Ready Player One happens in 2045, which is a near enough future to be interesting. While not a focus of the film, I did like seeing glimpses of how things will look like then. This movie felt like a movie I saw when I was younger, where a kid enters a video game tournament and has to play Super Mario Bros in the championship game.

Ready Player One is an adult version of that film, with themes that resonant with now and recent history. You could imagine that in an alternate history, Second Life kept going and became OASIS. Although, I don’t think users would actually zero out – no matter how tied to our daily lives and finances an online account is (e.g. Google account), if there is a chance you will die and lose everything, you would just use a second account for any death-defying stuff (like raid against major corporations).

The story itself is kid-friendly, although with plenty of fan-service cameos to make the Otaku happy. It has a polished story, although I am not sure how believable it actually is that an Easter egg didn’t get solved after 5 years. Given the Spielberg connection, I could see this movie being this generation’s ET. Although I am not sure how old you should be to see this movie (I saw ET when I was young and remember being scared of it – not of the alien but his behaviour). Ready Player One is a solid 4 out of 5 for its portrayal of future society.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: games, moviereview