Review of Ready Player One (2018) by Eludiumq36 — 08 Aug 2018

The great VR CGI hits you right off the bat but so does the endless, oh-no-I-think-I-need-to-take-notes exposition! Seriously, they basically read us a user guide to the movie! And, of course, the much heralded soundtrack which is basically a greatest hits of the 80s playlist.

Again, seriously, how much did THAT cost in licensing fees?! And 15-mins in I'm getting the first bit of too-muchery, during the wreck-every-sec opening race where Parzival, aka Z, is tailing Artemis and is just so fortunate to be able to pick up all the players' coins who crash near him, while he miraculously escapes the mayhem around him, yeh, ok, it's like this then.

The animated characters are derivatives of those in "Avatar", so I guess they licensed that tech, too. Keep in mind that anyone can be anything, species, gender, etc but our principals have chosen avatars that resemble them IRL, way to spoon feed us Spielberg.

And it's kind of incongruent that Wade IRL is nerdy meek and a pushover but his alter ego, Parzival, is bold and assertive, so that doesn't track. And the Curator, a C3PO derivative, seeing a pattern here? Skipping to the end, it's filled with Spielberg's "Amazing Stories" material and the most blatant is when Parzival asks Halliday what he is and Halliday responds deflectively.

While enigmatic to young 'uns, it's once again infuriatingly derivative and a wasted trope to any grownup. And finally, the final scene is a direct contradiction of that just described scene betw Z and Halliday.

Oh, unexpected treat, TJ Miller (formerly of "Silicon Valley") as an awkwardly comedic I-Roc. Tieing this up, the VR CGI was decent enough but it didn't always track with reality and the overall plot was so very derivative that watching this qualifies as a rewatch of like five other films.