Steven Spielberg Explains Why He Chose ‘The Shining’ for That Epic ‘Ready Player One’ Scene

Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One is chock full of horror references and tributes, but no film gets more love in it than Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. In order to find the virtual reality game’s second key, Spielberg sends his main characters directly into the Overlook Hotel to do battle with the film’s baddies, and it’s one of the coolest sequences in recent years.

Meredith Borders described the sequence in full for us recently…

“Parzival, along with his friends Aech (Lena Waithe) and Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), make their way to the virtual Overlook Theatre, with an old-fashioned marquee trumpeting The Shining. As they walk inside, they find the lobby of the Overlook hotel, the rustic southwest design we all know so well. They wander into Jack’s office off of the lobby, and there they find his trusty typewriter, with pages upon pages of “All work and no play make Jack a dull boy,” of course, only this time the words form the shape of keys on the page, in honor of Ready Player One’s key quests.

The kids get separated, because that’s what happens in horror movies. Aech follows a ball that bounces through the lobby and takes him to the second floor, at which point the audience started giggling in nervous anticipation. He walks past a framed photo of Overlook guests of the past, then sees the twins in their blue dresses in front of the red elevator. The elevator does what that elevator does, which is to say it opens and floods the hallway with an ocean of blood that sweeps Aech off his feet and to – you guessed it!- room 237.

He meets the young/old naked woman from the bathtub, before an axe – Jack’s axe, presumably, although we never see the wielder – breaks through the door, and suddenly Aech is running through a tiny model of the icy labyrinth while a giant axe chops after him. The scene culminates with a ghostly ballroom scene that looks like nothing so much as the ball in Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride, before everything dissolves into a zombie fight, because Ready Player One can never be just one thing.”

So why did Spielberg choose The Shining for the film’s most epic homage? In a chat with EW, he revealed that his own nostalgic connection to the film brought about the sequence.

“It was nostalgic for me because I first met Stanley Kubrick on the set that I depict in Ready Player One,” Spielberg told the site. “The main living area with the grand fireplace in the Overlook is where I first encountered Stanley in 1979 when I went to look at the sound stages. They were about to build the sets for Raiders of the Lost Ark in Elstree Studios. When I found out Stanley had completed a set and was planning his shots, I asked if I could meet him.”

Yes, Steven Spielberg was on the set of The Shining, which he faithfully recreated decades later in Ready Player One, a nostalgic tribute to pop culture past. How cool is that?!

Ready Player One arrives on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD on July 24.