Blu-ray & DVD Combo Set Review: 'Ready Player One'

(C)2018 Warner Home Entertainment, Village Roadshow Pictures, and Amblin Entertainment

On Tuesday, July 24, Warner Home Entertainment released director Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One on Blu-ray and DVD, three weeks after the digital download release and nearly four months after the theatrical premiere of this imaginative adaptation of Ernest Cline’s best-selling 2011 novel of the same name.

Director Steven Spielberg’s science-fiction action-adventure reveals a chaotic, collapsing world in the year 2045. Salvation lies in the OASIS, a fantastical virtual-reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday When Halliday dies, his immense fortune is left to the first person who can find a digital Easter egg hidden in the OASIS. Joining the hunt is unlikely hero Wade Watts, who is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending quest filled with mystery, discovery, and danger. 

Although Warner Home Entertainment released Ready Player One in several disc and digital formats – including 4K UHD Blu-ray, Blu-ray/Digital Copy, and DVD/Digital Copy – the one I purchased on Amazon is the Blu-ray/DVD/Digital combo pack.

The Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Combo includes:

1 BD-50 Blu-ray (BD) disc. (Ready Player One feature film and Special Features

1 DVD

1 Movies Anywhere Redemption Code insert (Expires Sept. 30, 2019)

There are six Special Features behind-the-scenes documentaries that come with the Blu-ray, the longest of which is nearly one-hour long in running time. The documentaries are :

• The '80s: You're the Inspiration (1080p, 5:38): Ernest Cline and the film's cast and crew discuss their love for the '80s. Spielberg also briefly touches on cutting most of the references to his films.

• Game Changer: Cracking the Code (1080p, 57:22): An in-depth exploration of the entire movie, beginning with the original writing and moving on to adapting it for the screen, assembling the cast, performances, realizing The Oasis and the real world depicted in the film, costume and prop design and avatar character construction, motion capture performance work, recreating key moments from The Shining, Janusz Kamiński's cinematography, real world shooting locations, and more.

• Effects for a Brave New World (1080p, 24:39): A comprehensive exploration of the film's challenging and complex visual effects, including, most fascinatingly, Spielberg's opportunity to perform pre-visualization in virtual reality.

• Level up: Sound for the Future (1080p, 8:03): A quality examination of the film's sound design, including finding the proper tone for the sound elements, avatar voices, recreating iconic sounds, and more.

• High Score: Endgame (1080p, 10:04): This piece focuses on Alan Silvestri's work on the film's score.

• Ernie & Tye's Excellent Adventure (1080p, 12:00): Ernest Cline and Tye Sheridan sit down to discuss the film ahead of its Austin premiere.

My Take

I somehow managed to miss Ready Player One when it was out in theaters earlier in the year, and being the Spielberg fan that I am, I ordered this Blu-ray + DVD + Digital set as soon as it was available on Amazon. 

I have not read Ernest Cline's best-selling novel, and since I had not seen Ready Player One at the movies, I didn't know what to expect. (Well, that's not quite true. I "kinda, sorta" knew that it was a "young adult" science fiction story, that the setting was dystopian [no surprises there], and that the hero was a teenage boy named Wade. But other than that, I was in the dark about the story, the plot, and the whole 1980s-culture subtheme.)

Well, let me say that I was amazed by what might be Steven Spielberg's most ambitious movie yet. I mean, honestly. I know that Spielberg has a long-term relationship with special effects-heavy movies; his filmography includes SFX-spectaculars that depend on practical effects (Jaws) as well as digital ones (Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park), not to mention all the films that mix both styles (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, War Horse, Bridge of Spies). Ready Player One tops them all visually, if not in thematic depth or overall storytelling pizzazz. 

I have not tried to watch Ready Player One on standard definition DVD yet, but I have watched it on Blu-ray, and I must tell you, Dear Reader, it is definitely a must-get BD set.  

I'm not an expert videophile who can explain technical details such as "crushed blacks' or "artifacts" or "image grain." There are sites on the Internet where there are people who can explain those video issues, including my favorite, Blu-ray.com. 

I can tell you this much, though: If you have a decent (40" or better) HDTV flat screen set with a respectable sound system and a high-end Blu-ray player, Ready Player One will make your jaw drop. 

Now, not only does watching this on a good TV-sound system set-up kinda, sorta make up for not seeing this movie in theaters, but you'll marvel at the cinematic genius of director-producer Spielberg and his cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski. 

Seriously. Look at the way that Kaminski desaturates the 2045 "real world" images to accentuate the starkness of the situation in Columbus, OHIO, and then uses a palette of super saturated and vivid colors when the movie takes us into the virtual-reality MMORPG known as the OASIS. The difference between the two worlds is stark, and it is supposed to be.  It conveys visually why the people in the dystopian world of 2045 would want to turn their backs on a bleak reality and live in a fantasy world were, through the use of hi-tech body suits and gloves, they can literally change their appearance, genders, or even species.

Ready Player One will probably not be my favorite movie by Steven Spielberg, but it certainly is fun to watch at home on Blu-ray. Warner Home Entertainment clearly did a good job with this set; I heartily recommend it.