★★★★☆
STEVEN Spielberg flexes his nostalgic-meets-futuristic muscles for what is surely one of the most gargantuan pop culture, geek-fuelled extravaganzas the big screen has ever seen.
The year is 2045 and the world has become even more overcrowded and under-resourced. As our young protagonist Wade (Tye Sheridan) describes it, he was born after people stopped trying to make things better and focused on pure survival.
The only way to escape the harsh reality of the real world is to plug into the OASIS, a virtual world created by the now-dead James Halliday (Mark Rylance), a kind of Willy Wonka-esque figure for the tech world, alongside business partner Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg). The OASIS allows people to do, and more importantly be, pretty much anything they can imagine inside the bodies of their chosen avatars.
Halliday has left behind a quest that involves a series of near-unbeatable challenges which lead to retrieving three keys and eventually to a fabled “Easter Egg” hidden somewhere in the virtual world. The prize for the lucky winner is control of the entire OASIS itself and, by extension, the future of mankind.
As shadowy tech company IOI – led by the ruthless Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) – seeks the prize for their own nefarious ends, Wade teams up with like-minded players including the rebellious Art3mis (Olivia Cooke) and mod-creator Aech (Lena Waithe) to finish the quest first.
The action is built in part like a video game, with our hero using power-ups at his disposal to solve levels. As it goes we’re presented with set-piece after set-piece that play out like a visually overwhelming, eye-popping explosion of graphical nostalgia where you get to play a fun game of spot-the-reference.
Batman, The Iron Giant, Back to the Future, Halo, Freddy Krueger – few geek touchstones are left unturned and, if you feel like any are missing, they’re probably in there somewhere in the background waiting to be spotted upon rewatches.
The question, then, becomes is this a mere shallow exercise in rose-tinted longing for the past? Or is it a loving, energetic celebration of the pop culture that has not only been cherished and even created by Spielberg himself but become so ingrained in our collective cultural consumerism.
The answer lies in how much you’re willing to take that leap and dive wholeheartedly into the imagination-driven world that has little time for cynicism. In the hands of a lesser director you might say that it exploits and flings around the nostalgia like so many puppets on strings.
But Spielberg’s intentions feel pure here, replacing the often self-satisfied smirk of Ernest Cline’s source material – the author’s co-screenwriting credit suggests this vision works infinitely better when adapted – and replaced it with a joyous grin intent on making a wide mainstream audience feel the same way. There is a beating heart behind the glossy technical craft here, a real respect for the pop culture that so dictates everything about the film’s universe.
At the same time, in the very way it bombards and overwhelms you with its visuals, there’s an underlying critiquing of the way in which imagery from entertainment gets appropriated and even begins to lose some meaning – “I like things how they were,” Halliday says in one of his carefully archived and viewable memories. “Why can’t we go backwards for once?”
The film also weaves in a valuable lesson for today’s online-obsessed era that maybe it’s best to log off every once in a while. But for the duration that we’re plugged into this particular virtual world, it’s a hugely enjoyable, visually spectacular and escapist thrill ride.
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