“YOU DON’T HAVE TO be a videogame freak.” I heard that reassurance on my way in to see Steven Spielberg’s newest extravaganza ‘Ready Player One’, which arrives in theaters everywhere next week. It’s based, after all, on Ernest Cline’s 2011 barnstormer young-adult novel of the same name – which memorably made USA Today hail the author as “the hottest geek on the planet”.

I then got the same reassurance from the director himself. The world premier screening was held at the South By South West festival, in Austin’s legendary and beautifully renovated theater The Paramount; and Spielberg emerged onto the big screen’s narrow strip of stage … to the kind of rapturous welcome that rock-stars may take in stride, but few others.

Even Spielberg – who’s no doubt used to considerable adulation – appeared startled. His evident bashfulness extended to performing a little (perhaps studied?) boleo back-kick.

And to introduce his work, he painstakingly stressed that he’d set out to make an entertainment which did NOT require insider knowledge. I was sitting next to a twelve-year old who said he’d read Cline’s book seven times, so I was still skeptical.

Then as if Spielberg ever needed to burnish his populist credentials, he described his offering as “definitely not a ‘film’ – this is a MOVIE!”

And once the movie rolled … and I have to say once my eyes, ears and solar plexus had adjusted, in some degree at least, to its unrelenting high-octane sensory impact … I found myself carried along through the bifurcated world which we’re not-so-gently persuaded to inhabit for an entire 140 minutes.

And that bifurcated world? Oh, it’s a dystopian future (what other kind of future would you expect?) in which gaming fantasy and quotidian post-apocalyptic squalor exist side-by-side – both as fully real entities – and we constantly switch from one to the other in a nano-second.

Like many a director, Spielberg has seemingly fallen hard for the initially Shakespearian, but infinitely genre-versatile actor Mark Rylance (below left) since he cast him in ‘Bridge of Spies’ – swiftly followed by ‘BFG‘ (that’s ‘Big Friendly Giant’, to be ploddy with Roald Dahl’s title for his finespun children’s classic).

In ‘Player’ Spielberg employs Rylance as the movie’s presiding genius ‘James Halliday’, in both his younger and his older days, and after death too – not forgetting (duh!) as his own alternative universe avatar. Halliday, whose avatar is delightfully called “Anorak” (a nickname borrowed from “real” life in the Cline original), is the digital inventor/entrepreneur who created the entire complementary reality upon which book and film projects are both built.

To describe Rylance in this role as an unabashed scene-stealer is a gross understatement, even though he’s also generous in his interactions with the (mostly) much younger cast-members. But then, we’re used to both those qualities with Rylance.

ONE ODDITY OCCURRED in the SXSW screening of ‘Player’, which most likely won’t happen again. Perhaps over-eager to amp up the audio-effects (ear-popping as many were) the presenters apparently kept boosting the Dolby Surround 7.1 levels to a point that the Paramount’s sound-system (venerable, and now completely state-of-the-art — but clearly not indestructible) was effectively blown out.

Suddenly a huge, action-packed battle-scene, of all things, played to us in complete silence. Until, that is, all action was frozen on-screen, and frantic remedial efforts were instigated in the projection room. Finally – though only after three attempts – both sound and picture resumed as they should. Afterwards Spielberg described this interrupted premier as having given him “the worst anxiety attack I’ve ever had”.

Spielberg was also, along with everyone else involved, making desperate appeals that the evening’s viewers should not give away spoilers – for there are indeed some striking ‘reveals’ as the story hurtles toward its end. (There are, though, millions of faithful Cline readers who’ll scarcely be surprised.)

I’ll observe the interdiction willingly. I’ll limit myself to saying that … on fully considered judgment (and it is pretty full, given that it took 140 minutes in arriving) … you don’t have to be a gamer to enjoy Ready Player One. But it certainly helps.

And judging by the whoops, yelps, and howls of joy around me from SXSW’s many dedicated gamers – at every allusion (and there are many) to the erudite realm of gamer history … all the way back even to Pong! … it certainly helps a lot.