10 Best Movies Like Ready Player One

Upon its release in 2018, the sci-fi action adventure Ready Player One was like little else fans had experienced. Based on the Ernest Cline novel of the same name and directed by the father of the summer blockbuster, Steven Spielberg, Ready Player One was set in a dystopian future where people were increasingly spending more time in a virtual world to escape the realities of their own.

What made the film stand out was its sheer number of references to other areas of pop culture. Within the virtual world, players could customize themselves however they like, and the film really captures the full breadth of that creativity. Although never done in quite the same way, Ready Player One wasn’t the first to exploit video games or the idea of another reality on the big screen.

10 Avatar Immersed the Audience in a Totally New World

Avatar

A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.

Director

James Cameron

Release Date

December 18, 2009

Studio

20th Century Fox

Cast

Sam Worthington , Zoe Saldana , Stephen Lang

Runtime

162 minutes

James Camron’s Avatarand its subsequent sequel managed to transport viewers to another world in a way that is unlike any other cinematic experience. Although not a virtual or constructed reality, as in Ready Player One, Avatar sees its main characters step outside their bodies in order to explore a new world.

The experience for the audience is even more profound. Letting them enter a digitally constructed realm filled with bright natural colors and outstanding geography, the Avatar films are as much about being portals to another world as they are the journey of Jake Sully and his family.

9 Tron Was the First Video Game Movie

Tron

A computer hacker is abducted into the digital world and forced to participate in gladiatorial games where his only chance of escape is with the help of a heroic security program.

Director

Steven Lisberger

Release Date

July 9, 1982

Cast

Jeff Bridges , Bruce Boxleitner , David Warner , Cindy Morgan

Writers

Steven Lisberger , Bonnie MacBird , Charles S. Haas

Runtime

96 minutes

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

Production Company

Walt Disney Productions

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1982’s Tron holds the distinction of being one of the first movies about video games, as well as one of the earliest Hollywood features to fully embrace CGI. It follows Kevin Flynn ( Jeff Bridges), a programmer and game designer who’s sucked inside a computer mainframe and forced to play his own game to escape.

Due to Tron’s pioneering nature, many of its visuals have aged rather poorly, but it’s still the first film to imagine what being inside a computer could look like. Its sequel, Tron: Legacy, builds on the same idea with far superior visuals, and both laid the groundwork for virtual reality in cinema.

8 Jumanji Trapped its Characters Inside a Video Game

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

Four teenagers are sucked into a magical video game, and the only way they can escape is to work together to finish the game.

Director

Jake Kasdan

Release Date

December 20, 2017

Cast

Dwayne Johnson , Karen Gillan , Kevin Hart , Jack Black

Writers

Chris McKenna , Erik Sommers , Scott Rosenberg

Runtime

119 minutes

Main Genre

Adventure

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is the second film in the Jumanji franchise and serves as a direct sequel to the original Jumanji, starring Robin Williams. What was the Jumanji board game has now become the Jumanji video game, and when four unsuspecting players are sucked into it, they must complete a quest in order to escape.

The film frequently pokes fun at the tropes of ’90s video games, including having the protagonist as a muscle-bound doctor and a scantily clad female warrior (Dwayne Johnson and Karen Gillan). The reality of the video game looks almost the same as the real world, but the story embraces the structure of gaming quests and challenges for the heroes to progress through.

7 Wreck-It Ralph Showed Life Inside a Video Game

Wreck-It Ralph

A video game villain wants to be a hero and sets out to fulfill his dream, but his quest brings havoc to the whole arcade where he lives.

Director

Rich Moore

Release Date

November 2, 2012

Cast

John C. Reilly , Sarah Silverman , Jack McBrayer , Jane Lynch , Alan Tudyk , Mindy Kaling

Runtime

1 hour 41 minutes

While other films on this list are about human characters that get pulled into video game worlds, Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph is about the lives of video game characters. Set in an arcade, it follows Ralph, the villain of the game Fix-It Felix, as he journies around the arcade in order to earn a medal and make himself a hero.

Crafted by a team who clearly care about the material they’re riffing on, Ralph is packed with references to old-school video games. Each character that Ralph encounters and every game he explores is given its own unique style, and the film does a lot of work to build out the inner life and community of its fictional arcade.

6 The Last Starfighter Combines Video Games with a Galactic Conflict

The Last Starfighter

High schooler Alex Rogan conquers the Starfighter video game, only to find out it was just a test, and is transported to another planet. He has been recruited to join a team of the best starfighters to defend their world from the attack.

Director

Nick Castle

Release Date

July 13, 1984

Cast

Lance Guest , Robert Preston , Dan O’Herlihy , Catherine Mary Stewart

Runtime

101 minutes

Production Company

Lorimar Productions

Following in the footsteps of Tron, The Last Starfighter was the second Hollywood feature film to fully embrace the use of CGI. The film follows Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), a down-on-his-luck teenager who vents his frustrations by mastering the arcade game “Starfighter.”

Once Alex archives the game’s highest score, he’s approached by its creator (Robert Preston) and taken for a ride. It’s revealed that the game’s story wasn’t fiction but represented a real intergalactic conflict. The creator was using the game to find recruits who could support his species in the conflict. The film’s effects have aged like an early-year PlayStation 2 game, but surely it’s every kid’s dream to have their video game skills mean something in the real world.

5 Back to the Future was the Height of ’80s Energy

Back to the Future

Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent 30 years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the maverick scientist Doc Brown.

Director

Robert Zemeckis

Release Date

July 3, 1985

Studio

Universal Pictures

Cast

Michael J. Fox , Christopher Lloyd , Lea Thompson

Writers

Robert Zemeckis , Bob Gale

Runtime

1 Hour 56 Minutes

Main Genre

Adventure

Production Company

Universal Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, U-Drive Productions

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Beyond its reverence for pop culture, one of the defining parts of Ready Player One is its love of all things ’80s. One of the major pieces of ’80s iconography in the film is Wade’s main mode of transportation, the time-traveling DeLorean from Back to the Future. The film also features a Zemeckis Cube, named after the Back to the Future director.

Of all the great ’80s blockbusters, none capture the essence of the decade more than Back to Future. Although most of the film is actually set in the ’50s, that just becomes more of an opportunity to define ’80s culture by how it’s changed from the past.

4 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World Brought Video Game Action to the Big Screen

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

In a magically realistic version of Toronto, a young man must defeat his new girlfriend’s seven evil exes one by one in order to win her heart.

Director

Edgar Wright

Release Date

August 13, 2010

Writers

Michael Bacall , Edgar Wright , Bryan Lee O’Malley

Runtime

112 minutes

Main Genre

Comedy

Edger Wright’s adaptation of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World isn’t really a movie about video games or virtual realities, and yet, more than any other film, it brings that over-the-top video game energy to the screen. It follows Scott (Michael Cera) on a quest to date Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and defeat her seven evil exes.

The film takes place in a heightened reality, where Wright’s trademark sharp editing is supplemented with striking effects and punchy retro on-screen graphics. The film speaks to the directionless–probably too online–generation and gives a reason to be less self-centered and embrace their own identity.

3 The Lego Movie is Brimming with Cultural Easter Eggs

The Lego Movie

An ordinary LEGO construction worker, thought to be the prophesied as “special”, is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil tyrant from gluing the LEGO universe into eternal stasis.

Director

Phil Lord , Christopher Miller

Release Date

February 7, 2014

Studio

Warner Bros.

Cast

Chris Pratt , Morgan Freeman , Elizabeth Banks , Will Ferrell , Will Arnett , Craig Berry

Writers

Phil Lord , Christopher Miller , Dan Hageman

Runtime

100 minutes

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The one film that rivals, and maybe even surpasses, Ready Player One in the realm of pop culture references that are actually meaningful to the story is The Lego Movie. Based on the popular building toy, The Lego Movie follows Emmet (Chris Pratt), a generic construction worker believed to be a Master Builder and the one capable of stopping the evil Lord Business.

The Lego Movie brings together a vast variety of sets and IPs, all from the Lego canon. Each is used in a way that expands the world of the Lego universe and ends up being relevant to the story. In this regard, its spin-off, The Lego Batman Movie, and the sequel, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, are even more ambitious.

2 Last Action Hero Pokes Fun at an Overblown Reality

The often under-appreciated ’90s action satire Last Action Hero uses its alternate-reality story as a targeted lampooning of the overblown action genre. Danny Madigan (Austin O’Brien) is a 10-year-old kid and a bonified action movie and pop culture buff. While watching an early screen of the new Arnold Schwarzenegger action film, Danny is transported inside of the picture.

Directed by John McTiernan, whose previous credits include Predator and Die Hard, Last Action Hero plays into all the tropes of an ’80s action movie, with Danny constantly calling out how non-sensical everything is compared to the harsh reality of his world. It captures the same sense of escapism as Ready Player One, with the same conclusion that the problems of the real world can’t be ignored.

1 The Matrix is the Ultimate Alternate Reality Story

The Matrix

When a beautiful stranger leads computer hacker Neo to a forbidding underworld, he discovers the shocking truth–the life he knows is the elaborate deception of an evil cyber-intelligence.

Director

Lana Wachowski , Lilly Wachowski

Release Date

March 31, 1999

Cast

Keanu Reeves , Laurence Fishburne , Carrie-Anne Moss , Hugo Weaving , Gloria Foster , Joe Pantoliano

Writers

Lilly Wachowski , Lana Wachowski

Runtime

2 hours 16 minutes

Main Genre

Action

Production Company

Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures, Groucho Film Partnership, Silver Pictures, 3 Arts Entertainment

Any list of movies that play in the realm of alternative realities would be incomplete if it didn’t include The Matrix. The 1999 movie, directed by the Wachowski sisters, blends sci-fi, martial arts, and high-minded philosophy to become the defining film of its generation.

Unlike in Ready Player One, the alternate reality where most of humanity spends their time isn’t a conscious choice up a prison people are unknowingly born into. Society outside of the simulation isn’t just in decline; it’s completely collapsed. The easier fate would be for everyone to accept their fate and live a pleasant life in the simulation, but, of course, that would be inhuman.