Ready Player One's Star Wars Easter Eggs

WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, in theaters now.

If you're going to make a film about the greatest pop culture to emerge from the 1980s, then not mentioning Star Wars would be a pretty glaring omission. Fans of Ernest Cline's 2011 novel Ready Player One worried its adaptation would arrive in theaters with a Star Wars-shaped hole after word circulated that Disney had refused permission. Luckily, director Steven Spielberg quickly extinguished that internet fire, assuring fans the entertainment giants did indeed give its blessings. However, he restrained himself from using too many Star Wars elements, for good reason.

The Oscar winner had already worried fans early in production that they'd have to kiss mementos of his own filmography goodbye, because he didn't want to be self-referential. (Don't worry, he ultimately gave in, and allowed some Spielbergian Easter eggs to survive the final edit.) So how to choose which Star Wars elements appear in Ready Player One?

"It was difficult," Spielberg conceded in an interview with Fandango, "because we were greedy about wanting so many cultural references throughout the '80s and '90s. But everybody cooperated. We got 20th Century Fox, and Universal, and Paramount, and Sony, and Disney. Everybody basically came on board to help us take their IPs and ... allowed us to create Easter eggs from their own cultural phenomenon. So if you look very carefully you'll see a couple. You'll see an R2-D2 somewhere. You'll see an X-wing somewhere."

Finding the Star Wars references may prove somewhat difficult. However, there are actually more than the two Spielberg mentioned:

Wade's avatar, Parzival, wears a belt and gun holster exactly like Han Solo's, except that his belt buckle very prominently features the Thundercats logo.
When Parzival wins the first challenge, he's greeted by Halliday's avatar, Anorak, who says "nice racing, Padawan." This is the only reference to the Star Wars prequels, as Padawans aren't mentioned in the original trilogy.
Viewers have reported a Princess Leia avatar seen walking around the OASIS.
During an all-world battle for an artifact — the special limited-edition items that are worth a lot in the OASIS and contain special abilities — Stormtroopers appear among those fighting.
Before the nightclub scene, several kinds of spacecraft make their way toward the planet, including an X-wing and a Lambda-class shuttle like the ones seen on Endor in Return of the Jedi.

The Millennium Falcon in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

After Parzival wins the first challenge, Nolan Sorrento, president of IOI (Innovative Online Industries), attempts to lure him into working for IOI to complete the final two challenges with the promise of getting his own Millennium Falcon. Clearly, it's a coveted and rare form of transportation within the OASIS.
The R2-D2 mentioned by Spielberg appears at the end of the film, during in a scene in Wade and Artemis's apartment. It sits near the television in their living room, on the left side of the screen, not far from the Robot from Lost in Space.

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These references are remarkably reserved. Why not feature an Ewok, or have a TIE Fighter take down one of the enemies? Why limit the Star Wars to blink-or-you'll-miss-them moments? Spielberg's reason actually makes a lot of sense. While, yes, it's impossible not to consider the original trilogy as central to popular culture in the 1980s, the truth, is the franchise does not belong solely to that decade.

Not that that would stop Spielberg. After all, the primary difference between the two versions of Ready Player One is that the film dips into cultural references from almost every decade, whereas the novel hones in on the '80s. But the director a good point in his interview when he said the story of Ready Player One is about the nostalgic references made to the movies, television series, anime, comic books and video games of yesteryear.

"We didn't want to use the main cultural icons from any of the Disney Star Wars films, because that's ongoing," he said. "That's really part of our contemporary world right now. And even though it began in the '80s, it is so much a part of our real life today in the 21st century. So we asked for some of the smaller items, and Disney gave us everything we asked for."

Star Wars is arguably as big as it ever was -- bigger even, if box office numbers or merchandise sales determine such things. The sheer enormity of the franchise, then, threatens to cast a shadow cover other, more subversive references. That's what Cline's novel taps into, and is an interesting part of the tension of Wade Watts' world. Does the undeniable "coolness" of minute pop-culture knowledge remain quite so "cool" when an entire generation becomes obsessed with all the same once-obscure entities?

After all, while spotting that R2-D2 feels pretty great, noticing a nod to a smaller and lesser-known properties is sure to trigger greater delight in fans. In fact, it may be Wade Watts' world of casual pop-culture trivia that most justifies Spielberg's Star Wars restraint. In a world where absorbing the minutia of entertainment knowledge is a rewarded pastime, the playing field of what constitutes a cool reference becomes quite level.

The Star Wars Easter eggs are great, but fans of horror films, Atari games, Dungeons & Dragons, Terminator, and even Minecraft will find something waiting for them. Spielberg certainly outdoes himself in many respects with Ready Player One, but his restraint in displaying too much Star Wars enthusiasm is part of what makes him a great filmmaker and a true devotee.

In theaters now, Ready Player One is produced and directed by Steven Spielberg from a script by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline. The film stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Win Morisaki, Lena Waithe, Hannah John-Kamen, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance, Ben Mendelsohn, TJ Miller and Ralph Ineson.

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