This film peaks the interests of SciFi lovers and gamers alike, promising a concept that takes open world style gaming to whole new levels and fits millions of players into the same place where they can be and do anything that they want. My hopes going into this film was that it would honor the love gamers have for lore, for building their reputation, and for banding together to take out other teams in hopes of mastering the video game world. I didn’t want to expect much more than that for two reasons:

1. Movies don’t have the room or time that video games (or novels like the one this film is based on) do to really build the world and characters. In this film, we had two worlds to understand in a short time: the real world and the virtual one. There just wasn’t enough time in this two-hour film to accomplish what a game or novel can.

2. The foundation of this virtual world is Pop Culture, references to classic films and characters and movie stars. While this makes for an interesting mesh of lovable characters, I also expected the film to be overwhelmingly packed with unnecessary nostalgia that doesn’t move the plot forward in the two-hour span of story we are being offered.

That said, I was more excited to see this game/novel brought to life than anything. The plot centers in on the final wishes of the game developer James Halliday who asked that users of the game, titled “Oasis,” study his life and his experiences in full to discover the hidden Easter Egg within the game. For those who are not familiar with gaming, “Easter Eggs” are little extra features or bonuses developers sneak into a game. They can be for humor or for some added boost to your character or for nothing at all. In the case of Oasis, the Easter Egg would determine the sole proprietor of Halliday’s legacy: one trillion dollars, ownership over the Oasis and its operations, and the renown as the first player to have beaten this massive open world game. To find the Easter Egg, a player has to secure three keys, each of which are rewards for solving a clue left behind by Halliday that requires gameplay and heavy research into the creation of the game itself. When we are introduced to the Oasis, most of its users have lost interest in the hunt for Halliday’s Easter Egg, even though it is still a cultural staple of the game and its challenges.

Only die-hard individuals still research and study the game to uncover the location of the three keys and the Easter Egg. Wade Watts, Gamertag: Parzival, is one of the few “gunters” left and becomes the first user to locate one of the legendary keys, reigniting the hunt for Halliday’s Easter Egg. Along with a few other gunters and a profit-hungry corporation called Innovative Online Industries (IOI), Parzival locates each key one by one in a race to inherit Halliday’s legacy before corrupt individuals turn into a profit machine.

Throughout the hunt, characters must survive action-packed challenges in game that could destroy their characters and force them to respawn with years of collected items, coins, and weapons lost while also surviving assassination and kidnapping attempts in the real world as they prove that they are getting closer to the egg. IOI is the cleverly acronym’d villain of this story, hiring (enslaving) gamers all over the world as manpower to increase their chances of getting to the egg first. Despite their army of a few hundred users and a few dozen “Halliday Scholars,” they are still always one step behind Parzival in the deciphering of clues to push a user ahead in the hunt. Of course, they target him instead, chasing him through the challenges until an all-out war must decide who will be the last man standing. Spoiler alert: everyone dies, so how is the egg won?

The film does an amazing job of breaking down the Oasis and the culture of the world affected by the creation of a virtual escape from real-world dystopia. It isn’t hard to believe that a game like this is possible with the way it addresses the tech that goes into entering the game and the world that is the Oasis. If you have the space and the tech to run in place, expect to get fit as a fighter whose real body movements and agility determine your fate in game challenges. Like with real games, it is up to the user to pay attention to the clues provided and decipher ways to make it to the next level, all the while having the opportunity to wander off and spend a few hours doing absolutely nothing in the well built open world. There are bars, libraries, races where one has to get past King Kong to win, and even casino planets. This game is every game in one, showing the vast capabilities of software and game development when well funded and well supported. We spend most of the movie getting to know our favorite characters in their avatar form, only to meet their real-world forms as the plot progresses. Both in-game and out, these characters are charismatic badasses that you can’t help but support all the way to the end. With the drop of a visor, you are immersed in a world where you can be anyone and accomplish anything, as long as you don’t die and “lose your shit” first. Who wouldn’t love a movie that imagines allowing you to be anyone anywhere?

Fight scenes that imagine players and recognizable avatars as the champions of a fight to real-world revolution really allow you to get invested in the struggle of Parzival and the High 5 (his gamer clan). By the end of this film, you want nothing more than to see them succeed at becoming the first to the egg as the group who truly and genuinely cherish the spirit of the game in the way that Halliday intended. One of my favorite elements of the movie was getting to meet the major gamers moving the plot along in the real world. You learn that characters you didn’t even expect to be real world people are. This world is literally full of people living out their everyday lives as their avatars.

To be frank, this film was borderline cheesy. The many references ignite nostalgia in the audience, but also come off as sacrilege depending on how a reference is introduced. If you are going to bring up a classic, bring it up in a way that revitalizes it more than makes it a cliche. I was happy to see how the Iron Giant played into the film, but then other recognizable references come off as cliche (I won’t spoil further). Ultimately, the world that we are given is too big to actually function the way that the film claims without filling some major plotholes. It is just not possible to have an open world like this without some major software, energy, and hardware innovations that the film doesn’t bother to ponder at all. We are supposed to believe that this world that is slowly losing its primary fuel resources can power a worldwide Oasis where even the most poverty-stricken can log on and be great? How? Something is missing that maybe the books break down better than the movie could in two hours.  This is definitely a kid-friendly movie designed to help the audience fall in love with new SciFi that revitalizes Pop Culture references we all know and respect. The result of so many references in one movie, however, is a sort of nostalgia overload. By the end, I am begging the movie to end and tell me if the Easter Egg is ever won by either side. It is also weird to me that Steven Spielberg felt compelled to remove all references of his own works from the film as he brought it to life, when originally he is a referenced classic creator in the book. Ultimately, the world built is believable on screen but doesn’t actually fill in all the plotholes needed to be a successful Science Fiction conceptualization.

Lastly, while the film does its best to incorporate gamer culture and language into each character, many of the slang choices and execution are not well executed. Its not so noticeable that it harms the film, but any gamer going into this film expecting to feel authentically represented must pick and choose the victories won in Ready Player One.