‘Ready Player One’ pops onto screens and culture

“Ready Player One” is a new movie adapted from the novel written by Ernest Cline and is set in the year 2045. The movie is about a human population that spends more time in a virtual reality world called the Oasis, than they do in the real world.

The film, directed by Steven Spielberg, features a little bit of everything: it has adventure, love, comedy and 80s pop culture.

There’s destructive car chases and zombies, including references such as Godzilla, Gundam Wing, Atari, adventures into “The Shining” and just all out war.

The movie stars Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke. Sheridan plays Wade Watts and also voices his avatar Parzival and Cooke plays Samantha and voices her avatar, Artemis.

The creator of the Oasis is James Halliday, played by Mark Rylance. Halliday dies, and in a recording lets everyone in the Oasis know there is an easter egg in the game. An easter egg is a message or a feature in a game that’s not necessary for completing the game, but it adds to it. In the movie, whoever finds this easter egg will own the Oasis.

Halliday sets up three tasks in the game which must be completed in order to win the easter egg. There are people who are completely invested in finding the keys. In five years, nobody has found any of the keys, but all that changed once Parzival found the first key.

Of course Parzival, Artemis and their friends have to fight someone and that someone would be the Corporation IOI, which has evil intentions for the Oasis. The IOI has a whole army of people that they use to try and find the keys while fighting Parzival and his team.

The majority of the movie is spent in the Oasis because that’s what everyone in this future does. This makes the movie feel as though you’re watching a CGI film or a very long cutscene from a video game.

The CGI and plot are very good, so you don’t care or even notice that you’re watching CGI most of the time. Plus there’s lots of action and death going on inside the Oasis.

From time to time, the characters pop back into reality and you kind of see why Wade would rather be Parzival and why everyone enjoys being their avatars.

The Oasis is a world where you can be anything you want to be. You can be an original avatar or you can be Batman, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Master Sergeant.

In a time where the world just doesn’t look like a place where anyone wants to be, I would spend most of my time in the Oasis, too.

“Ready Player One” is a very good film that mixes CGI and real world acting together beautifully. For me it gets 4 out of 5 stars.