Review of Ready Player One (2018) by Gayle C — 08 Apr 2018

If I were in charge of choosing a book about a dystopian society that turns to VR to make life more bearable, I'd be more inclined to choose Tad Williams' Otherlands series than Ready Player One, but let's deal with the movie that we got, shall we? We see a shitty world of shacks and desperation, where people choose to spend most of their time in The Oasis, an online game that is a world unto itself. In the film, we only see small sections of the game,enough to know that people can choose different passtimes within, but not enough to make us understand why people are obsessed with spending their every waking moment (other than meals and bathroom breaks) in what looks like a lot of uncomfortable gear. We meet our protagonist, what's left of his family, and his friends but we don't really get any real sense of the bonds that they share, or develop. Some of this is likely due to shortened timeline. In the book, years pass. In the movie, the action is necessarily condensed, so there isn't much time to explore each character individually, let alone the dynamics in their various groupings. Because you don't know the characters enough to really care about them, it's hard to get invested in their fates, so you never get that sense of peril that makes action adventure movies exhilarating.

The story is pretty simple, and presented with absolutely zero subtlety. Unchecked capitalism is bad and results in a form of slavery, or at the very least indentured servitude. I mean, it's hard to argue with the point, but the movie doesn't leave any time for reflection or discussion anyway because it's constantly racing towards the next set-piece where our plucky heroes face up against The Man and his all-too-literal corporate drones. The whole thing culminates in one enormous Overwatch-looking battle. Meh.

Through it all, there is what should have been melancholy. It's like the ghost of what could have been is trapped in the machine. You have a solid story about the destructive powers of greed and social isolation, but the threads never go far enough for you to FEEL it to the extent that you should. Look, I didn't hate Ready Player One. It had some good visuals, lots of nostalgia, a couple of nicely played gags, and some big ideas. I liked it alright, I guess. I just wanted to love it, and I found I couldn't feel enough of it to bother. I may walk away now, think about it for a while and completely change my mind, but for now I would give it a 6.5/10. Not bad, just a hollow shell that should have been a well formed, intact egg.