Review of Ready Player One (2018) by Maliq F — 10 Apr 2018

People of my age range have been increasingly exerting control of the entertainment industry the last few years. You can see it in things like the new Star Wars movies, or shows like Rick & Morty or Stranger Things, which seem like the logical end result of someone 40-50 years old having grown up mostly in the 80s, watching the same TV shows and movies I was. These people are now creating the media I love. Robert Kirkman (Walking Dead) is 39. JJ Abrams (Force Awakens) is 51. Rian Johnson (Last Jedi) is 44. Kevin Feige (MCU) is 44. The Rick & Morty creators are 38 & 45. You get the picture.

So, why they would give a 71-year old Steven Spielberg the reigns to a Generation X pop culture bonanza such as Ready Player One is absolutely beyond me. What a complete and utter piece of garbage this thing was in terms of honoring the stuff I grew up loving. Every chance he had to make this movie cool was totally squandered. He Spielbergified it to a sickening degree, making it safe, kid-friendly, and sappy as hell. Leaving out the fact that he had amazingly specific source material to draw from, I couldn't even enjoy this movie as standing on its own. The book is PACKED with obscure 80s video game and movie references. It's almost the whole point of it. The movie had barely a smattering of those references, and none of the key ones entire plot points were built around. Spielberg didn't understand the material one single bit. He didn't grow up playing video games, probably two-finger types on his IBM laptop, and therefore produced a Spielberg version of The Matrix, which was awful awful saccharine poop. I was insulted by this movie, and I can't believe it's rating as high as it is.

Maybe you'll enjoy this load of crap if you didn't read the book. It looks pretty. But be warned, there's not even a single friggin' Rush song in a movie about a virtual paradise built by a giant video game nerd from the 80s. There's something very wrong about that.