Ready Player Dumb

Rating: 1/10 (21 August 2018)

I haven't read the book, but it hardly sounds like something that would interest me. The premise is dull, and the whole virtual reality thing has not been something that has gripped my attention. What it boils down to is fan service and references aping off of people's fleeting nostalgia with a simple cookie-cutter plot to excuse the story's existence.
The movie is decidedly focused on TV and film, mostly popular in the 70s through 90s, with the occasional 80s pop-rock song thrown into the mix. What I find odd is that people in the future would be clinging on to these outdated properties so seriously - it's somewhat unrealistic, as you can see if you go into a real virtual chat room nowadays as there's an overabundance of memes. It is also hard to believe that nothing new and original would have become a cultural sensation by the time this story takes place.
The characters are flat and basic as can be, and the acting and writing is bad to boot. This film feels like a cheesy 90s film with its cliched dramatic elements, its inappropriately placed melodrama, and its cartoonishly evil white businessman villain. The main characters emotional acting is completely wrong, as he fails to emote following the death of his aunt, yet he over-emotes upon meeting the creator of The Oasis, bursting into tears.
This film apparently introduces new story elements that don't make sense. The secret to the first puzzle is just something the average racing game enthusiast would accidentally stumble upon within ten minutes of playing the game, yet the film acts like our hero cracked the Da Vinci Code once he figures it out.
The ending is one of the worst I've ever seen that shows that the writers clearly didn't think before submitting it. Once our hero gains ownership of The Oasis, he decides to shut down the Oasis two days a week to force people to go out into the real world and experience life. There is no way this marketing practice would work in real life, as logically you'd come to think "Oh, well people work every day of the week at all times. What about people who only get those two days off? Well, **** them, I guess, who needs them anyways?" What real games do is they implement rested XP as a means to reward players for avoiding binging for extended periods of time, and this method proved to be very effective, and prior to this there were more serious issues that aren't addressed in this story at all, such as people literally dying from gaming marathons. There's a lot of material here to work with, but unfortunately everything is surface-level at best. I imagine anyone with any knowledge of gaming whatsoever will find this ending extremely annoying, and for me it was the cherry on top of a over-hyped heap of trash.
The only scene I found interesting is that Shining scene, but even that is incredibly short-lived as it's followed by a nonsensical dancing zombie platforming sequence.
I also don't understand why they're working so hard in real life to create a treadmill for virtual gaming. Surely a hamster-ball type contraption would abide by the laws of physics. Also, people are walking the streets playing by the end of the film, yet none of them seem to bump into each other or any of the real-life objects in their way despite being such a huge mob, and characters are clearly shown playing via mouse and keyboard earlier, which would be a much safer and effective method than walking around in the real world. The tech simply doesn't make sense if you think about it.
This film is yet another lacking creativity to come from Steven Spielberg in recent years, and will surely only be a blast for nostalgia-tripping 90s kids and the least demanding of casual movie-goers alike.