ready player one

The future looks a lot like the ’80s, at least in the idealized virtual reality known as the OASIS from ‘Ready Player One’.  The real world looks like crap.  The world has been reduced to crummy shanty towns, stacked to the sky, but who cares about that?  Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) and the rest of the inhabitants of 2044 spend most of their time in the OASIS, masquerading as slick avatars (like Wade’s which is named Parzival).  But what happens when the creator of the OASIS dies and hides an Easter Egg in this virtual world which will make whoever finds it the new ruler?

An all out race breaks out, with Wade/Parzival looking to be a clear front-runner, but when the multinational Innovative Online Industries (IOI) sets its sights on the prize, with plans to make the OASIS only accessible to the very rich, things get deadly and not just in the game, as Wade finds his home in “The Stacks” under siege.

As fans of the novel, by Ernest Cline, know, ‘Ready Player One’ is riddled with so many pop culture references, mainly from the Me Decade, that most assumed it would be impossible to make into a film, due to all the licensing rights that would be required.  But if one person can turn this pop smorgasbord into a reality (virtual or not), it’s Steven Spielberg, who directed based on a script by Cline and Zak Penn.

Check out the new trailer below and see how many references you can pick out:

 

In addition to Sheridan, the cast includes Ben Mendelsohn as the film’s villain Nolan Sorrento, plus Kae Alexander, Olivia Cooke, Hannah John-Kamen, T.J. Miller, Simon PeggMark Rylance, Lena Waithe and Letitia Wright.

‘Ready Player One’ opens on March 30, 2018.

Source: Vanity Fair