Ready Player One is One of My All-Time Favorite Movies
This is the most fun Steven Spielberg movie released since the 1980s. It's the most entertaining movie I've seen since Avatar. It combines all the light, giddy fun of the "lesser" Amblin productions that Spielberg didn't direct with the skills of a master storyteller that no other director besides Spielberg can match. The movie is amazing in how it demonstrates that you don't need darkness, grimness and a depressing tone to make a modern action/adventure movie that is thoroughly involving and gripping. It is amazing that Spielberg at age 70 seems to feel as enthusiastic about this material as the average child one-tenth his age would.
This had one of the greatest plots of any recent adventure movie, with lots of nice surprises that didn't call undue attention to themselves as the "big twist." The sense of forward momentum in the story is incredibly strong and powerful. Most movies these days don't keep you on the edge of your seat like this. There is never a moment where you aren't rooting for the heroes to win and fascinated to find out what is going to happen next.
The cinematography was some of the most brilliant I have ever seen. The shots in the opening chase scene made me feel like I was zooming down an insane amusement park ride. Not since the original Star Wars trilogy trench run and speeder bike scenes has a movie taken the audience on such a ride. The way the zombie dance scene was shot was just ridiculously creative and strikingly perfect in execution. It featured comically "feel-good" gore like I've never seen before. The whole sequence at the dance club was one of the BEST directed scenes I have EVER seen in ANY movie. So much complicated stuff happens in that sequence with such complete smoothness and clarity to the storytelling. So many different kinds of tones need to be struck in rapid succession during this segment including romance, suspense, dance, action, danger, mystery, adventure, comedy, etc. The movie does not miss a beat in making every one of these moments feel exactly right. Ready Player One was unquestionably directed by a master filmmaker at the top of his game. It should be studied by every director out there.
This is a true "I loved the part where" movie like we haven't seen since the glory days of Star Wars and Indiana Jones. I loved the part where King Kong smashes the motorcycle! I loved the part where the characters dance to Saturday Night Fever! I loved the part where I-r0q explodes into a massive pile of gold and treasure! I loved the part where Sorrento is pulling off his employees' helmets looking for Samantha! I loved the part where Mecha Godzilla gets blown up by a Madball! I loved the part where Wade almost destroys the entire Oasis on his first day! Even the song choices are so perfectly chosen and timed that they make the songs sound better and more meaningful than they ever have.
These incredible moments of artful cinematic beauty and perfectly staged and timed story beats just jump out at you throughout the movie. This is not just another movie trying to show you what things are happening, this is a movie that makes you feel and experience everything that is happening. Few movies in history have ever been shot, framed and edited this brilliantly and expertly to draw you so deeply into the story that it becomes an out-of-body experience. The original Star Wars is one of the few other ones.
I've seen this movie 3 times in the theater and will watch it at least 100 times at home like I haven't watched a movie since the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies and Superman 1 and 2. This is a movie for people who love 1980s movies and other entertainment from that era that they can now love just as much. It is a movie that honors and celebrates a period of time in cultural history that is so very special to so many people. We get so many movies telling us how bad humanity is or was at some point in the past (like the dreadful, depressing, dark, dreary 2017 Skull Island). Ready Player One is a movie that instead reminds us how happy we can be and how good it can feel to be alive. It tells us that no matter what our personal flaws and imperfections are, we can find joy in life and accomplish amazing things. It's a miraculous, soaring, pure entertainment like nobody has made for decades. It is one of the most fun, joyful, pleasurable, ingenious, intelligent, inspired, beautiful, amazing, life-affirming movies ever made.