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Created Apr 21, 2018 12:03AM PST • Edited Mar 12, 2021 06:16PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Ready Player One is plenty of fun, yet is leavened by SciFi seriousness. It’s also kind of a cult movie, yet worked for a newbie like me. The more pop culture you know, especially 80s pop culture, the more fun it is.

   Steven Spielberg’s best SciFi in 25 years is often an extended visual tickle, albeit too extended at 2½ hours. Long and adolescently rambunctious, it brings out the kid in Spielberg, which is where he made his bones.

   He hasn’t lost his youthful fastball. Just consider the performance he gets from Tye Sheridan. Still young, but no longer a kid, the great Sheridan enters full Brando territory as Wade Watts, aka Player One: Parzival.

   Yep, all hail the king of cinema. Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One richly rewards a trip to the movies.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Tye Sheridan enters leading-man territory as Wade Watts / Parzival. Sheridan (one of several terrific new moviestars, including Liam James and Nick Robinson) made his mark early in Tree of Life, then etched two legendary performances in 2013: Mud & Joe.

   • Olivia Cooke is more than a little intriguing as Art3mis / Samantha Cook.
   • Mark Rylance delivers far and away the best performance as James Halliday, the deceased co-creator of the OASIS, who goes by Anorak in OASIS. Rylance is the latest greatest Brit thespian.
   • Ben Mendelsohn plays one of his figurehead roles as the recently-appointed CEO of Innovative Online Industries, aka the big bad guy.
   • Lena Waithe livens up the movie as “H” / Helen Harris.
   • T.J. Miller voices his annoying brand of comedy as a freelance weapons and magic item dealer and bounty hunter, who is often employed by IOI.
   • Simon Pegg is more vulnerable than usual as Curator / Ogden Morrow.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The scenes of stacked living in a downmarket dystopia are first rate SciFi. Credit the director, guy name of Spielberg, and the screenplay by Ernest Cline & Zak Penn.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    This is Spielberg’s best SciFi in 25 years, comparing very favorably to the rest of his 21st century output.

    • Minority Report
    • A.I.
    • War of the Worlds

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    Over a hundred stunt players, on top of countless FX and CGI artists and staff.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.8

17. Sex Innocent 1.5

18. Violence Fierce 2.1

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.4

    Conservation of Energy is the law of nature most abused in SciFi movies. Oddly, it’s respected here, since all the superhuman action happens in cyberspace.

    The laws of economics are abused instead, as the video game based economy is nearly as implausible as Tony Stark’s chest-implanted arc reactor.

22. Circumstantial Supernatural 3.1

23. Biological Glib 2.0

24. Physical Glib 2.0