DUBAI: The latest film from superstar director Steven Spielberg — “Ready Player One” — is a love letter to 1980’s pop culture. But that’s not why its stars, Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke, fell in love with it. “This movie is a fantastical event with lots of 80s pop culture references and video game winks, but I think, at the core of it, it’s a story about overcoming evil, about friendships and lasting relationships, and about the struggle to accept your true self. And I think those are universal, relatable themes,” Cooke told Arab News. For her co-star Sheridan, who plays the lead character Wade Watts — known in the movie’s virtual world as Parzival — it’s all about character. “I think they’re very relatable characters, because at the core of this movie it’s about humanity, and they all have some quality about them that they are not able to accept. That’s apparent in the high-five characters — the characters that we’re following — and that part of the film really spoke to me as well,” Sheridan said. “Ready Player One” tells the story of a future in which most of the planet’s inhabitants spend their time inside a virtual reality called the OASIS. Its creator, obsessed with the pop culture of his childhood, has filled the OASIS with a host of references to the 1980s, and so the world of 2045 becomes increasingly obsessed with that era too. While the bestselling book on which the film is based is told in the first person, following Wade as he hunts down clues to an extremely valuable ‘easter egg’ hidden inside the OASIS, Spielberg’s take is much more of an ensemble piece, allowing Olivia Cooke’s character of Art3mis and the other members of this group, called ‘The High Five’, to come to the fore. Sheridan said he had read the book a couple of times before shooting started and appreciated Spielberg’s narrative shift. “What’s great is that across so many of Steven’s movies you see a great camaraderie between young people. I think that’s something that’s very present in his films, especially this one. When he’s on set, he’s enthusiastic — kind of like a child — and he gets excited about the things that I get excited about, or even the things that I got excited about when I was six years old. He has a youthful spirit that bleeds into his films.” That energy made for an unforgettable experience on set, Sheridan explained: “It’s hard to break it down to a favorite moment. I think the experience of working on one of his films, working with our crew, and this amazing cast was incredible. I think it stems from the top. Steven is very inclusive, and that brings the crew and the cast together like a large family. All of the relationships on set felt incredibly intimate, and that’s something that’s going to stay with me forever. That’s what’s going to make the experience memorable.” Cooke echoes those sentiments. “Every day was a memorable day because you’re on the set of a Steven Spielberg film,” the 24-year-old English actress said. “Everyone was at the top of their game and so stellar at what they do, so you just felt incredibly lucky to be there.” Cooke and Sheridan met early on in the casting process, but it wasn’t until they started filming scenes that they really got acquainted. “We met at an audition five months before we started shooting,” said Cooke. “We then had a two-week rehearsal period without Steven, when Tye and I and the High Five had a chance to acclimatize to working in the motion capture space. Tye and I had intensive dance rehearsals where we got to know each other intimately.” This is not the first time Sheridan has worked with a storied director — aged 13, he was selected from a reported 10,000 hopefuls to star in Terrence Malick’s 2011 film “The Tree of Life.” Now 21, Sheridan is focused on his future. “You’re always trying to grow with each of your films. Even if you do have an amazing experience like we had on this film, it’s a matter of pushing yourself, propelling yourself forward, and putting challenges in your way that are going to help you grow and evolve into the artist you’re going to become,” he said. “I think I grew a lot with this movie. There were a lot of things that were very challenging, and I’m looking forward to the next thing,” he continued. “To me, that’s my satisfaction.”