Before he died, Halliday hid three clues in his world for an “Easter egg” that would allow the discoverer complete control of this fabulous spectral kingdom. The game’s creator is the late James Halliday, played by Mark Rylance, an uber-nerd genius who is a cross between Willy Wonka, Steve Jobs and Tim Berners-Lee. (The film hints subliminally at X-rated experiences in motels for those interested.) They can win digital money in various contests but possibly blow it all – “lose their shit”. Here is a limitless fantasyscape of the mind where people can play games and have experiences. His only interest is in strapping on the VR headset and entering the alternative universe of the Oasis, as a mythic avatar named Parzifal. Tye Sheridan is Wade Watts, a lonely teenager living in Columbus, Ohio, which is now a gruesome favela of trailers stacked on top of each other. Cities are massive scuzzy slums and virtual reality is the opium of the masses. The future world is pretty badly beaten up after a series of wittily imagined seismic catastrophes, including the “bandwidth riots”. The film is set in 2045, and though we may yet see a fashion for YA dramas about pre-apocalyptic utopias, Ready Player One isn’t one of them. Where’s the beef? And the movie is left with the tricky and anticlimactic business of negotiating the relationship between virtual reality and the boring old actual sort. It’s a close encounter of the pixelated kind. But as with all VR on film, from Tron in 1982 to the new Jumanji of 2017, I found a weightless, frictionless quality to this inner zone of digitally rendered experience.
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