Review of Ready Player One (2018) by Dirigiblepulp — 27 Apr 2018

First things first -- it's kind of fun and there's thrills to be had and all that. It drags at times and is manic but hey aren't most expensive tentpoles nowadays.

This movie somehow was able to take highly advanced virtual reality combined with an insane amount of pop culture nostalgia reverence and manage to put those things in a dystopia!, revel in it a bit (like we all do), and then somehow refuse to make any kind of meta-commentary on what that means for contemporary society or modern film/art/etc. I mean, turn off the video games for 2 days a week and meet a girl? That's all we get?

I really hated the 2nd sequence. Not homage, not fun, not clever, just perversely misguided and completely ruining a masterpiece that deserves to be seen on its own terms for new generations. I can't believe Spielberg would do that to a friend...

It's so blatant it almost feels intentional. At least with the book you put it off as bad writing by an author clearly unaware of the implications of his premise but more than ready to treat it as pseudo-paradise unironically. I have no idea what Spielberg wanted to do with this.