Post 4, Group B - The Look and Feel of Ready Player One, by Jared Islas

Over spring break, I went to see Ready Player One with my dad. I hadn’t heard really heard much about the film but my dad was a big fan of the book (he said he has read it multiple times). The movie is about a future where a VR-like technology captures the mind of the entire population. In Ready Player One, this comes in the form of a virtual reality world called The Oasis. The main character of the movie, Wade Watts, explains that, “People come to The Oasis for all the things they can do, but they stay for all the things they can be.” When in The Oasis, people can customize their avatar to be anything they want, any gender, any body form, any character, etc. When I was watching the movie, I found it a bit jarring of how different the in-game scenes (which were all CGI) were compared to the real world scenes (which were live action). They used two completely different styles and color pallets. This was until a scene in the middle of the movie, that this post will dive into, combined these two dueling styles in a meaningful and simple way.

Much of the beginning of the film follows Wade (as his in-game avatar Parzival), and his in-game friends Aech, Artemis, Sho and Daito trying to beat other players in the game at a challenge to find an “easter egg” left by the game’s creator. The group of friends, led by Wade are successful, and begin becoming popular among other players but also begin to be targeted by a private company who sends out armies of players into The Oasis to be the first to find the easter egg which grants the winner exclusive ownership over the entire Oasis.

Wade begins falling for Artemis due to the fact that they share similar interests and the desire to be the first to find the easter egg. This happens despite the fact that they have never met in real life and all Wade knows of her is her avatar. When Wade tells Artemis about his feelings in-game, she expresses her dismay explaining that he does not know her at all and he’s only falling in love with the idea of her, or only what she wants him to see/know.

Eventually after some more twists and turns, Wade finally meets Artemis (whose real name is Samantha) in the real world. This was one of my favorite parts of the movie because the look and feel of the scene is vastly different than anything from the film up to this point. Like I said, the majority of the beginning of the film was seen from the perspective of the in-game characters in The Oasis, so everything was bright, colorful, flashy, etc (as seen in the trailer above). Conversely, the live action portions of the film up to this point mostly followed Wade in and around the stacks (where the people live in this future) and the back of a van where he goes online to The Oasis. Both of these settings (pictured below) have a dark, dirty, industrial like feel to them.

Both of these look and feel completely different than what this scene looks and feels like. In the scene, Wade and Samantha are sitting on the top of a rooftop surrounded by greenery. The picture below is the best I can find of the scene, but you can still see the contrast between the other live-action scenes and the animated scenes. I think Steven Spielberg, the director of the movie might have chose to have this scene blend the two color palettes of the film together to depict the meeting of in-game friends in the real world.  

This scene is also incredibly slow, but in a good way. Compared to other action packed portions of the film, the scene focuses on the two characters and their conversation about their relationship and The Oasis. Another thing that is different about this scene compared to the rest of the movie was the absence of a score. The scene was silent and calm. Again, I think Spielberg did this to express how everyone in this world is so caught up in The Oasis, that they never just take a minute to live in the moment. 

It is with this scene that Wade’s opinion on The Oasis changes, with the help of Samantha. Rather than seeing it as a fun game where everyone spends every waking moment of their life doing anything they want, he begins to see that there is things, and people, in the real world that are worth experiencing. This sentiment is best described by Justin Nordstrom in his article about the book that the movie was based on written by Ernest Cline. Nordstrom says that, “Cline’s Oasis setting is simultaneously utopian and dystopian—as it enhances education and ignites a player’s imagination on one hand, and leads to abandonment of the world’s pressing needs on the other.” I understand the quote “abandonment of the world’s pressing needs” in a number of ways.  This refers to not only the world’s pressing needs, but also people’s pressing needs like real relationships, real experiences, or simply reality. 

Works Cited

Nordstrom, J. "“A Pleasant Place for the World to Hide”: Exploring Themes of Utopian Play in Ready Player One." Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, vol. 18 no. 2, 2016, pp. 238-256. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/618474.