Summary
Wade Watts, a teenager living in 2045, when the majority of life takes place inside the virtual world of Oasis, competes in a contest that could grant him untold riches and reshape the landscape of the digital world forever.
My Thoughts
This movie is a lot of fun. There are crazy chases and bonkers fight scenes, all of them filled to the brim with hundreds of references to pop culture icons from the 70s, 80s and 90s. During some of the scenes in the Oasis I’m sure you could find half a dozen different icons onscreen simultaneously. But just because this film is dripping with nostalgia, doesn’t mean it’s inherently an amazing movie. It’s entertaining, sure, and it did exceed my expectations, but in twenty years, I doubt this film will be considered a classic like some of Spielberg’s better blockbusters.
(SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW)
This film is set in the not-too-distant future, wherein the majority of humanity lives most of their lives within the digital landscape of Oasis. Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan, “The Tree of Life”) is one of the thousands of players obsessed with trying to complete a challenge left by Oasis’s eccentric creator, James Halliday (Mark Rylance, “Dunkirk”). The prize for completing this challenge left by Halliday is half a trillion dollars and complete control over the world of Oasis. As the stakes are so high, it’s revealed that some of the more morally questionable characters are willing to go to extreme lengths to get an edge; even going so far as to do physical harm to players outside of the game. As the film goes on, Watts’s avatar navigates a shifting digital landscape of imaginative challenges, gaining new friends, including love interest Art3mis (Olivia Cooke, “Thoroughbreds”, “The Limehouse Golem”), and battling new foes, like Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn, “Darkest Hour”).
(SPOILERS END)
One of the film’s biggest strengths is also one of its weaknesses: the visual effects. The visual effects in this film are spellbinding; there are some scenes that are so frenetic and dizzying that they make your head spin. But that’s also the problem; sometimes there’s just so much going on it’s hard to focus on one thing. It’s exhausting, but it’s also quite incredible. For myself, the way that Spielberg directed this film, with his tendency to use long takes that followed players through battle or over racetracks, was meant to make the viewer feel like they were right there in the Oasis in the heat of the action. Without Spielberg’s direction, I don’t think this movie would’ve been nearly as entertaining or thrilling. I honestly think I’ll watch this movie once or twice more just to see what I missed the first time around.
However, I went to see this movie with a few buddies, and they did not share my enthusiasm for the manic nature of the film. The way that Spielberg cuts between the real world and the virtual one is sometimes a little jarring, to the point that one of my friends actually said it was starting to make him nauseous towards the end. I never got nauseous but I did start to get a headache.
Perhaps the biggest problem with this film is it’s own confusion on what message it’s trying to send. Every once in a while it preaches against the dangers of social media and being trapped in a world not grounded in reality, but then for the rest of the film the characters live their lives in the Oasis and never really suffer any consequences.
I also want to mention that, having read the book by Ernest Cline, I realize that the movie is far, far different than the book, but I would actually argue in some ways it is a little superior. There are bits in the book that didn’t really work as challenges, and other bits that I don’t think would translate to screen. As far as an adaption, I think this is probably the best we could’ve hoped for. Even if it is vastly different, it still succeeded in some places, and without good direction this movie could’ve been an atrocity.
Verdict
This is another movie that won’t go down in history as a huge success or a failure; it’s certainly a fun film, but it won’t be remembered like “ET”, “Indiana Jones”, or “Jaws”. For people looking for a good popcorn flick or something to watch on a rainy Saturday afternoon, this movie would be a good choice.
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