Steven Spielberg’s giant nostalgia trip through a huge virtual reality world, “Ready Player One,” is upon us, ready to blast audiences with crazy action scenes and visual references to everything they ever liked as an ’80s (or ’90s) kid.
The movie follows Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), who spends all his time in the OASIS, a massive online virtual world filled with things to do, places to go and characters to be. It’s like the internet if you could walk around in it. Wade is obsessed with finding Halliday’s Easter Egg, a hidden gem left by the OASIS’ late creator (Mark Rylance). Like a digital Willy Wonka, Halliday left the Easter Egg after his death for a way to pass on ownership of the OASIS to a new person, along with fabulous wealth.
“Ready Player One” is a huge romp through its own virtual universe, and in the era of properties like “Star Wars” and Marvel superhero movies, it seems like it might be primed for a cinematic universe of its own. Lots of movies include post-credits scenes teasing potential sequels to get audiences primed for the next chapter in the story — so do you need to wait around through the credits of “Ready Player One” for a post-credits scene hinting at the OASIS cinematic universe?
The answer to that question, in fact, is no. There’s no post-credits scene on “Ready Player One.” That might even be considered a callback to Spielberg’s other blockbusters, that end at the end, and then the credits roll. In any event, if you need to sprint to the bathroom or you just want to start cataloguing all the Easter Eggs that pop up in the background of “Ready Player One,” you can do so after the final scene.
Though “Ready Player One” has no teaser for future movies, it’s not hard to imagine how they might come to be if the film is a hit among fans — especially since Ernest Cline, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, has written other books about lonely fanboys like Wade, including the 2016 novel “Armada.”
In addition, the OASIS spans multiple planets, like “Planet Doom” and “Planet Minecraft,” that reference everything from popular games and movies of now, to the ones Halliday was obsessed with from the 1980s and 1990s. It’d be easy to dip into the virtual world, and potentially, to find new stories to tell.