Ready Player One (film)

Ready Player One is a 2018 American science fiction action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a screenplay by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline based on Cline's 2011 novel of the same name. It stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, and Mark Rylance. It takes place in 2045, when much of humanity uses the virtual reality software OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation) to escape the desolation of the real world. Orphaned teenager Wade Watts (Sheridan) finds clues to a hidden game that promises OASIS's ownership to the winner, and he and four allies try to complete it before a corporation run by businessman Nolan Sorrento (Mendelsohn) can do so.

Ready Player One
Theatrical release poster
Directed bySteven Spielberg
Produced by
Screenplay by
Based onReady Player One
by Ernest Cline
Starring
Music byAlan Silvestri
CinematographyJanusz Kamiński
Edited by
Production
company
Distributed byWarner Bros. Pictures
Release date
  • March 11, 2018 (2018-03-11) (SXSW)[2]
  • March 29, 2018 (2018-03-29) (United States)
Running time
140 minutes[3]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$155–175 million[4][5][6]
Box office$582.9 million[7]

Ready Player One premiered at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas on March 11, 2018, and was theatrically released by Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States on March 29, 2018, in Dolby Cinema, RealD 3D, IMAX, 4DX, and IMAX 3D. It grossed over $582 million and received generally positive reviews; critics praised its visuals and brisk pacing but criticized the character development. The film was noted to have significant differences from the book, and some critics said the film's plot was an improvement over the source material.[8][9] It also received nominations at the 91st Academy Awards, 24th Critics' Choice Awards, and 72nd British Academy Film Awards, all for visual effects.

Plot

In 2045, people seek to escape from reality through the virtual reality entertainment universe called the OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation), co-created by James Halliday and Ogden Morrow of Gregarious Games. After Halliday's death, a pre-recorded message left by his avatar Anorak announces a game, granting ownership of the OASIS to the first to find the Golden Easter Egg within it, which is locked behind a gate requiring three keys which players can obtain by accomplishing three challenges.

The contest has lured a number of "Gunters", or egg hunters, and the interest of Nolan Sorrento, the CEO of Innovative Online Industries (IOI) who seeks to control the OASIS himself in order to insert intrusive online advertising. IOI uses a number of indentured servants as well as an army of employees called "Sixers" to find the egg.[lower-alpha 1]

Wade Watts is a teenager living in Columbus, Ohio with his aunt Alice and her boyfriend Rick. Wade's avatar Parzival, an avid Gunter, participates in the first challenge, an unbeatable race, alongside his best friend Aech, and Art3mis, a female avatar who Parzival has a crush on. Parzival regularly visits Halliday's Journals, a simulated archive of Halliday's life and hobbies, run by the Curator. Acknowledging a phrase by Halliday, Wade realises the race can be won by driving backwards, receiving the Copper Key from Anorak. Art3mis, Aech, and his friends Daito and Sho, all win the race thereafter, later collectively named the High-5 on the OASIS' scoreboard.

Sorrento asks his friend i-R0k to learn Wade's true identity, with the intent on bribing him to win the contest of IOI's behalf. Wade and Art3mis discover from the Journals that Halliday once dated Morrow's wife Karen "Kira" Underwood, but Halliday's anxiety led to them watching a movie rather than go dancing. Wade and Art3mis visit the Distracted Globe night club to look for clues, where Wade confesses his love and true name to Art3mis. They survive an IOI raid in which Art3mis abandons Wade, explaining that her father died in debt to IOI. i-R0k, who was eavesdropping on their conversation, informs Sorrento of his findings.

Sorrento contacts Wade with his offer. When rejected, Sorrento destroys Wade's home, killing Alice among others. Art3mis' player Samantha Cook takes Wade in. Together, they realise the second challenge relates to Halliday's regret towards not pursuing a relationship with Kira. Along with Aech, Daito, and Sho, Parzival and Art3mis search a recreation of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining. Art3mis asks Kira to a dance and wins the Jade Key.

Sorrento's subordinate F'Nale Zandor storms the Gunters' hideout, taking Samantha to a IOI Loyalty Center to pay off her father's debt. Wade is rescued by the other High-5 users, Helen Harris (Aech), Toshiro (Daito), and Zhou (Sho) in Helen's truck. By hacking Sorrento's OASIS rig, the group learn where Samantha is being held, allowing her to escape confinement.

The third challenge is found in Castle Anorak on Planet Doom, where players must guess Halliday's favourite Atari 2600 game to earn the Crystal Key. iR0k places a forcefield around the castle using the Orb of Osuvox, but Art3mis is able to deactivate it. The High-5 lead an army of OASIS players against the Sixers. Sorrento fights back in Mechagodzilla, but Aech, Daito, and Art3mis destroy his avatar using the Iron Giant, a Gundam, and a Madballs-shaped bomb. Parzival destroys Samantha's avatar, allowing her to flee IOI and is picked up by the High-5.

Parzival reaches the console, but Sorrento detonates the Cataclyst bomb, wiping out every avatar on Planet Doom. Parzival survives using an extra life coin given to him earlier by the Curator in a bet. He plays Adventure, winning the Crystal Key by locating its programmer's Easter egg. He uses the three keys to enter a treasure room, where Anorak offers him a contract to sign. Parzival recognizes it as the one Morrow signed when Halliday forced him out of Gregarious Games, and refuses to sign it. Anorak transforms into Halliday, who expresses his regrets in life, handing over the Easter Egg.

Sorrento confronts the High-5, but relents upon seeing Wade with the egg. He and F'Nale are arrested for the bombing. Ogden Morrow appears, revealing he is the Curator. Wade decides to run the OASIS with the High-5, inviting Morrow to join them as a consultant. The IOI Loyalty Centers are shut down, while the High-5 make the controversial choice to close the OASIS every Tuesday and Thursday, so people can spend time in the real world.

Cast
  • Tye Sheridan as Wade Watts / Parzival, a Gunter who wishes to win so he can leave the Stacks. Wade's avatar Parzival is a white/blue-haired male with arm and facial tattoos. Parzival's vehicle of choice inside the OASIS is the Back to the Future DeLorean time machine, equipped with KITT's scanner from Knight Rider, which, in the novel, is referred to as "Ecto-88" due to Ghostbusters decals he puts on the doors, whilst the film does not depict this.
  • Olivia Cooke as Samantha Cook / Art3mis, a well-known Gunter who works with various allies to ensure the OASIS is kept free and out of the hands of IOI. In the real world, Samantha has a birthmark around her right eye, which she is somewhat self-conscious of; her avatar Art3mis is a pink-skinned female humanoid with spiky red hair, adopts this birthmark late in the film.
  • Ben Mendelsohn as Nolan Sorrento / IOI-655321, the CEO of Innovative Online Industries who seeks full control over the OASIS.
  • Lena Waithe as Helen Harris / Aech, a Gunter and long-time friend of Wade's who works as a mechanic and modder in the OASIS and engages in PVP matches. Helen's avatar Aech is a male cybernetic orc. As in the novel, Parzival/Wade initially has no idea Aech is female in real life. The novel also states that Helen is lesbian, although the film only hints at this during the sequence in the Overlook Hotel, as she tries to have sex with a female NPC. Inside Aech's garage, numerous spacecraft from science fiction films and TV series can be spotted.
  • T.J. Miller as i-R0k, a freelance dealer and mercenary often employed by IOI. He shares his name with a minor character from the novel who unwittingly helps IOI discover the location of the First Quest, but is otherwise unrelated.
  • Simon Pegg as Ogden Morrow / Curator, a co-creator of the OASIS who eventually left Gregarious Games. He is concerned that many people have developed an unhealthy dependency on the game. Ogden's avatar, the Curator in this film is a butler-styled robot that works in the Halliday Archives in the OASIS.
  • Mark Rylance as James Halliday / Anorak the All-Knowing, the deceased co-creator of the OASIS who reveals after his death that an Easter Egg is hidden in the OASIS that grants control over the OASIS to its winner. Halliday's avatar Anorak is a hooded wizard.
  • Philip Zhao as Zhou / Sho, a Chinese Gunter and one of the "High Five". He is based upon Akihide "Shoto" Karatsu, a Japanese gunter [sic] featured in the novel. Zhou's avatar Sho is a lizard-like ninja.
  • Win Morisaki as Toshiro / Daito, a Japanese Gunter and one of the "High Five". Toshiro's avatar Daito is an armored samurai.
  • Hannah John-Kamen as F'Nale Zandor, IOI's head of operations in the physical world and for their indentured servant programs in IOI's Loyalty Centers.[10]
  • Susan Lynch as Alice, Wade's aunt.[11]
  • Ralph Ineson as Rick, Alice's boyfriend who mistreats Wade and uses a StarCraft marine as his avatar.
  • Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo as Sorrento's Assistant.
  • Cara Theobold as Tracer.
  • Perdita Weeks as Karen "Kira" Underwood, Morrow's wife.[12]

Letitia Wright, Mckenna Grace, and Lulu Wilson make appearances in the film, with Wright as a rebel who can be seen at Samantha's safe house, and Grace and Wilson as students using the OASIS. Kit Connor also makes an appearance as a Rebel Kid.

Production

Development and pre-production
Director Steven Spielberg (far left) and Ernest Cline with the cast of Ready Player One at San Diego Comic-Con. From third of left: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, T.J. Miller and Ben Mendelsohn.

Warner Bros. bought the film rights for producers Dan Farah and Donald De Line in June 2010, one year before the book was published.[13] Cline was set to write the script for the film, which Donald De Line and Dan Farah would produce.[14] Eric Eason rewrote Cline's script,[15] and Zak Penn was hired to rewrite the previous drafts by Cline and Eason. Village Roadshow Pictures came aboard to co-finance and co-produce the film with Warner Bros.[16] Steven Spielberg signed on to direct and produce the film, which Kristie Macosko Krieger also produced, along with De Line and Farah.[17] Ready Player One is Spielberg's first action-fantasy film since The Adventures of Tintin in late 2011.[18] Cline and Penn made several revisions while adapting the novel to film. Most of these changes were to eliminate scenes that would be uninteresting in a visual format, such as when Wade beats a high score in Pac-Man, or recites all the lines from the film WarGames.[19][20] In 2016, American musician Moby said that he had made an attempt to adapt the book into a film, but found out that Spielberg had secured it by that time.[21]

Elle Fanning, Olivia Cooke, and Lola Kirke were the frontrunners for the role of Art3mis;[22] with Cooke announced as having been cast in the role by September 2015.[23] In January 2016, Ben Mendelsohn joined the cast.[24] In February 2016, Tye Sheridan was confirmed as playing the lead role of Wade, after a lengthy nationwide casting call failed to produce an unknown for the part.[25] Simon Pegg was added to the cast in March,[26] with Mark Rylance joining in April.[27] By June, T.J. Miller, Hannah John-Kamen and Win Morisaki had also been cast in the film.[28][29][30][31] In July, Philip Zhao joined the cast,[32] with Lena Waithe, Ralph Ineson, Mckenna Grace, and Letitia Wright being revealed as appearing in the film over time prior to the film's release.[33][34][35][36]

Filming

Production was set to begin in July 2016.[29] Screenwriter Zak Penn announced via Twitter on July 1, 2016, that the first week of filming had been completed.[37] In August and September 2016, filming took place in Birmingham, England; this included Livery Street in the Jewellery Quarter area of the city, which was extensively used, including the van chase that takes place towards the film's end. The chase was edited to make the street appear longer than it actually is. The backpackers hostel Hatters, also on Livery Street, was used for internal filming for a basement scene. The Ludgate Hill Car Park lot on Lionel Street, in which caravan homes were partially built, was also used and a planned explosion there caused some local business and homes to call emergency services, as no prior notification were given by the production team. Other locations in the city included the former industrial area of Digbeth, in a rooftop scene that overlooks the Birmingham City Centre skyline. Some of the city's landmark buildings were erased and replaced with CGI buildings to create a dystopian Ohio in the year 2045.[38][39] Principal photography wrapped on September 27, 2016.[40][41]

Visual effects and post-production

Visual effects for the film were provided by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), Digital Domain and Territory Studio, with some pre-visualization done by The Third Floor.[42][43] For three hours three days a week Spielberg met with ILM, which was in charge of the OASIS segments and produced the bulk of the visual effects shots with 900 in total;[41] 80 minutes of the final 140-minute film are set in the OASIS according to VFX supervisor Grady Cofer. Spielberg remarked that "this is the most difficult movie I've done since Saving Private Ryan."[41] Visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett stated that the visual effects team would collaborate with Spielberg and writers Ernest Cline and Zak Penn. "What we did at one point was to have a card for every single character that we considered to be a "hero" character within the movie, and we put them up on a board and Steven and everyone else spent hours assigning them to scenes. We'd say, "This is where we want whoever it would be … Batman, Chun-Li, or whoever." And then we went through the whole movie doing that. As the scenes developed, we got an understanding of how many characters we needed."[44]

Part of the film takes place in a virtual space based on the Overlook Hotel in the film The Shining. This was mostly a digital recreation using high-quality telecine of the original film, allowing new camera angles and shots that did not appear in the original. Some original footage from The Shining was also used, with ILM's modifications. Only a few scenes in this sequence involved real actors (such as the appearance of the Grady twins) and required reproduction of The Shining's physical sets. The Shining sequence was post-processed with film grain and other aging effects to make the new footage closely resemble the original.[45] During the production of Ready Player One, Spielberg's team was consulting for the production of Doctor Sleep, the film sequel to The Shining, parts of which take place in the Overlook Hotel. Doctor Sleep used practical sets with limited CGI to recreate the hotel, and its production team worked between the Ready Player One production design and Stanley Kubrick's blueprints to faithfully recreate the hotel.[46] ILM also had to produce digital versions of the film's many cultural references, including the DeLorean time machine (from the Back to the Future films); the Iron Giant; Chucky and King Kong, modeled after the 1933 film version.[47] The Tyrannosaurus rex from Jurassic Park was created from the base model ILM had created for the 1993 film.[47]

Digital Domain facilitated pre-visualization (with The Third Floor), motion capture and virtual sets, and also created 300 visual effects shots for the primarily live-action portions of the film. The virtual sets were powered by game engines and were used congruently with the motion-capture process, with pre-visualization supervisor Scott Meadows explaining that in real time Spielberg would "put on a headset and scout the sets and make adjustments." [42][43]

Music

On June 9, 2016, Variety stated that Spielberg's regular collaborator John Williams was planning to compose the film's score.[48] However, in July 2017, it was reported that Williams had left the project to work on Spielberg's The Post instead, with Alan Silvestri hired to take over scoring duties for Ready Player One.[49] The official score was released by WaterTower Music as a two-CD set on March 30, 2018,[50] with vinyl and cassette releases projected for the summer.[51] At Spielberg's request, Silvestri references his own music from Back to the Future within the film's score, as well as quoting the music by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind from The Shining for the film's sequence at the Overlook Hotel.[52] Joan Jett's song "I Hate Myself for Loving You" is also included in the movie, but not in the soundtrack.

Ready Player One (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."The Oasis"Alan Silvestri1:49
2."Hello, I'm James Halliday"Alan Silvestri2:01
3."Why Can't We Go Backwards?"Alan Silvestri4:18
4."An Orb Meeting"Alan Silvestri4:11
5."Real World Consequences"Alan Silvestri3:30
6."Sorrento Makes an Offer"Alan Silvestri3:34
7."Welcome to the Rebellion"Alan Silvestri3:14
8."High 5 Assembles"Alan Silvestri4:24
9."Orb of Osuvox"Alan Silvestri3:45
10."Sorrento Punked"Alan Silvestri3:57
11."Wade's Broadcast"Alan Silvestri,5:51
12."Arty on the Inside"Alan Silvestri2:33
13."Looking for a Truck"Alan Silvestri, Akira Ifukube5:36
14."She Never Left"Alan Silvestri2:41
15."Last Chance"Alan Silvestri3:21
16."Get Me Out of This"Alan Silvestri1:35
17."Hold on to Something"Alan Silvestri5:14
18."This Is Wrong"Alan Silvestri3:49
19."What Are You?"Alan Silvestri3:29
20."There's Something I Need to Do"Alan Silvestri5:01
21."Main Title"Alan Silvestri2:27
22."End Credits"Alan Silvestri8:04
Ready Player One: Songs from the Motion Picture
No.TitlePerformed byLength
1."I Wanna Be Your Lover"Prince5:48
2."Everybody Wants to Rule the World"Tears for Fears4:12
3."Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)"The Temptations3:49
4."Stand on It"Bruce Springsteen3:06
5."One Way or Another"Blondie3:27
6."Can't Hide Love"Earth, Wind & Fire4:09
7."Blue Monday"New Order7:24
8."Stayin' Alive"Bee Gees4:45
9."We're Not Gonna Take It"Twisted Sister3:38
10."You Make My Dreams"Hall & Oates3:12
11."Pure Imagination (feat. Merethe Soltvedt)"Bryan Nguyen2:33

Cultural references
Director Steven Spielberg was reluctant to include references to his own movies for the film, but would eventually include references to Back to the Future and Jurassic Park.

Ready Player One, as in the book, pays homage to popular culture from various time periods, mainly the 1970s and 1980s but also extending to the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s; reviewers have identified well over a hundred references to films, television shows, music, toys, video games, anime, and comics from these eras.[53][54][55] Cline did not have any issues with these copyrighted elements when he published the book, but was aware that securing all necessary rights would be a major obstacle for a film adaptation. This task was eventually made easier thanks to Spielberg's reputation in the film industry.[19] Spielberg and producer Kristie Macosko Krieger spent several years securing the rights for the copyrighted elements used in the film long before filming began, knowing that some scenes would not be possible without certain copyrighted elements.[56][57] In the end, Spielberg estimated that they managed to get about 80% of the copyrighted elements they desired,[19] noting that in some cases, the filmmakers were able to secure rights for some but not all the characters they wanted. In negotiating with Warner Bros., they could not secure Close Encounters of the Third Kind from Columbia Pictures, despite the latter being one of Spielberg's first films as director.[58]

Blade Runner, which was integral to the plot of the book, was off-limits as Blade Runner 2049 was in production at the same time as Ready Player One; as a replacement, the creative team had the players play through the events of The Shining, which Spielberg was able to secure the rights to as an homage to his friend Stanley Kubrick.[19] While Cline's original work heavily used the character of Ultraman, the rights over the character were still under legal dispute, requiring them to replace Ultraman with the titular robot from The Iron Giant and RX-78-2 Gundam.[59] Spielberg recognized that his past films were a significant part of the 1980s popular culture cited in the book, and to avoid being accused of "vanity", he opted to remove many of the references to his own work.[60] Cline stated that he believed Spielberg wanted to avoid self-references to films he directed, due to the criticism he received for his film 1941, which lampooned his own previous works Jaws and Duel. Cline said he had to convince Spielberg to include some iconic elements, such as the DeLorean time machine from Back to the Future, which Spielberg conceded as the film was one he produced rather than directed.[61] Spielberg also allowed the Tyrannosaurus rex from his own Jurassic Park to be included.[47] Cline also asked ILM to include a reference to Last Action Hero, one of Penn's first screenplays, without Penn's knowledge; a movie marquee in the Manhattan race segment bears the name "Jack Slater", the character Arnold Schwarzenegger played in that film.[62]

Release

Ready Player One was initially scheduled to be released on December 15, 2017,[63] but was pushed back to March 30, 2018, to avoid competition with Star Wars: The Last Jedi.[64] In January 2018, it was announced the film's release date had been moved up one day to March 29, 2018.[65] The film had its world premiere at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas on March 11, 2018 (as part of the South by Southwest Film Festival).[4]

Warner Bros. Pictures distributed the film worldwide, with Village Roadshow Pictures distributing in several overseas territories.[66] Around the same time the film was released, massively multi-player online game platform Roblox held an event based on it. The winner of the event was the user r0cu.[67]

Home media

Ready Player One was released on digital copy on July 3, 2018, and on 4K UHD Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, and DVD on July 24, 2018.[68] The film debuted at the top of the NPD VideoScan First Alert chart for the week ending on July 27, 2018.[69] It retained the No. 1 spot on the chart for the week ending on August 4, 2018.[70]

Reception

Box office

Ready Player One grossed $137.7 million in the United States and Canada, and $445.2 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $582.9 million.[7] Made on a production budget of $175 million, with about $150 million more spent on global marketing costs, the film needed to gross at least $440 million in order to break even.[71] It was the twelfth-highest-grossing film of 2018.

North America

In the United States and Canada, Ready Player One was released alongside God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness and Acrimony, and was projected to gross $40–50 million from 4,100 theaters over its first four days.[6] It made $12.1 million on its first day, including $3.75 million from Wednesday night previews. It ended up grossing $41.8 million in its opening weekend (for a four-day total of $53.7 million), marking Spielberg's biggest debut since 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.[72] In its second weekend it grossed $25.1 million (a drop of 40%), finishing second behind newcomer A Quiet Place ($50 million).[73] In its third weekend the film made $11.2 million, coming in fourth behind Rampage, A Quiet Place, and Truth or Dare.[74] In its fourth weekend the film made $7.4 million, finishing sixth at the box office.[75] In its fifth weekend it grossed $2.4 million, a drop of 67% from previous weekend and finishing ninth.[76]

Other territories

Worldwide, the film was released in 62 countries, including China, where it was expected to make $100–120 million in its opening weekend.[6] It grossed $2.9 million on its first day from 11 countries, including $980,000 from South Korea.[77] In China the film made $14.75 million on its first day and earned a score of 9.2 from audiences on Douban (compared to the average 6–7 earned by Hollywood films).[71] It grossed $61.7 million in China in its opening weekend which is the highest opening ever for Warner Bros. in said territory. The film's other major opening weekend territories were South Korea ($8.1 million), United Kingdom ($7.3 million), Russia ($6.1 million), and France ($6 million).[78] In its second weekend in China it grossed $42 million, and in its third weekend grossed $13.9 million.[79][80] The film grossed $81.7 million in its second weekend overseas, dropping only 35%, ahead of other newcomers A Quiet Place and Blockers.[79] In its third weekend it grossed $33.8 million overseas dropping 58.6%.[80] On April 21, 2018, the film topped $200 million in China, becoming the tenth-biggest U.S. release ever in the country.[81] In its fourth weekend in China, it grossed $8.24 million finishing third at the box office and has a total gross of $207 million.[82] It grossed $23 million overseas from 67 territories in its fourth weekend.[83] It opened in Japan, its final major market and grossed $4.4 million.[83] In its fifth weekend overseas, it grossed $8.6 million from 63 territories.[84] In China, the weekend was $2.4M to push it past Avatar as the no. 9 Hollywood title ever in the market with $213.8 million (RMB 1.34 billion).[84] Japan's third frame held well during Golden Week with just a 6% drop from the last session. The total there is currently at $17.5 million.[85] In its sixth weekend in China, it bumped up 10% from last session to lift the local cume to $220.2 million.[85] The film's largest markets after China are Japan ($23.4 million), United Kingdom ($21.3 million), France ($21.5 million), South Korea ($18.6 million), and Russia-CIS ($13.1 million).[86]

Critical reception

On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 72% based on 420 reviews, and an average rating of 6.83/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Ready Player One is a sweetly nostalgic thrill ride that neatly encapsulates Spielberg's strengths while adding another solidly engrossing adventure to his filmography."[87] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 55 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[88] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it an 82% overall positive score and a 65% "definite recommend".[71]

In a review for RogerEbert.com, Brian Tallerico wrote that the film's "overwhelming" nature and non-stop action will likely thrill fans of pop culture; while he observed narrative weaknesses, such as a lack of depth among the supporting characters, he felt that they ultimately do not hinder the film from working "on the level of technical, blockbuster mastery that Spielberg helped define".[89] Writing for Variety, Owen Gleiberman called the film a "coruscating explosion of pop-culture eye candy", and found the sequence based on The Shining to be "irresistible". However, he also criticized Spielberg's dichotomization of fantasy and reality, as well as the film having "more activity than it does layers".[90] IndieWire's Eric Kohn characterized the film as "an astonishing sci-fi spectacle and a relentless nostalgia trip at once" and praised both the sequence based on The Shining as well as Penn's screenplay, particularly with respect to Mendelsohn's character. Nevertheless, he remarked that the film "drags a bunch in its final third".[91]

Alissa Wilkinson, writing for Vox, praised both the quality and quantity of the world building. She also commented on just how dystopian the future portrayed is, where the main characters fight to save the OASIS and the escape from reality it represents, with arguably less concern for the problems of the real world.[92]

Monica Castillo was more critical of the film in her review for The Guardian and drew attention to the absence of character arcs, the lack of resolution for plot holes in the novel, and the bloating of scenes in the film by trivia.[93]

Film and television critic Matt Zoller Seitz praised Ready Player One and noted the undercurrent of sadness present in the film, stating that "I don't think Spielberg gets enough credit for making sad films that most people interpret as happy, and complex films that are immediately dismissed as simple or confused".[94][95][96] Seitz concluded that the film "is a mess, but it is a fascinating and complex one..."[97] In March 2019, a year after the film's release, Seitz determined that with Ready Player One's images commenting on capitalism and popular culture, the film was the second-most "interesting [and] substantive" big-budgeted fantasy in 2018 after Black Panther, admitting that "I still think about [Ready Player One] a lot, especially in relation to the world around me."[98][99]

Accolades
Award Date of ceremony Category Recipient(s) Result Ref(s)
Teen Choice Awards August 12, 2018 Choice Sci-Fi Movie Ready Player One Nominated [100]
Choice Sci-Fi Movie Actor Tye Sheridan Nominated
Choice Sci-Fi Movie Actress Olivia Cooke Nominated
Choice Breakout Movie Star Nominated
Critics' Choice Movie Awards January 13, 2019 Best Visual Effects Ready Player One Nominated [101]
Visual Effects Society Awards February 5, 2019 Outstanding Visual Effects in a
Photoreal Feature		 Roger Guyett, Jennifer Meislohn, Dave Shirk,
Matthew E. Butler, Neil Corbould		 Nominated [102]
Outstanding Animated Character
in a Photoreal Feature		 Dave Shirk, Brian Cantwell, Jung-Seung Hong and
Kim Ooi for "Art3mis"		 Nominated
Outstanding Created Environment
in a Photoreal Feature		 Mert Yamak, Stanley Wong, Joana Garrido and
Daniel Gagiu for "Overlook Hotel"		 Won
Outstanding Virtual Cinematography
in a Photoreal Project		 Daniele Bigi, Edmund Kolloen, Mathieu Vig and
Jean-Baptiste Noyau for "New York Race"		 Won
Outstanding Model in a
Photoreal or Animated Project		 Giuseppe Laterza, Kim Lindqvist, Mauro Giacomazzo
and William Gallyo for "DeLorean DMC-12"		 Nominated
Satellite Awards February 17, 2019 Best Visual Effects Ready Player One Nominated [103]
BAFTA Awards February 10, 2019 Best Special Visual Effects Matthew E. Butler, Grady Cofer, Roger Guyett,
Dave Shirk		 Nominated [104]
Academy Awards February 24, 2019 Best Visual Effects Roger Guyett, Grady Cofer, Matthew E. Butler and Dave Shirk Nominated [105]
Saturn Awards September 13, 2019 Best Science Fiction Film Ready Player One Won [106]
Best Director Steven Spielberg Nominated
Best Music Alan Silvestri Nominated
Best Special Effects Ready Player One Nominated

Possible sequel

Cline is working on a sequel to the novel.[107][108] For a sequel to the film, he stated, "I think there's a good chance that, if this one does well, Warner Bros. will want to make a sequel. I don't know if Steven [Spielberg] would want to dive back in, because he would know what he is getting into. He's said that it's the third-hardest film he's made, out of dozens and dozens of movies".[109][110] Co-star Olivia Cooke, and presumably the rest of the cast, is "contracted to sequels".[111]

Notes
  1. IOI employees are called Sixers because their employee IDs are six digits long and begin with the number 6.
gollark: I expect there are significant diminishing returns with actual teaching quality in the trendier universities.
gollark: Increasingly, if you want to learn a thing for learningous purposes, you can just get free/cheap material on it off the internet.
gollark: Although over here there are rather large variations in income 5 years after graduation by degree.
gollark: According to statisticoids™, a lot (I think 70%ish?) of graduate jobs do not actually care what degree you had.
gollark: And the majority of the point of the whole thing is prestige.

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