Catch the Myth: Decoding the Ready Player One trailer
At the height of his power in the 1980s, Steven Spielberg clarified his relationship with cinematic escapism. “I don’t want audiences to escape from reality,” he said. “I want them to escape with reality.” The likes of Empire of the Sun, Jurassic Park and Minority Report went on to underline his point, but with Ready Player One, Spielberg may have found his definitive comment on the uneasy tension between reality and fantasy.
Based on Ernest Cline’s novel, Ready Player One launched its first trailer at San Diego Comic Con on July 22nd, and it contained enough breathtaking effects, sly references and action set pieces to keep the online fan community happy. What’s most remarkable, however, is that despite showing a side to Spielberg we haven’t seen before (I never thought I’d see a Spielberg scene in which a giant man-beast thing annihilates Freddie Krueger with a machine gun), it’s still definitively a Spielberg film.
In this piece, I’ll look at how elements of Spielberg’s signature style manifest themselves in the trailer…
Identity and Faces
Ready Player One is a tale of two worlds: the ravaged real world and the virtual world of The Oasis. Spielberg needs to draw a clear line between these worlds, but also show how those differences reflect on character. He does that through characters’ faces.
Look at how Spielberg captures Wade while he’s in the real-world. Here, we see our hero’s face in close-ups or medium close-ups without shadow to obscure him.
There’s a sense of connection here, but when we move into The Oasis, it’s lost. Suddenly, characters are shrouded in darkness or by masks and Spielberg sets his camera at a distance from them, building a sense of disconnect between us and them.
This isn’t a new technique. Think of our introduction to Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where our hero’s face is kept hidden from us to build mystery. Or Empire of the Sun, where the morally ambiguous Basie is hidden beneath a baseball cap and sunglasses during his introduction to Jim. A.I. and Minority Report, whose dark science fiction Ready Player One seems to be channelling, play the same game, as Spielberg obscures and distorts his lead character’s faces in order to highlight their inhumanity in a world dominated by technology.
A Virtual Dystopia
One of the frequent criticism of Cline’s novel is that it too easily endorses its lead character’s nostalgia. I’ve never really agreed with that point, and I don’t think Spielberg does either. Judging by what we see in the trailer, Spielberg’s take on The Oasis is a nightmare of claustrophobic order and darkness.
Look, for example, at the calm and deliberate way Spielberg moves his camera when shooting The Sixers. We’re seeing these characters ready themselves for a battle or a chase. There’s a sense of chaos and disorder in their actions, but Spielberg undercuts it with a steady and dispassionate camera that has a somewhat Kubrickian feel to it.
It’s during this part of the trailer that Spielberg cuts to one of the promo’s more interesting shots — and one that could well get lost amongst the visual pyrotechnics that follow. As The Sixers get ready, Spielberg shows us the traffic lights that will tell them when to go, and focuses in particular on a green light in which The Sixers’ cars and the Statue of Liberty are reflected.
It’s another moment that recalls Kubrick (the glowing red ‘eye’ of Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey) and one that also touches upon Spielberg’s own use of eyes and sight symbolism (see A.I. and Minority Report. But it also underlines the dystopian feel Spielberg is perhaps aiming for with The Oasis. Here wa have order, control and an army of soldiers ready to attack the hero — all set in front of an icon of freedom and liberty.
Some paradise.
Light Side/Dark Side
One of the most famous elements of Spielberg’s style is his use of light, but Ready Player One is notable for how little there is of it. This is a trailer of surprising visual darkness, where most of the illumination comes from light produced by gunfire and explosions.
Even when the trailer opens up into lighter areas (such as the car chase sequences), Spielberg fills his frame with such chaos that it feels as claustrophobic as the dark. What’s more, during the moments when we do get some light, it’s hard, cold light that obscures the scene. Compare, for example, the light Spielberg employs during Wade’s entry into The Oasis with the light he used when The BFG snatches Sophie. The latter is soft and inviting, the former piercing and distancing. It’s another suggestion that The Oasis may not be all it seems.
The real world, by contrast, seems much more inviting. There’s greater depth of field, more light, a wider frame. Sure it’s a wasteland and you can see why people would want to escape, but at least there’s room to breathe.
Perhaps the most telling insight into Spielberg’s possible depiction of The Oasis and the real world comes in the sole shot that combines the two. Early in the trailer, we see a woman plugged in and pole dancing. She seems happy, but Spielberg traps her. She’s captured within the frame of her window that’s within the frame of her trailer that’s within the frame of the cinema screen. There’s limitless opportunities in The Oasis, but seen from the outside her world seems tragically small.
Ready, Player One?
What does all this mean? It’s difficult to tell from a short trailer, of course, but it’s interesting to speculate nonetheless. By creating such an ominous atmosphere within The Oasis, Spielberg may be doing what he did in Jurassic Park, A.I. and Minority Report: asking us to question the value of escapism and how our desire for it impacts the real world.
Whatever the darkness of The Oasis, Wade is right when he says that it grants him the freedom to be someone, and perhaps that’s the tragedy at the heart of Spielberg’s adaptation. Humans crave power and control, and maybe a dystopia in which we feel like we can change something is better than a flawed world in which we feel like we can’t.
Of all the nods and Easter eggs this trailer holds, the most important comes towards the end, where Rush sing about the nature of changes and change. “He knows changes aren’t permanent,” they say. “But change is.” Perhaps the struggle of Ready Player One is for the characters to realise just how important real change in the real world really is.
