Ready Player One

Monday morning. Kids at school. $10 tickets at the Galleria. All looking good. And then....Ready Player Wonka. This is Steven Spielberg's latest. It's about a boy, Charlie Bucket Wade Watts, played by Tye Sheridan, who lives in an impoverished rural urban setting and dreams of being elsewhere. Enter a mysterious, man-child savant with poor social skills and a hugely popular business enterprise. Said fella wants to give away 'the keys to the kingdom' for one reason or another. Loads of people scramble to find the golden ticket keys. Shit, there's even a scene of the protagonists floating in a cylindrical chamber that's very reminiscent of the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Like most Spielberg films, this is put together with the skills of a professional technician who knows what he's doing and can call upon the cream of the industry to help him. He has some pull, this guy. But also like most Spielberg films, it doesn't do anything creatively or dramatically innovative. I read someone once refer to him as a 'one-trick pony' and I'm inclined to agree. Sure, there's a market and a place for these kind of films and, if I'm honest, his films are generally not terrible. But there's no bite, no edge, no other angle aside from a child-like wish for a happy resolution. In Ready Player One, he manages to cram in loads of speccy stuff and 'easter eggs' but it still doesn't provoke anything more than a cursory head nod.

There's lots of exposition too - 'Oh, you're Parzival, the knight who found the holy grail. Oh, and you're Artemis, the Greek goddess of some bullshit....' I'd say this is another fault, treating the audience like children, but as most of them probably ARE children, perhaps I'm being overly harsh. Ultimately, we don't NEED to know who the avatars are named after if we don't know already. Another irritation is the overwhelming abundance of pop culture references, hidden and glaringly obvious. I'd usually rail against this obscene nodding and winking but that's kind of the point of the film, for what it's worth. The creator of the Oasis, James Halliday, is (was) a massive nerd genius and the story is really about him and his child-like innocence. The video games, music, films, etc, are all part of the virtual world he created and therefore, part of the film. Many of the usual 'Spielbergian' themes are here - friendship and belonging (clanning up, in the film's vernacular) and the struggle of the weak and oppressed against the powerful (not much hypocrisy there). No surprises who wins in this sugar-coated world. I quite liked the mirror work of the kids in the Oasis rectifying the past relationship between Halliday and Simon Pegg's Ogden Morrow (a bit of a Zuckerberg / Saverin reference?)

There are some nice things about Ready Player One. The visuals are well done in a video game sort of way, the performances run the gamut from heartfelt (Mark Rylance) to suitable (Olivia Cooke) to roast ham (Mendelsohn) and the juxtaposition of the Oasis and the real world is nicely designed. But the pongs outweigh the pings. It starts with Van Halen's 'Jump' and fuck off. The soundtrack is trite and uninventive all the way through. There's a troubling question at the end as to what/who Halliday is (a god, an angel, a spirit residing in his 'oasis'). Whatever the answer, it was unnecessary. And the moment when Parzival summoned the Saturday Night Fever dance floor, I knew it wasn't going to end well for me.


See also:

Obviously, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971) with Gene Wilder as Wonka and also David Cronenberg's Existenz (1999) for a more dystopic taste of virtual reality.

SPOILERS WITHIN PODCAST!!

Listen to "Ready Player One" on Spreaker.

Annihilation

Here's a new thing. I usually only put up entries for films that I see at the cinema (save the occasional 'best of' or some such) but as this streaming idea begins to take hold, I thought I'd join the party. The caveat is that Annihilation was released in cinemas in the US, Canada and China, and Netflix in other 'territories' so it's actually a ridgy digde theatrical release anyway. Not sure how to play it with films like Bright and Mute, which were Netflix originals (though not much chop). We'll see.

So, to the film itself. This follows a few years after the great Ex Machina and is imbued with similar weighty, thought-provoking qualities. It stars Natalie Portman and Oscar Isaac, both of whom are top drawer, basically their default setting. It's creepy, well-paced and it ends with some nice ambiguity. So why didn't I like it as much as I thought I would? Don't get me wrong, it's a good film. But I wasn't blown away. Nor was I moved at all. Nor amused (in any of that word's senses). Impressed, yes, even a little deferential (you don't want Garland on your wrong side, incidentally). But I couldn't warm to it.

There are loads of issues relating to the meaning of aspects of the film, many of which we get stuck into with spoilers in the podcast below. An alien asteroid has landed on a lighthouse and it's life force has spread, creating all sorts of weird and wonderful googly booglies. Suffice to say, the metaphor of the Shimmer is central to the machinations of the plot. This is the colourful, wavy zone that causes all the trouble and drives the story and characters. In fact, Annihilation fits nicely into the three-act paradigm of Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis (read John Yorke's 'Into the Woods'). Especially synthesis, as you'll see if you watch it. Without giving too much away, the themes of self-destruction and evolution are explored while the relevance of the title itself has more to do with personal relationships than your standard sci-fi idea of annihilation. I expect Garland is happy to leave that to Mars Attacks! and Independence Day.

So ultimately Annihilation is a worthy, well-made and pretty unique beast, just not one that I could say I liked very much.


See also:

John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), Daniel Espinosa's Life (2017) and Denis Villeneuve's fantastic Arrival (2016). All for various plot-based similarities.

SPOILERS WITHIN PODCAST!!

Listen to "Annihilation" on Spreaker.