Summary

• Ready Player One captures the immersive world and video game adventure similar to Spielberg's movies.
• Various movies influenced Spielberg's Ready Player One or explored similar technological ideas.
• The film references classic movies and video games, exploring themes of escapism and virtual reality.

While it is hard to ever match Steven Spielberg, movies like Ready Player One capture the similar immersive sci-fi world and engrossing video game adventure of his movie. Adapted from Ernest Cline's best-selling novel of the same name, the movie is jam-packed with action, humor, and romance all set around a video game scavenger hunt. There are many aspects to the movie to enjoy, like the nostalgic references and idea of living among them, the young rebel heroes fighting against the corrupt powers, and the concept of escaping the real world through a new reality.

Ready Player One is, by virtue of its core themes and source material, informed by a great many movies both legendary and underrated. There are so many examples of movies that either directly influenced Spielberg's Ready Player One or similarly explored the ideas of the technology of this world. Those looking for similarly fun and thought-provoking stories, whether they may be light and colorful adventures, darker and violent action movies, or deeply detailed documentaries, will have plenty of options to choose from.

22 The Last Starfighter (1984)

A Young Video Gamer Discovers The Game He Beats Was A Test For A Greater Adventure

Ready Player One was far from the first movie to incorporate video games into a sci-fi fantasy story and it bears several similarities to the cult favorite space adventure The Last Starfighter. With Ready Player One's adoration of cult movies, it would make sense if it served as an inspiration in some ways.

Both movies feature protagonists who escape their dead-end lives in trailer parks with their gaming skills, only to find that they might be their ticket out of there. The movie follows a young teenager named Alex (Lance Guest) who is recruited by an alien civilization to be their savior in a war with their intergalactic enemies.

While The Last Starfighter is clearly influenced by Star Wars, its effects were ambitious back in the mid-80s even if they don't hold up today, and is much more influential than it's often given credit for.

Rent on Apple TV.

21 Life 2.0 (2010)

A Documentary About People Creating New Virtual Lives

Given the wild futuristic adventure that Ready Player One takes audiences on, it might seem strange that a documentary captures some similar vibes. However, Second Life is an exploration of technology that proved to be ahead of its time.

This enveloping documentary follows the lives of several people who develop new lives in the online world of Second Life, a virtual world that offers its users opportunities that range from financial to romantic. Spielberg's Ready Player One explores both the escapism elements of the virtual reality world and the idea of it taking away from real life.

The documentary is similarly an even-handed study of what draws people to virtual spaces and then keeps them there, examining how and why games can become preferable to people's actual realities. Given how huge these kinds of immersive online worlds have evolved since then, Second Life would be an interesting movie to revisit.

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19 The King Of Kong (2007)

A Documentary About Two Men Battling For The Top Score In Donkey Kong

There is a love of video games that permeates Ready Player One and that passion is found in this unique documentary as well. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters delves into the strange and fascinating world of arcade game high scores, specifically the competition surrounding the record for the classic game Donkey Kong.

As unlikely as it may seem, the movie finds a larger-than-life hero and villain in the endearing outsider Steve Wiebe and the overconfident champion Billy Mitchell, respectively. The movie is a surprisingly thrilling ride with an entertaining narrative of a true underdog story.

It is also a reminder of how much people can get attached to these worlds though the movie never judges these people who have dedicated so much time to the world of arcades. Though a small-scale documentary, it packs as many thrills as Ready Player One.

18 Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971)

An Eccentric Chocolatier Opens His Mysterious Factory To The Public

While 2023's Wonka surprised many people, the best Willy Wonka movie is still considered to be the first one. This classic adaptation of author Roald Dahl's beloved children's book brought the titular character to life in an unforgettable way with Gene Wilder's performance as the eccentric chocolatier. The story follows a young boy who is among the lucky few guests who are welcomed inside Wonka's secret factory where the wonderous world he's created is revealed.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is referenced throughout Ready Player One as one of its most fundamental pop-culture influences, each story sharing the central concept of a reclusive genius presenting the public with a rare opportunity to understand and profit from the imaginative world that they've created. It's certainly not an action movie but the comedy and adventure are still unbeatable even today.

17 The Matrix (1999)

A Man Realizes His World Is A Simulation

The Wachowskis' iconic sci-fi mind-bender injected modern philosophical concepts like transforming identities in a predominantly digital future with dazzling action and effects, drawing inspiration from a vast legacy of popular culture from across the world.

The story of a nobody who discovers that his life is merely a simulation remains a landmark of both genre filmmaking and discussions about virtual reality, with the conversations between the characters proving as stimulating to audiences as its meticulous fight choreography.

While Ready Player One explored the thrill of jumping into a fantasy world of this virtual reality existence, The Matrix was a thought-provoking look at what it would be like if the entire human race were unknowingly trapped as part of that simulation. Though the franchise continued, the sequels failed to capture the special feeling of The Matrix.

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15 Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010)

A Video Game-Inspired Action Love Story

Edgar Wright's adaptation of Bryan Lee O'Malley's graphic novel series is bursting with colorfully creative action and all the adolescent kicks that a movie fan's heart could possibly desire. In Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Michael Cera plays the eponymous bass player who must battle a woman's evil exes in order to win her heart and the movie's video-game-inspired quest is one of the greatest marriages of the mediums ever made.

Just as Ready Player One celebrates the world of movies, games, and nostalgic pop culture, Scott Pilgrim is a love letter to so many areas of the "geek world." The movie is also full of fun references to nostalgic video games, from the 9-bit opening title sequence to the fact that defeated characters turn into a pile of coins. The Scott Pilgrim cast recently returned for the animated series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off.

14 Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)

A World Where Cartoon Characters Are Real

One of the many filmmakers that are frequently referenced throughout Ready Player One is Robert Zemeckis, who made many strides in the field of integrating animation with live-action in feature films. There are many movies that show Zemeckis' development of Ready Player One's most essential technologies but his classic cartoon mystery adventure is still arguably his magnum opus.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a hugely inventive live-action and animation hybrid starring Bob Hoskins as a grizzled detective who attempts to prove cartoon character Roger Rabbit has been framed for murder. While it is fun to see the characters of Ready Player One walk around in a world inhabited by iconic characters like The Iron Giant and Chucky, it feels like an homage to the world of Who Framed Roger Rabbit where icons like Mickey Mouse and Bug Bunny inhabit the same space.

13 Gamer (2009)

Convicts Are Used As Real-Life Video Game Avatars

While Ready Player One has a lot of fun with its characters entering into video game worlds, Gamer is a wild action movie that imagines if the real world was used as a canvas for gamers to play using real people as their avatars. Gerard Butler stars as a death row inmate who's forced to become a real-world avatar that's controlled by gamers in a deadly gladiator game not too dissimilar to Ready Player One's virtual reality world, "the Oasis."

Michael C. Hall is the megalomaniacal creator of the futuristic tech that allows all of this to happen and Logan Lerman is the young player who teams up with Butler's action hero to take his empire down. The idea of real people being used as video game characters is a clever one and allows for some fun examinations of video game quirks and concepts.

12 Brigsby Bear (2017)

A Young Man Recreates The Television Show From His Childhood To Give It An Ending

One of the most interesting themes of Ready Player One is society's growing inability to grow beyond the stage of childhood and there are few movies that tackle the difficult subject in as heartfelt and unique a way as Brigsby Bear. Through a comedic approach, this quirky story explores how people learn to move on from those nostalgic treasures.

The story follows a grown man who was raised in an isolated facility with only his parents and an educational children's TV show made by his father for a company. When he is freed and told that he was abducted as a child, he attempts to adjust to reality by creating his own movie to finish the story of his fake father's creation and forms lasting bonds of friendship through the process, finding meaning through the collaborative creative process.

11 Room 237 (2012)

A Documentary About The Obsession Over The Shining's Biggest Mysteries

Another interesting concept at the heart of Ready Player One is the obsessive quality of fans' fascination with the work of their favorite artists and creators, constantly looking for meaning and hidden secrets within their back catalogs.

Spielberg chose his contemporary Stanley Kubrick as the next biggest influence running throughout the adaptation. The Shining itself makes up one of the most memorable scenes of Ready Player One.

The documentary Room 237 explores the way people have latched onto that movie and built elaborate theories about its meaning, references, and allegories, specifically the mystery of The Shining's Room 237. Fans of The Shining will know that there is a lot to unpack in the iconic horror movie, but this documentary examines just how much people have invested in exploring the unanswered questions and endless possibilities of this movie.

10 Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Impressive CGI Filmmaking Brings A Cyborg Warrior To Life

Steven Spielberg is a filmmaker known for impressing people with practical effects that still hold up decades later, like the shark in Jaws or the T-Rex in Jurassic Park. However, Spielberg embraced the CGI of modern filmmaking, including creating entirely animated characters, for Ready Player One.

That's in line with Alita: Battle Angel, which tells the story of a scrapped cyborg who, after being revived, can't remember anything about who she is, embarking on a quest to find out. The movie is full of action but it also has the video game vibes of Ready Player One.

Alita herself is an animated character in a real environment, which makes her and her deadly mechanical opponents very similar to the virtual creations of the Oasis. The movie is a collaboration between James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez, resulting in an exciting example of the imaginative nature of these two filmmakers.

9 Tron: Legacy (2010)

A Young Man Enters A Video Game In Search Of His Missing Father

Tron was the original and ground-breaking movie that capitalized on the growing popularity of video games and imagining what would happen if someone found themselves inside one of these games. This belated sequel to the classic brings so much more modern technology and action.

In Tron: Legacy, the son of a virtual world designer searches for his father but ends up in the deadly reality that he created. The movie is a giant video game where the story's main players are tasked to compete against each other on "the Grid."

With a tale of family, self-discovery, and incredible technology, it's a visually striking splendor that immerses the viewers in a video game world with the added thrill of seeing original star Jeff Bridges return. Fans will have the chance to return to the world in the upcoming Tron: Ares.

8 Pacific Rim (2013)

Giant Robots Defend The World From Kaiju