Cinemavenger

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Ready Player One

Ready Player One isn't a movie.  It's 500cc of nostalgia shot straight into the hearts of aging Gen Xers and even aginger Baby Boomers Pulp Fiction-style.

The first sound audiences hear is the opening chords of Van Halen's "Jump" off the album 1984.  From, no fucking surprises here, 1984.  Maybe a handful of people under the age of 30 will even recognize the song, and none of them will have any emotional connection to it.  Proof positive that Ready Player One is more photo album than photo bomb, more memory lane than meme stream.

It's 2045, and the world has fallen to shit.  Poverty is rampant.  Wealthy, above-the-law corporations run the country.  People are fat, stupid and depressed, so they spend most of their time staring at flickering images on screens to dull the pain on their relentless march to death.  Wait, did I say 2045?

We get it Steven "E.T.'s List" Spielberg.  You're trying to comment on today with your fractured future fairy tale.  Your commentary would have a lot more bite if Ready Player One's world made an ass lick worth of sense.  Except for the people at one villainous corporation and a handful of cops, nobody works.  How do they pay for their albeit shitty homes?  Or food?  Or the electricity and Wi-Fi needed to play in the Oasis?

Yeah, the virtual world where anyone can be anything is called the Oasis.  Wonderwall not included.  In the Oasis, people can be and do anything their imaginations can dream up.  So, of course, everyone looks like anime characters, ninjas or cyborgs, and all they do is fight and race to earn in-game currency.  It may be a Wonka-esque world of pure imagination, but Spielberg's - I mean these characters' - imaginations suck giant, glowing donkey balls.  Also not included.

The creator of the Oasis left behind an Easter Egg when he died.  Whoever finds it gets control of the Oasis and a gazillion dollars.  Wade Watts (Tye "For A Fifth" Sheridan) is one of many, including that evil corporation where people actually work, searching for the Easter Egg.  Along the way, he teams up with and falls for Art3mis (Olivia "Clothes Off" Cooke) in the Oasis.  Wade's buddy points out that in real life she could be a 350-pound dude.  Turns out that in real life Artemis is an age-appropriate hottie.  Natch.

Ready Player One is Tron with endless pop culture cameos.  Makes you pine for 1941.

March 30, 2018