Ready Player One Review

xandermartin98 I must say, I was initially very confused as to how and why this film ended up in the movie-theater equivalent to Wal-Mart bargain bins so astonishingly quickly; I mean, come on, seriously, it was directed by Stephen Spielberg and was easily one of the most ridiculously hyped-up films he's ever been involved in (well, in recent memory, at least); in the words of the Angry Video Game Nerd himself, how bad could it possibly be?
Well, to give it at least SOME credit, it certainly does beat the living Hell out of Michael Bay's downright laughable Transformers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film adaptations any day of the week, and its visuals are a pretty underappreciated aspect of it to say the least...but upon closer inspection, I very quickly began to realize the true reason why this film wound up in the bargain bin so quickly...because it's easily one of the most generic, predictable and clichéd things to ever exist.
The characters are all ridiculously one-note and occasionally even outright offensive stereotypes, the story and humor are basically just that of The Lego Movie but without the hilarious self-awareness, the music is generic stock balderdash half of the time and obnoxiously forced-in classic rock songs that have considerably less to do with what's actually happening in the scenes they're used in then Stephen apparently seems to think they do the other half of the time...
Not to mention that the relationship between Wade and Samantha is basically (if not literally) a live-action version of the one between Gene and Jailbreak in The Emoji Movie, the setting has literally no real stakes in it whatsoever, the director seems to very pretentiously think that the film is teaching an "anti-tech" moral message when in reality it's doing quite the exact opposite...
(Not to mention that it also rather adorably seems to think that Halo and Borderlands will somehow still manage to remain commercially relevant game franchises in 20-fracking- 45...)
Most importantly, however, the pop-culture references. Jesus fracking CHRIST on a crucifix, the gosh-darned pop-culture references.
Just to name as many of them (both intentional and possibly non-intentional) as I can off the top of my head; Oasis is an overglorified glorified spoof of the Oculus Rift (and also the name of a classic rock band that made the infamous "Wonderwall" song from the 90s), the characters' virtual avatars explode into coins Mario-style whenever and wherever they die, Tracer from Overwatch appears for a few brief seconds just so that the film can have the honor of saying it "did the thing", the film's obligatory "first-person war shooter" planet is called Planet Doom (as in the classic DOS game), Wade's (predictably nasty, polluted and just generally disgusting) trailer-park hometown in Ohio looks almost exactly like the slums of Midgar from Final Fantasy VII, the evil businessman's virtual avatar looks like a bigger and bulkier version of Superman, Wade also ends up having to wear a Clark Kent disguise at a certain point in the film, the Holy Hand Grenade from Warhammer and Worms eventually comes into play just for the pure sake of it, the Rubik's Cube makes an appearance as a god-forsaken time-travel device, Godzilla and King Kong both appear as obstacles during the New York City street-racing scene (or maybe it was actually just the latter and I'm remembering it wrong; who gives a rat’s buttocks anyway)...
The third key is found by playing a whole 8-bit-storm of old Atari games, the guy who developed Oasis says that his favorite restaurant is Chuck-E-Cheese's of all pizza-related things [section of rant missing because it was too long to fit in this format; see /r/RalphTheMovieMaker for the full version], Spielberg somehow even managed to cram the fracking IRON GIANT into this movie despite the outright fact that the film isn't even remotely good enough overall to be considered anywhere near even remotely worthy of having him in it in the first damned place (not to mention that he's also horrendously out-of-character as well, just to add insult to injury)...
And in general, the entire film is just a completely rushed, forgettable and un-focused mess; literally just The Lego Movie without the charm. Overall, I would give it about a 5/10; it has its strong points, yes, but to say the LEAST, subtlety and intelligence are most definitely not among them. Long story short, I pathetically begged for a hitch-hike the rest of the way to the theater to watch a good old-fashioned movie, not a comically overglorified product-placement commercial. Seriously, did this film learn nothing from Wreck-It Ralph?
(In other words, the actual reason why WIR chose to set its pop-culture "joke" limit so tightly?)
Anyway, even if Ready Player One is supposed to be a satire of modern-day hyper-consumerism and how pop culture is completely taking over the world, let's be honest: Rocko's Modern Life - Static Cling and the upcoming Invader Zim movie are both going to completely fracking destroy this pretentious, soulless, money-grubbing sack of dung limb from limb

(Long story short, if you want a REAL Steven Spielberg film, start with Back To The Future)

Comments

DISCLAIMER: Back To The Future was a Robert Zemeckis film PUBLISHED by Spielberg - xandermartin98

I am looking forward to it. It seems a very debated movie upon people, some love it, some think it is good and others hate it - iliekpiez

Yeah make good posts like these not lists about your fetishes - visitor

^ - iliekpiez

yea - AlanaThePony

Your hate on this movie is getting very annoying dude and I don't even like this movie, It just doesn't even look as bad as you make it out to be - B1ueNew

At least Infinity War is overrated and just okay

(yes, I agree, Thanos is NOTHING compared to Dark Knight Joker or Spider-Man 2 Doc Ock) - xandermartin98