This past Sunday, at the SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas, Ready Player One premiered to an audience of film critics and video game culture geeks alike. Despite some slight technical mistakes, the Steven Spielberg-directed film received mostly positive reactions, even garnering standing ovation from the crowd as the film wrapped up, says the Hollywood Reporter.
The sci-fi epic, adapted from a 2011 Ernest Cline novel, centers on a teenage gamer (Tye Sheridan) who is engaged in an exciting and dangerous event in the VR video game OASIS. There, dead game-maker James Halliday (Mark Rylance) created a plot for a player to gain control of the world’s most popular game, which sends large amounts of players into a desperate frenzy to be the one to gain control. From the looks of the overall promising feedback from last night’s premiere, it’s safe to say that things are off to a good start.
The verdict in general seemed to be that the Warner Bros. film was a success. However, not everyone was deeply impressed with Spielberg’s latest effort. Amongst the unfavorable critiques were those by Kristy Puchko of Slashfilm, who found the film to be a sloppy product of mass iconography instead of something engaging with its source material and inspiration.
However, with most of the feedback being of an encouraging nature, the Ready Player One team shouldn’t be too worried about a few negative pundits. Look for the now highly anticipated Spielberg project when it hits theaters on March 29th.
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