Quick Critique: Ready Player One (Movie) (Patreon)

Quick caveat, I saw this movie for free. I think that's important to say.

If you hated the Ready Player One book, like me, you will despise the movie. They changed the one interesting thing I remember about the book with the key being hidden in the school. They actually changed quite a bit about the movie, but none of it makes the story any better. How the characters get the keys, how the main guy gets the quarter, how the characters meet, and how things wrap-up are all different. But that's all they are... different, but not any better or more thought out. Everything else is the same lazy Family Guy/Robot Chicken style nostalgia. It just constantly reminds you of the properties and asks you if you remember them, without actually doing anything with that. It's actually even worse than the book because now it's just asking if you remember Overwatch characters or Master Chief or modern day BattleToads. I don't need you to remind me that Tracer exists. I can't escape Overwatch in my current life so I don't need you shining a bright light on it in your pop culture orgy. Use your nostalgia to say something. 80s nostalgia came back in a big way in our present time, so the fact that it comes back again again 30 years from now is a heck of a lot more meaningful than any of the characters in the story. Use your blatant pandering to discuss how creatively bankrupt all this is. Or about the state of video games, VR, social media, or just the world itself, the capitalism gone amuck of the future they show us, or just something. Anything. There's a throwaway line about how people stopped trying to solve problems and just outlive them, so... and? That line could have been the story's core message, but it's all but ignored after that. 

Divorced from the book and judging it based only on its merits as a movie, it’s still awful. The directing and pacing are a chore. The cast is horrible and you actively dislike all of them. Probably not a good sign when the entire story is built around you caring about one kid. The CG is so omni-present that it neither impresses nor disappoints because it’s just… there. Always. All the time. In your face Final Fantasy reject main character’s mug giant on the screen. There’s a single scene in the movie that was well-done (in the final battle when they use the two guns and it cuts back to the facility and you see the pods go red, that was a great shot). Another scene (in the movie… within the movie) got laughs in the theater at the start but it just went on and on and was ultimately so divorced from the original movie that it lost all meaning. From a story that says and means nothing to a movie that says or means nothing, and does that nothing in such an uninteresting fashion, it's just draining to watch. I got fidgety and was just profoundly tired, only to find out that there was still an hour left in the movie. Even ignoring the creative ramifications of relying on nostalgia, you also run into the issue where if you keep reminding me of more interesting movies that exist, I'm going to want to watch them instead of the one I'm current watching.