Keys hidden in a VR game world unlock the fortune of the inventor of the OASIS and control over it, so a group of kids must stop a shady Corporation getting the prize.
Like ET crossed with Willy Wonka, Ready Player One is Spielberg back to classic Spielberg - the kids are fighting off the big bad business boss while trying to win the grand prize of a tech giant's fortune and control of the OASIS, a virtual reality world used by most of the planet's population to escape the horrors of their everyday lives. The tech giant in question is the socially awkward but big dreaming James Halliday expertly played by Mark Rylance in a Brian May wig (originally Spielberg wanted Gene Wilder to play the role before his untimely death in 2016) who lived pop culture references and so made all the challenges (all different to the ones in the 2011 book by Ernest Cline) based around his obsession with 1970s & 80s pop culture.
Characters including the Iron Giant, Harley Quinn, MechaGozilla, Chucky, Lara Croft and King Kong all make an appearance alongside references from games like Overwatch, Pitfall, Mortal Kombat, Joust, Street Fighter II, Bioshock, Battle Toads and Mass Effect and more than enough film nods like Back to the Future, Alien, Saturday Night Fever, Robocop, Monty Python & the Holy Grail, Jurassic Park, Beetlejuice, Terminator 2, Mad Max and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. The amazing thing is that the constant search for these on-screen glimpses doesn't distract at all from the story and, in typical Spielberg fashion, the action and narrative are married perfectly with one never overshadowing the other.
There are a vast number of audience-made lists out there on forums documenting as many references as they can and there always seems to be one they've missed. It never ends. From the big ones (like an entire sequence set in a particular film which was completely missing from the trailer, so you'll get no spoilers here) to the little ones (like a briefly-mentioned artefact that turns time back by 60 seconds called the Zemeckis Cube, so named after the Back to the Future director), they flash by for you to either catch and enjoy or miss and never know that that was Freddy Krueger being punched in the balls by Duke Nukem.
Best Quote: "I mean ... it's nothing less than a war for control of the future."
