The second of the films that I caught on the plane is the latest work by Steven Spielberg and adapted from a popular young adult novel. Though I read plenty of crap on the Internet, I am not so juvenile as to think that stringing together a pile of pop culture references and packaging them into a game makes for anything resembling a decent novel. As such I had no real interest in watching this but then I did hear that this is a rare case of the film adaptation being better than the source material.

Earth in the year 2045 is such a crapsack world that ordinary people spend most of their time in virtual realities of one kind or another. The most popular of these platforms is OASIS created mainly by James Halliday. When he died some years ago, he unveiled a massive Easter Egg hunt for three keys hidden throughout OASIS with the grand prize being ownership of OASIS itself. Among these hunters is orphaned teenager Wade Watts and his best friend Aech who he has never met in real life. Wade has an advantage in this effort as he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the life of Halliday including his most important moments and his favorite pieces of pop culture. He is able to be the first in the world to win the first key by figuring out from Halliday’s quotes that he should complete a race by driving backwards. They befriend another hunter known as Art3mis and are assisted by a mysterious Curator who runs a comprehensive archive of Halliday’s life. Opposing them is Nolan Sorrento, the CEO of a corporation which seeks control of OASIS and has an entire army of employees trying to break Halliday’s puzzles through brute force.

The scenario here is, of course, cartoonish and completely implausible. For example the evil IOI corporation enslaves people in indentured servitude and has them literally break rocks in virtual reality. It’s supposed to be all about video games, yet it shows only the fun stuff, gorgeous graphics, spiffy avatars, exciting action etc., without a single scene about the legions of programmers, animators and artists who would be needed to make all that content. The idea that Halliday could have made it all himself and then gamers could keep playing the same games for years after his death is laughable. The dialogue is awful and the gamerspeak littered everywhere, with names like Art3mis and Sorrento’s lead henchwomen known as F’Nale is cringe inducing. The fact that Halliday’s puzzles has to solved by understanding his Rosebud equivalents as yet another nod to Citizen Kane is passable I suppose but very predictable. By most metrics, this would undoubtedly be a very bad movie.

Still, this is a film made by Spielberg and he is nothing if not a consummate craftsman. The film looks great and even though I feel that the way it constantly references pop culture is shallow, capturing only the visuals and nothing else, it’s still fun. The scene in which Daito turns into a Gundam is perfect crowning moment of awesome and though I haven’t read the novel, I could tell that it was originally supposed to Ultraman. Apparently they weren’t able to get the rights. I also loved the extended scene that comes right out of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. It’s odd though as I wouldn’t have thought that there would be much demographical overlap between fans of the novel and those who have watched The Shining. Most of all, Spielberg’s sense of pacing is excellent and he is able to move quickly through the most cringeworthy moments so they don’t weigh too heavily.

So this is another fun but very silly romp, recommended only if you actually recognize the references and can turn your brain off for a while. I’m also not sure that this is actually better than the novel. A quick reading tells me that quite a few of the main characters actually die in the original version while IOI here are cartoon villains who posture but exude no real threat.