On the surface, Ready Player One is stuffed with pop culture references.
But a little deeper within the movie are some crucial details and messages worth exploring.
Yippee-ki-yay movie lovers, it's Jan here and today I'm explaining the ending to Ready
Player One and that final scene between Wade and Halliday plus what it means for a potential
sequel.
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this.
Of course, spoilers ahead for the movie, so take care if you've not seen it yet.
Ready Player One is set in a dystopian future in which people escape the real world by visiting
the Oasis, a vast virtual reality universe co-created by designer James Halliday and
his friend Ogden Morrow.
But when Halliday dies, he sets a quest for gunters to track down one easter egg that
will unlock a fortune and give them complete control of the Oasis.
It's when Wade, aka Parzival, begins to research Halliday's archives, that he discovers the
secret track behind him in the race that leads him to the first key.
Wade used Halliday's fear of going forward to figure out he needed to go backwards.
This is the first example of Wade taking time to connect with the game's creator James Halliday
which helps him to figure out the answers he needs.
This theme is taken forward and is crucial to the whole movie, plus it's also how Wade
got that extra life coin which came in so useful later on.
Wade makes the next breakthrough when his Parzival avatar teams up with Artemis and
the rest of the High Five and they work together on the second challenge.
The set-up for this is a stunning recreation of The Shining and again to crack this challenge,
the team have to understand Halliday's personal history and failings.
It was when Halliday gave up trying to communicate with Kira, who he loved, that he retreated
from the world and broke up his friendship with Ogden Morrow.
At this point in the movie, it's Samantha, aka Artemis, who has the emotional depth to
properly understand the situation and she realises that Kira needs to be freed from
the kind of emotional prison that Halliday has trapped her in.
Artemis realises the leap that Halliday referred to in his clue is more than a literal leap,
so in the Overlook Hotel's ballroom she jumps over to Kira, fighting off the zombies, and
asks her to dance, the very thing that Halliday couldn't bring himself to do.
The final key and challenge involves a game called Adventure.
Although the villainous Nolan Sorrento's team eventually figures out how to win the game,
they find to their dismay that winning doesn't actually get them the key.
Instead, as Wade discovers, what Halliday wanted players to learn was that "it's not
about winning, it's about playing".
Rather than triumphing at the game, Halliday wanted the players to discover the game's
easter egg and in that way connect with the original creator.
By the way, in real life, Atari, which developed the Adventure game in the 1970s, refused to
give credit to their game designers and programmers and so this digital easter egg was how one
particular designer hid a credit for himself in the game.
The message that Halliday, and ultimately Spielberg, seem to want to convey in Ready
Player One is the idea of a player forming a bond with the inventor.
Playing the game in this ways transcends the limitations of simply trying to get the highest
score or winning and, instead, it means the creator and the player can enjoy a shared
moment.
In fact, the connection between characters, audiences and the filmmaker is a recurring
theme in Spielberg's movies.
Films can feel like ongoing conversations between a director and their audience, and
can create a long-lasting sense of closeness between a filmmaker or film and us viewers.
Speaking recently at a Ready Player One event at SXSW, Spielberg noted that, "When I decide
to make a movie, sitting in the audience with you, I direct in the seat right next to you.
And your reaction is everything."
But not only does Spielberg prize that strong connection with his own audience, he also
feels that bond with the work of other filmmakers too.
Indeed, he's talked previously about the unforgettable effect on him of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A
Space Odyssey and David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia.
And it's interesting to see this idea of a deep connection emphasised again in Ready
Player One.
In fact, it's that understanding that allows Wade to realise that if he signs Halliday's
contract for sole ownership of the Oasis, he'll make the same mistake that Halliday
did when he lost his friendship with Ogden Morrow, his former partner in Gregarious Games.
And that's when Anorak reveals the secret prize beyond the ownership of the Oasis is
to meet Halliday.
Parzival enters a room with Halliday where a young Halliday is sitting playing a video
game.
In that childhood room, Halliday gives Wade the real easter egg prize, explaining to him
that he created the Oasis because he never felt at home in the real world and he didn't
know how to connect with people.
But Halliday adds that just before he died, he realised that although the real world was
scary to him, reality was in his words "the only place you could get a good meal" and
the only place that's actually real.
Like Halliday, Spielberg has often talked about how his own fears have fuelled his filmmaking
over the years, providing the starting place for many of his projects, adding that 'The
stories always vanquish the fear.'
And in a further echo of Halliday's words in the film, Spielberg recently stated in
an interview with EW that "escape has its pleasurable and medicinal place, but total
escape should not be a destination."
So, in the end, Wade shares control of the Oasis with his friends, the High Five, and
they decide to close the Oasis two days a week to encourage people to participate in
the real world and to connect with each other there.
And what's curious about that last scene with Halliday is that it implies that what we're
seeing is an AI version of the man.
It's almost as if Halliday managed to duplicate his consciousness and upload it into the Oasis
to live on and make sure an appropriate successor was chosen to inherit the virtual world.
It's an interesting theory and would also allow for Halliday's character to return should
a sequel to the movie ever be made.
So, what did you think of Ready Player One and would you like to see a sequel?
And what were your favourite moments or easter eggs in the film?
Aside from The Shining sequence, one of my favourites was the Zemeckis Cube which turns
back time, in homage to Back To The Future director Robert Zemeckis.
Let me know what you enjoyed most in the comments below!
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Thanks for watching and see ya next time.
Yippee-ki-yay movie lovers.