Steven Spielberg’s movie ‘Ready Player One’ was mediocre at best. There are several reasons why I think this. Firstly, the plot. Main characters are competing with a huge corporation, known as IOI, to solve the secret puzzles to obtain three keys. The first person to obtain all the keys is given total control of the OASIS. The OASIS is a super advanced virtual reality world created by Halliday. Halliday was a genius video game creator and a social outcast for most of his life. He has become immortalized almost to a godlike status because of creating the OASIS. The movie establishes that most people in the world spend the majority of their life in the OASIS is now because real life has become miserable to live in. Most of the population is living inside giant towers of RVs, known as ‘The Stacks’.
The first reason I think ‘Ready Player One’ is a mediocre movie is because it is too reliant on references to other media. The movie has no ground to stand on without references to pop culture. Anyone who isn’t familiar with 80s culture or pop culture in general will have a hard time enjoying this movie. Because they won’t understand half of the things they talk about or key plot points in the story. Such as in the middle of the film when they go into the movie ‘The Shining’ to find the second key. This movie just gives off the feeling of someone out of touch with pop culture just taking lots of well-known iconic things and trying to see what things work when put together.
Main characters I find bland and uninteresting. Especially the main character Wade Watts, played by Tye Sheridan. To me he seems to just be a caricature of the intended audience for this movie rather than his own character. His main characteristics are liking pop culture and being a very nerdy. Though I would imagine in the world this movie takes place in his interests would be considered normal or something that everyone likes. He doesn't come across as a developed person, but rather a person whose only passions in life are 80s culture and video games. His main partner, Samantha Cook, is a lot like Wade. They both share a lot of the same interests, they are almost the same character, they both are interested in finding the keys that lead to control of the OASIS. Their reasons for doing so however are different: Wade wants to find the keys for the adventure and Samantha wants to find them to stop IOI from getting control.
If I was able to rewrite this movie, the first thing I would do is remove some of the more obvious references. Otherwise, the movie is not really the same property. I think the basic concept of the movie is very interesting. So, I would focus more on the element of a virtual reality world that people go inside to avoid the miserable reality they live in. Next, I would change the antagonist from an evil corporation to a 1984-esque government. And just like how in ‘Brave New World’ they use Soma to nullify negative feelings. Here they would use the OASIS in a similar manner.
Overall, ‘Ready Player One’ is an example of why you can’t make a good movie by just acknowledging that you are aware of lots of other iconic movies.