Ready Player One, based on the book by the same name by Ernest Cline, is latest movie from the mind of Steven Spielberg. The movie stars Wade Watts, a teenager living in 2045. He reveals that nearly everything is done in a virtual reality game, the OASIS, because the real world is not a good place to live. When the OASIS’ creator, James Halladay, dies, he reveals a contest. Whoever can find three keys, hidden in very specific spots and only obtained by winning nearly impossible challenges, will gain his fortune and complete control of his creation. However, after five years, nobody has cleared the first challenge, an insane race on a death course. At the same time, a massive corporation, IOI, is trying to gain control of the OASIS in hopes of using it for their own purposes. Lead by the CEO of the company, Nolan Sorrento, they will stop at nothing to find the keys. So Wade (Or as he goes by in the OASIS, Parzival), his best friend Aech, his cyber crush Art3mis, and two japanese brothers named Sho and Daito, need to find the keys before IOI do.

As hard as this is for me to say, this film does have a few flaws. Younger kids may not get all the references in the film. Also, the first challenge is beaten in a very idiotic way, and the fact no one beat it in five years is very dumb.

In spite of the few flaws, this film is fantastic. The visuals are fantastic and really help capture the idea of being inside a world where you can do anything. The great CGI helps to capture the amazing effects and do not look bad at any point in the movie. All of the challenges are amazing from the death course race to the surprisingly goofy recreation of the hotel from The Shining. The movie is filled with references from classic games like Adventure to animation classics, such as the Iron Giant, and even anime like Gundam. The way the main five play off of each other is cute and makes for some great laughs, both in the OASIS and the real world. The romance between Wade/Parzival and Samantha/Art3mis is adorable, as they both play off of each other really well. Sorrento and his chief enforcer I-R0k are fantastic villains, as they provide a decent threat as well as some laughs, I-R0k in particular. The movie’s climax is amazing and has two very touching messages, namely that it’s the adventure that’s the prize, not the end, and that you can’t use fantasy to escape from the real world.

Overall this film is fantastic. The flaws it does have are few and far between. Even if quite a few things from the book were changed, it’s similar enough to the book to still have its spirit but different enough to have its own identity. Even if you never read the book or don’t like video games, this is still a great movie.

Final Score: 5/5