New ‘Ready Player One’ Featurette Pays Tribute To Steven Spielberg
I’m a little nervous aboutReady Player One. I do not care for Ernest Cline’s novel, which reads to me like a string of name-dropping pop-culture references without much of a purpose. Yet at the same time, I love Steven Spielberg. In my humble opinion, Spielberg’s career has only improved the older he gets, as he continually takes on challenging material and spins it into entertaining films. The key to getting me, and others like me, to seeReady Player Oneisn’t Cline’s prose – it’s Spielberg. And that’s exactly what this newReady Player Onefeaturette understands.
Ready Player One Featurette
Ugh, that wassomanipulative, and also it worked. Now I want to see this. The first minute of this featurette has almost nothing to do withReady Player One, and instead serves as a sizzle reel of Spielberg’s greatest hits (with a few exceptions: they includePoltergeisthere, which, despite all rumors to the contrary, isstilltechnically a Tobe Hooper film; they also throw inThe Goonies, which was directed by Richard Donner. They also throw inGremlinsandBack to the Future, neither of which were directed by Spielberg). The combination of that classic Spielberg imagery mixed withJohn Williams’E.T.music is pretty much tailor made to get me excited, so, good work, manipulativeReady Player Onefeaturette!
The rest of this featurette is devoted to explaining the basic storyline of Cline’s book and the film adaptation. And that’s where you start to lose me. I have faith in Spielberg, but I’m still not sold on this story. Nor am I sold on leading manTye Sheridan, who just seemsso boring. Every time he mumbles, “They called our generation the missing millions,” in that flat voice of his, I want to roll my eyes and say, “Oh boy, did they?” to the screen. Here’s the official synopsis that accompanies the featurette.
From filmmaker Steven Spielberg comes the science fiction action adventure “Ready Player One,” based on Ernest Cline’s bestseller of the same name, which has become a worldwide phenomenon. The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger.
All my petty gripes aside, I will be thrilled to come out ofReady Player Onea believer. There’s nothing I want more than to give myself over to an entertaining Steven Spielberg movie, and come out buzzing about it. We’ll know how this all turns out whenReady Player Onehits theatersMarch 30, 2018.
