and pairing disparate characters up. Pairing Bones and Spock up is inspired and both Karl Urban and Zachary Quinto seem to be enjoying their odd-couple bickering. Idris Elba makes for an imposing villain in Krall- even if the back-story felt a little rushed and bolted on. There's a really impressive performance by Sofia Boutella as the alien Jaylah who helps the crew out on the planet.

Some people may be wondering what I made of the decision to make Sulu gay (a decision which dismayed original Sulu actor George Takei). To be honest, whilst I probably would have preferred them to create a new character, I wasn't massively bothered by it. The scene between Ben and Sulu was played very nicely- it's a bit of a blink-and-you-miss-it moment to be fair- and it wasn't really mentioned again, although Ben does appear again at the end. It certainly wasn't sensationalised or felt lurid or done just for shock value. I can appreciate that it sometimes feels like tokenism but you can create a LGBT character and not let their sexuality be their only defining feature; for me, it's the difference between having a gay character (where it is) and a character that is gay (where it isn't).

The film pays a touching tribute not only to the late Leonard Nimoy- whose death is directly addressed and provides one of the more poignant scenes between Spock and Kirk- but also to the original crew of the Enterprise who started the journey off half a century ago. It also pays tribute in the end credits to Anton Yelchin, the Chekhov actor who passed away earlier this year. I couldn't help but feel a little pang of sadness every time the excitable Russian navigator appeared on screen. He has left a big hole in the Star Trek family.

I went to this film to be entertained, to turn my brain off for a few hours and just let the sci-fi silliness wash over me. Whilst it delivers that in spades, don't be surprised if you feel a little emotional throughout it too.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tez

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Rhys' Shandy Ice Bucket Challenge in aid of Cancer Research Wales from The Watchers Film Show on Vimeo.

At the Watchers were big supporters of Cancer Research Wales and about two years ago we raised over £600 for them with our Bondathon. So this year I'm trying to raise money by running the Cardiff Half Marathon - YES a GEEK RUNNING!!! Fat Boy Run is my inspiration, thank you Simon Pegg!!

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