头号玩家 斯皮尔伯格的怀旧游戏

头号玩家斯皮尔伯格的怀旧游戏

《头号玩家》:斯皮尔伯格的怀旧游戏

It isn’t going too far out on a limb to predict that“Ready Player One” will turn out to be one of StevenSpielberg’s more controversial projects. Evenbefore its release, this adaptation of Ernest Cline’s2011 best seller — what one writer called a“nerdgasm” of a novel — was subjected to anunusual degree of internet pre-hate. That was onlyto be expected. Mr. Spielberg has tackledcontentious topics before — terrorism, slavery, thePentagon Papers, sharks — but nothing as likely tostir up a hornet’s nest of defensiveness, disdainand indignant “actually”-ing as the subject of this movie, which is video games.

如果预测《头号玩家》(Ready Player One)会是史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格(Steven Spielberg)比较有争议的作品之一，不会有很多人反对。这部电影改编自欧内斯特·克莱恩(Ernest Cline)2011年出版的畅销小说（一位作家称之为“死宅高潮”），早在发行前就在网上遭到极大厌恶。这完全正常。斯皮尔伯格以前处理过有争议的话题——恐怖主义、奴隶制、五角大楼文件、鲨鱼——但没有哪个像这部电影的主题——电子游戏——一样，可能会惹来防范心态、蔑视和愤愤不平的“事实上根本不是这样”的麻烦。

And not only video games. “Ready Player One,” written by Mr. Cline and Zak Penn, dives intothe magma of fan zeal, male self-pity and techno-mythology in which those once-innocentpastimes are now embedded. Mr. Spielberg, a digital enthusiast and an old-school cineaste, goes further than most filmmakers in exploring the aesthetic possibilities of a form that isfrequently dismissed and misunderstood.

不仅仅是电子游戏。克莱恩和扎克·佩恩(Zak Penn)联合编剧的《头号玩家》探究了粉丝的热情、男性的自怜，以及曾是无足轻重的消遣、现在却已根深蒂固的科技神话。斯皮尔伯格是数字爱好者，也是老派电影人。对于一种经常遭到无视与误解的形式，他却探讨它的审美可能性，在这方面，他比大部分电影人都走得更远。

Aided by his usual cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, and by the production designer AdamStockhausen, he turns a vast virtual landscape of battling avatars into a bustling pop-culturaltheme park, an interactive museum of

late-20th- and early-21st-century entertainment, amaze of niche tastes, cultish preoccupations and blockbuster callbacks. Mr. Spielberg navigatesthis warehouse with his usual dexterity, loading every frame with information without losingthe clarity and momentum of the story.

在御用摄影师雅努什·卡明斯基(Janusz Kaminski)和美术总监亚当·斯托克豪森(Adam Stockhausen)的协助下，他把宏大的虚拟化身打斗场景变成了一个熙熙攘攘的流行文化主题公园；一座展示20世纪末与21世纪初的娱乐的互动博物馆；乃至一个由小众化品味、

粉丝的狂热迷恋和对大片的回忆组成的迷宫。斯皮尔伯格用他惯用的娴熟技巧驾驭着这座仓库，赋予每一帧画面以信息，又不破坏故事清晰的条理和势头。

Nonetheless, the toy guns of social media and pop-up kulturkritik are locked and loaded. Mr. Spielberg will be accused of taking games and their players too seriously and not seriouslyenough, of pandering and mocking, of just not getting it and not being able to see beyond it —“it” being the voracious protoplasm that has, over the past three or four decades, swallowedup most of our cultural discourse. Whatever you call it — the revenge of the nerds, thefranchising of the universe, the collapse of civilization —it’s a force that is at onceemancipatory and authoritarian, innocent and pathological, delightful and corrosive.

尽管如此，社交媒体的玩具枪和快闪式的文化批判已经锁定目标。斯皮尔伯格会被指责太重视游戏和游戏玩家，也会被指责为不重视游戏和游戏玩家；会被指责为迎合，也会被指责为嘲笑；会被指责为不懂“它”，也会被指责为无力超越“它”——这里的“它”指的是过去三、四十年里吞噬了我们大部分文化话语的那种贪婪的物质。无论怎么称呼它——死宅的复仇、宇宙系列大片、文明的崩溃——它是一股既解放又专制，既无害又病态，既令人愉悦又具有腐蚀性的力量。

Mr. Spielberg and some of his friends helped to create this monster, which grants him ameasure of credibility and also opens him up to a degree of suspicion. He is the only personwho could have made this movie and the last person who should have been allowed near thematerial.

斯皮尔伯格和他的一些朋友参与创造了这个怪物。这让他获得了一定的称道，也让他遭受了一定程度的怀疑。他是唯一一个有可能拍出这部电影的人，也是原本最不应该被允许获得这一素材的人。

That material has issues of its own. Mr. Cline’s book — readable and amusing without beingexactly good — is a hodgepodge of cleverness and cliché. Less than a decade afterpublication, it already feels a bit dated, partly because its dystopian vision seems undulyoptimistic and partly because its vision of male geek rebellion has turned stale and sour.

这一素材有自己的问题。克莱恩的书可读性强、有趣味、但又确实不算出色，它是小聪明和陈词滥调的大杂烩。出版不到十年，它已经感觉有点过时了，部分是因为它的反乌托邦愿景似乎过于乐观，部分是因为它的男性极客反叛愿景已经变得老套和乏味。

In the film, set in 2045, Wade Watts (a young man played by the agreeably bland, blandlyagreeable Tye Sheridan) lives in “the stacks,” a vertical pile of trailers where the poorerresidents of Columbus, Ohio (Oklahoma City in the book), cling to hope, dignity and their VRgloves. Humanity has been ravaged by the usual political and ecological disasters (amongthem “bandwidth riots”