Ready Player One may be one of the recent victims of 'elitist' film criticism in which a movie gets killed even before its release. RPO's original material is very self-serving to the geek culture that it felt like any decent filmmaker who accepts this project is getting himself a career suicide.
Steven Spielberg is 71 years old and it is safe to say that he is now contemplating on his legacy. Halliday is Spielberg. The OASIS is Jurassic Park. Here we have two creators reflecting on the vast, irrevocable influence of their creation. Spielberg created the modern blockbuster, the modern studio movie so obsessed with branding that roughly half a century later still operates on the same checklist that made Jaws, Jurassic Park, E.T., and Indiana Jones rake cash like an open El Dorado.
RPO is Spielberg telling us to move on. Not to get more out of Jurassic Park (the OASIS), but to get out of Jurassic Park. RPO's main band of heroes missed the point Halliday tried to get through them. They were stuck with representing geek culture in this open world that they missed the chance to CREATE. The OASIS is filled with late 20th century pop culture that it somehow makes any player know what the references really are. They don't.
Spielberg filled the OASIS with movies that were influenced by his trailbraze. Here you see a creator dissecting himself and the spawns of his influence. But the players of OASIS do not really know what these movies meant. Iron Giant was used to smash guys in uniforms when in reality that movie is really just about pacifism. Wade doesn't really understand Halliday's "rosebud". Maybe he didn't really watch "Citizen Kane".
With RPO, we can feel a hint of Spielberg's regret. His filmography doesn't scream of radicalization nor does it try to "change the world". We cannot categorize this bearded, silent cinematic god into a genre, messaging, or motive. One thing the man keeps consistent is putting into frame the value of a single life and the struggle to protect it. Munich, Schindler's List, Close Encounters, The Post.
Spielberg is facing what could be the most crucial checkpoint of his career. Not the question of whether his legacy will live on but the question of whether generations of movie-goers will move on from the sweet nostalgia of 80s pop culture and the reverse-engineered blockbuster movie that always feels like E.T., all of which he helped to create.
RPO's biggest set piece and might be one of the humblest allusions a filmmaker can give to another filmmaker is Kubrick's The Shining. We can't easily dismiss what the sequence meant and what Spielberg wants to get through us. We can't stay in the hotel forever. We can't stay in the OASIS forever.
I really wish I'm just reading into Ready Player One too much but seeing the character of Halliday I cannot help but think of Steven Spielberg. He almost agreed on Interstellar and we could have seen a clearer existential question Spielberg imposed on himself and to his audience, especially the ones who grew up watching his blockbusters.
This turned out long.
Now, Scorsese.
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