- For reference on my own taste first, the top 3 films I've seen this year so far is The Shape of Water, Paddington 2 and Coco (Being in the UK means we get stuff a lot later than the US, although I will commit to my own sin of taking this long to watch Paddington. Last year my favourite films was Baby Driver, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. and Get Out. So if those match up with your tastes, you'll probably be in a similar boat with me on this.)
- I haven't read the book so I can't really do comparisons between the two. What I can tell though is Spielberg has appeared to cut out most of the problematic stuff from the book itself (There's no moment where the game comes to halt to talk about mastabation for example)
- I got to see this film due to Cineworld (UK) having it as one of their unlimited member screenings.
- Prepare yourself for an opening exposition dump by our main protagonist. It goes on for quite a long while (At least until the title card comes up) to the theme of Jump. Maybe it's mandatory to explain the premise of the world... but still, show, don't tell.
- Oh yeah Batman shows up here, he's in the film for a grand total of maybe 3 seconds for the whole film, similarly the 1966 Batmobile as well.
- In fact a lot of the references are like that, Tracer, Chun Li, the Battletoads, the Spartans from Halo, etc. For the most of them, what you've seen the trailer of them is what you get. With a few exceptions like King Kong, The Iron Giant, The Gundam and yes, Mechagodzilla.
- The highlight of the film acting wise comes from Mark Rylance and his performance as Halliday, he captures the weary old programmer role very well and has a great speech at the end of the film explaining why he created the Oasis in the first place. Simon Pegg also performs well as Ogden Morrow, the co-creator who parted ways with halliday when the Oasis becomes too big.
- Sadly can't say that Tye Sheridan as Wade Watts/Parzival is all that memorable. At best he's servicable, at other times he's a slog. If you've seen the trailer and saw his rallying speech in that, that's what you expect. You much rather prefer to spend more time with Art3mis and Aech who seem a lot more interesting, but we don't get nearly enough time with them to learn more about them.
- Daito and Shoto don't feel they get any time at all until the third act. At least they don't feel an embarassment to japan with only going on about honour on virtue of not being in the film that much.
- Ben Mendelsohn as Sorento does an alright job. He plays the corporate business bad guy to a tee, but he doesn't ham up the performance, that honour goes to T.J. Miller as i-R0k who gives in the requisite oddball performance for the film. Sadly there wasn't nearly enough Hannah John-Kamen as F'Nale Zandor (Wait, that's a real name and not a gamertag?) on screen with Sorento she clearly shows as the bigger threat, but she's not given any real time to be one.
- Spielberg knows how to shoot a film, I'll say that much. The worlds he's crafted here really do pop out and look great, even during the hectic race at the beginning of the film and the big final battle sequence, you can clearly tell what is going on and where everyone is along with what they are going to do. It's not going to make you vomit during the action sequences and it might be worth watching a youtube video 3 months later to spot all those blink and you miss references (Sonic is apparantly in the film somewhere but I did not spot him).
- CGI outside of the really bad looking main character designs is good as well. Perhaps it helps that it's a video game so it can be a little unrealistic compared to normal but it works, I particularly like how the Curator looks, and they do a good job for Mechagodzilla in the final big fight. The militarised IOI soldiers stand out as noteworthy to. Also there is i-R0k who's design is stupid but also amusingly stupid to enjoy.
- Funnily enough with all the talk about this being a movie about video games. It's the extended sequence in the middle of the film with the second key challenge set in The Shining where the film is at it's best. The references work here the best since it's basically just key moments from the shining messing around with the Hi-5 and getting to Aech who did not see the film, falling for the bloody elevator and the babe in the shower that's really an old woman.
- I wish the final battle was set in a more interesting place though, you here the name "Castle Anorak" and you are expecting a castle that can rival that of Castle Greyskull (considering the 80's references and all) but it falls on the fairly plain side design wise, after the really great Shining Sequence before it, you sorta want better.
- There are some really, really, really dumb moments of convenience that I hope where from the books as they stand out like a really sore thumb that you wonder why they are there, such as why do these High-Tech suits have the ability to feel pain if you are going to use them in combat? The main big bad gets beaten by Parzival kicking him in the balls and you have to wonder why would even make a suit that lets you feel pain in the balls in the real world, you got you big expensive custom gaming chair. Why does the Sorento have his password written on a small piece of paper by his chair for all to see, including Parzival when he holograms him in for a message. How does someone even reach a high rank by doing that, it's not even a trap or anything, he just has it there ready for all to see. And Halliday has a really big off-button that just turns off the Oasis in his place that Parzival nearly hits due to being chased in the real world... It feels like it's just there for last act tension and I don't know why it exists. Also there talk about Parzival parents died in the first part of the film and never touch on it again later on. I won't go into this much further though because those feel like CinemaSins stuff which people really don't care about.
- Your not going to care for the soundtrack unless it's themes you recognise from other films like parts of Back to the Future, the score of The Shining or Godzilla's theme.
- Oh and the 3D doesn't really stand out at all. It's lighted at least so you can see what is going on, but there was nothing about it that popped out. Since I think this film is only being released in 3D, that alone could be a big turn off for people.
