Ready Player One Review: 7 Ups And 3 Downs

6. Most Of The References Are Great

The movie, like the book, is bursting with Easter eggs and references - so many, in fact, that it'd be impossible to spot all of them on just one viewing, and highly improbable that any one person would get every single one.

Some of them are obvious yet thrilling, like a racing sequence featuring the DeLorean or the Iron Giant (which was the favourite of most of the cast) battling alongside the avatars, and others are far more obscure (things like Battletoads, Cocktail, and Spaceballs get shout-outs). And, despite reports saying there isn't, there is a reference to Star Wars in one line (and it's not exactly difficult to miss). Alan Silvestri's score, too, is essentially a retread of past work - leaning heavily on his own Back To The Future score - and its soundtrack is packed with hits, from the Bee Gees to Van Halen.

They add a lot of fun for people who've either read the book, love to hunt Easter eggs themselves (so no wonder that our resident Gunter, Simon Gallagher, loved it), or simply enjoy 80s nostalgia, and it's great to see the way Spielberg's utilised the majority of them here. It's not, crucially, references just for the sake of references, but they actually inform the characters and the decisions they make.