Steven Spielberg
Ready Player One

That Peter Pan syndrome appreciated in recent films like BFG returns forcibly in the new, highly anticipated Ready Player One. Perhaps the most emblematic work of this senile phase of the Cincinnati filmmaker's career. Visually overflowing, after the initial impact, it progressively waters down until it reveals itself for what it is: a little fairy tale, or slightly more, a kids' adventure that fails to convey real tension and engagement. A work of mannerism, with protagonists so two-dimensional they seem like cardboard cutouts, revealing the incapacity of the latest Spielberg to say genuinely interesting things with his cinema. To amaze, to bring content.

And it all resolves into a little moral lesson about the need to play less in Oasis and live real life. Thanks a lot, we really needed that. There are the good kids, those who truly love pop culture and video games, and there's the villain, a cynic who aims only for profit. Wow. Not exactly a fresh story, and made in a rather flat, manneristic way indeed. One gets the impression that the director is not in touch, that he hasn't truly internalized the story and is proposing it again with standard pieces, because after so many years of cinema, all stories resemble each other. This narrative laziness of Spielberg is what undermines his latest films; he focuses too much on the visual and playful side, almost completely forgetting about content and stories, human profiles. Or rather, they are present, but rounded off, sweetened to the maximum, reduced to caricatures, as in a senile vision that softens all the edges of the world.

Certainly, moments of delightful entertainment are not lacking, and understandably so. The sequence of the first car race is masterful, sensational. But the camera juggling quiets down as minutes pass, and what remains is a charming entertainment but devoid of great ambitions. Pleasure is found in the pure vision of very fast and nimble motorcycles, the iconic DeLorean, the Iron Giant, King Kong, Godzilla, and Gundam. Surely, but it is a frivolous pleasure aimed almost exclusively at the nerd audience, which leaves very little beyond the moment's enjoyment.

Thematic hints on the dystopian future and the symbiosis with a virtual reality are obviously present but treated with a paternalistic, bittersweet manner, frankly insignificant compared to what has been seen in numerous works in recent years. A 2010 book, in 2018, may already seem abundantly outdated, especially when it comes to dystopia and technology. In short, these are the years of Black Mirror, something else is needed to impress us.

What's left is the tribute to nerd culture and the eighties, even a bit trivially evoked by tracks like Jump by Van Halen and Blue Monday. There are indeed many citations (or so I believe); however, those alone are not enough to give real depth to the work. The use of specific slang terms like "killare" and "level up" is appreciable, consistent with the desire to pay tribute to that type of culture.

A film that perfectly captures Spielberg's moment. A director suspended out of time, clinging to a childish and overly naively playful vision of cinema, now outdated. Or rather, outdated when one wishes to create auteur works, but it's decidedly difficult to define a toy like Ready Player One as such.

6/10