I have a reputation around the Gabbing Geek offices as someone who hates nostalgia. That isn’t exactly unearned. I don’t care for sticking to the pop culture past simply because it came from the past. Ernie Cline’s novel wasn’t bad, but I didn’t care for it as much as, say, Ryan. It seemed to be a series of nonstop 80s references around a plot that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the 80s only set in cyberspace.
Well, Steven Spielberg directed a movie version of the book. I’ve seen it. Watson has seen it. Jenny has seen it. Ryan has seen it. One of them also reviewed it before, and now it’s my turn.
Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) likes nothing better than to surf the world of the Oasis, a virtual world where most of the people of the world want to hang out. Why? The rest of the world sucks and no one wants to fix problems anymore apparently. But five years earlier, Oasis creator James Halliday (Mark Rylance) died, leaving behind a quest to find an Easter Egg within the game world that would grant the lucky person who found it Halliday’s fortune and control of his company. Wade is a loner, but there are others. Some work in groups, and many work together for profit-obsessed competitor company IOI, led by CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn). Wade, an obsessive, figures out the first puzzle and soon it’s off to the races as he tries to stay one step ahead of IOI and win over another hunter named Art3mis (Olivia Cooke).
Spielberg, working off a script co-written by Cline, doesn’t have the most faithful of adaptations. It follows the spirit of the book but not so much the letter of the story. That’s probably for the best. The tone is actually fairly lighthearted, with the Sorrento character in particular played mostly for laughs. There’s one really impressive set piece, but much of the movie is only light fluff. Fortunately, Spielberg has a confident hand when it comes to this sort of thing. For me, though, I ultimately couldn’t bring myself to care about the Oasis. That was true for the book and for the movie. It just seems like a really pathetic thing to fight over when the bad guy’s main goal seems to be simply to flood the virtual world with pop-up ads. It’s a fun movie, but not a particularly substantial one. 8 out of 10 sudden appearances by giant robots.
You wrote 2171 words over two articles crapping on it (and for some reason, Armada), and you still gave it an 8/10.
*yawn*
2171 words and no substance other than, “me hate nostalgia, nothing new, ugh, buzzwords”
You clearly missed the hundreds of easter eggs in a movie / story regarding easter eggs. (Which came out on Easter weekend, btw.) the majority of which are from the last 5 years. (Halo, Battleborn, Overwatch, Mass Effect, …. I guess with a lack of Rumpole of the Bailey they missed your generation.)
Artemis is a female lead character that not only doesn’t fawn over Z, but goes on the hunt without the main character for the majority of the second act (more so in the book), and you treat her as is she’s cardboard comparing her to what’s her name in Armada?
You completely missed that the movie:
– takes the jeopardy Wade puts himself in to by going in to the loyalty center, gives it to her and doesn’t let her get reduced to a damsel
– She takes the biggest risks of the characters
– the head geek knowledge person at IOI is a girl
– the assassin is a girl
– Ache…
– Nowhere in the book or the movie does anyone blink that the celebrity Gunter, Artemis, is a girl.
And you say it would be an ’80’s flick.
I’d write more, but you’ll just pretend I’m trolling instead of having a point.
There is nothing new here. Even giving Art3mis more to do doesn’t make it any less cliche. And there’s nothing wrong with cliche, but let’s not pretend this is a deep story. A story about Easter Eggs is all about catching references to other works. That’s all. The story of Ready Player One boils down to a group of kids banding together to save the local hangout from profit-minded corporate dorks. That is the plot to who knows how many 80s movies. Making more of the characters female doesn’t make it any less than a typical 80s flick.
And there’s nothing really wrong with that. Ready Player One is perfectly fine as dumb fun, emphasis on dumb. It’s not creative. Many things are. Most things in life are, by definition, average. And I did say I think the movie does a better job with this sort of thing than Cline’s novel. My issue with Cline is his work is all about references to other work. That’s not overly creative. He’s recycling stories. Again, so do many others. And if you’re entertained by it, then why do you care that I, as you put it, crap all over it?
But since you raise the whole “women were kicking ass,” OK, fair point. There are probably a dozen thinkpieces out there better written than anything I could do on what something like RPO means post GamerGate. Ignoring that there are many real world instances of women into video games being disrespected by various men, let me ask you this: why is it for a woman to be considered strong in so many sci-fi movies likes this, she has to be able to fight like a man? Sure, no one blinks about Art3mis, and Aech was always female (but while posing as a male), but they only really gain respect for being good in a fight. French feminists posited that women should be able to tell different kinds of stories, stories without a singular big climax like the ones men tell (yes, it’s sort of sexual), but works like RPO just re-imagine the women as men with boobs. The best movie to really get the women-as-a-different-kind-of-hero right to date is Wonder Woman as she defeats the ultimate foe by NOT fighting.
So, where in the Oasis is the more female-centric pop culture references? No Sex-and-the-City themed virtual shopping trips? No Barbie dream houses to live in? I’m not sure Hello Kitty passing through in the background counts for anything. For that matter, did the Oasis have any content that wasn’t geared towards stereotypical younger people’s ideas of fun? I’m not saying they needed a virtual brothel, but there wasn’t much in there that I could see for more mature-themed ideas, like, I dunno, the chance to debate or learn from the feet of great thinkers or just chat stuff that didn’t involve playing a game.
Oh, and my generation? I grew up in the 80s. I’m fine with leaving it behind. I find the now always more interesting than the then, so the Rumpole of the Bailey thing (and he sucks in a gun fight) is obviously off-base, and I wouldn’t want the Mod Squad or the Dirty Dozen to run through all that much either. I mean, this is a movie set in 2045. From the looks of things, pop culture froze in 2017 or so. Nobody came up with an interesting character, TV show, movie, or video game in over a quarter of a century? I mean, sure, the audience wouldn’t recognize such a future character for obvious reasons, but that shows a society with no creativity. They just mine the past for ideas and concepts. Heck, the poet William Blake thought Hell was just a place with no creativity. Now, I don’t play video games, so many of those game references flew by me. I recognized the Halo guys, saw the Minecraft logo, and a few other things, but I’m not a gamer. Lots of people aren’t.
My concern with the longer piece, which ended with me saying I didn’t hate the book or the movie, was that there isn’t much beyond the surface of RPO. It’s all about saying, “Hey, remember this cool stuff?” rather than getting into why it was cool in the first place. It doesn’t do more than say “this thing was cool”. OK, that’s fine. That can be fun. It’s just not deep. If you enjoyed it, fantastic. To each their own. Don’t let me get in your way of your enjoyment, but I wrote the review here with my honest thoughts on the movie itself, and I wrote the other piece after thinking a bit on why I find Ernie Cline’s writing at best fun but without much really going on below the surface.
I actually respect everything here in this reply and have no argument against it. Except I was born in 73, so the Rumpole joke was meant to be an insiders comment to a peer rather than a shot at you being old. But hey, comic clarity isn’t my superpower.
But why an 8? You sound like maybe a 6 at best? (Sixer at best?)
Short answer: I’m an English teacher and an 8 is, in my mind, a B-. 6 is an F. That’s how the grading scale works at my school. If I put something these days below a 6, it means I really didn’t like it. RPO for most of the movie was a solid 7/7.5 for me. The Shining scene was brilliant and elevated it to an 8. Cut The Shining out and the grade drops.