Review of Ready Player One (2018) by Joe T — 29 Jun 2018

I grew up with Spielberg's classic adventure movies. And in that regard, Ready Player One is fairly good. But it has two major flaws that just took me out of the film.

(1) The majority of the film takes place in VR. And in VR, there are no stakes. If you die in VR... doesn't matter. So if you have to make a leap of faith in VR... doesn't matter. If the bad guy is chasing you in VR... doesn't matter. [Yeah, I know, they have to get the things to win the the thing before the bad guy does.].

For the other 20% of the movie that takes place in the real world, like any normal movie, you can feel the stakes. The danger. The chase. The dramatic tension that simply doesn't exist in VR.

(2) The movie doesn't seem to know if it wants to tell us that we need to get of our asses and live our lives in the real world, or if we need to succumb to excess and endless pop culture/media consumption. It felt like the movie wanted to have a message, but it... didn't.