Ready Player One

Annotation for KRRR! 2025 by Michael Šenovský

In his (so far) latest science fiction film, Steven Spielberg decided to tell a story about a dystopian future in which people nostalgically flee to a virtual world, while power­‑hungry corporations subvert the real world around them and slowly deprive them of their freedom. Needless to say, the chosen theme has not lost its relevance since the film was released in 2016. The adaptation of Ernest Cline’s novel takes viewers to the future, where eccentric inventor James Halliday has launched a vast virtual world, the OASIS, where people can escape from the ever­‑worsening reality of everyday life and experience adventures with a vast array of pop culture icons from the past fifty years. Posthumously, Halliday revealed that ownership of the OASIS technological empire will go to whoever manages to complete a series of challenging, nerdy­‑focused challenges. A number of Holiday's young admirers, including the main character Parzival, as well as the technology magnate Sorrento and the mysterious girl Art3mis, who helps Parzival realize the wider context of the overall event, are striving to win.

In his interpretation of Cline's novel, Spielberg emphasized certain motifs characteristic of his own work. Parzival grows up in a family without a father, and his relationship with his surrogate, but still absent father figure in the person of the inventor Halliday shapes his view of the world and character development throughout the narrative. The main villain Sorrento also came to the role of antagonist through his relationship with Halliday, which, however, ended in a bitter split, and for the young heroes he acts as a negative role model, someone they really do not want to become.

Although the film is full of pop culture references and for many viewers finding and recognizing them is a great source of pleasure, their presence in the film is not an end in itself and their meaning changes throughout the film. On the one hand, they represent a means for the heroes to build and deepen relationships with each other, and even to fight evil corporations, but on the other hand, it also shows that boundless escapism cannot ultimately be the solution to real problems.