Ready Player One Review

Ready Player One

This is one of the few cases where I’ve read the book before watching the movie. I actually had high hopes that the movie would be better, though. The thing that bugged me about the book was that its 80s gimmick was so in your face. The story would frequently come to a screeching halt as the author gushed, “Did you catch that reference?!” I also thought it was strange that, in the book, they acted like nothing interesting happened in pop culture between 1990 and 2045. I don’t care how much the creator of the world’s most popular MMO liked 80s stuff, people are still going to want to make avatars of the characters they grew up with.

So that’s one thing the movie rectifies, although how many of us really know our generational Buckaroo Banzai, GoldenEye, and Overwatch trivia? Still, the fact that many of these references can sit in the background and live as fun, little Easter eggs helps alleviate that amalgamation. If anything, the movie wasn’t packed with enough nods to older games and movies, but I’m sure it was hard to get the license to every friggin’ thing ever invented. We do at least get to see a Gundam suit fight against Mechagodzilla while Halo marines scurry between their feet. If that doesn’t satisfy your weekly dose of pop culture, then I don’t know what will.

The VR world here is admittedly pretty fun to see in action. The original key challenges from the book have been rewritten to perform better on the big screen, and the action sequences don’t disappoint. It’s the real-world aspect of the movie that falls flat. We’re given little reason to care about the humans behind the avatars and no investment in their incredibly forced romance. All of the live-action scenes felt like… Oh, it’s a movie, so two people have to fall in love, and of course we have to have a car chase in there, and the villain has to be comically “bad,” and we can’t kill any of the humans to add some real stakes, because that wouldn’t be appropriate for the kids. Anyway, back to the VR stuff!

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.