The bleakest depiction of the future since "Idiocracy" **SPOILERS**

Rating: 1/10 (11 April 2018)

Let me say this - I hate video games. I hate them with a passion. I feel that they've made people so creatively bankrupt that the only art they can think to make are drawings of video game characters, and the only videos they can make are themselves reacting to video games. Video games of today are trying to be movies - and vice-versa - and Ernest Cline's novel showed that books are following suit.
So, when I heard about this film, I wasn't excited to see it. But I was hoping to be proven wrong, as poorly-promoted films like "District 9" did in the past. But, right from the start, the film proved to be a chore to sit through.
The first fifteen minutes were some of the most visually and mentally exhausting moments I've seen in a movie. You are bombarded with a metric ton of exposition, then a rush through all the "worlds" of the OASIS with barely enough time to take it all in, then thrust into a race where entirely too much stuff is going on. Wrecking balls swinging, King Kong smashing, cars flipping and wrecking everywhere.
The race sequence sounds awesome until you realize the film made two grievous errors. First, for being an escape from a drab and depressing dystopia, the colors used in the OASIS are equally bland and blurry, everything cast through a blue filter. Something more cartoonish with brighter colors would've been a better approach to further distinguish the virtual world of the OASIS from the real world. This leads to the second problem - because the OASIS is depicted in such a drab color scheme, it's very difficult to pick out any of the "easter eggs" everyone's talking about. I saw this film in IMAX 3-D, and at any one moment - even with thousands of digital creatures on screen - I couldn't see more than four objects at a time. And, more often than not, you don't see things long enough for you to even recognize them.
What no one will admit, and die-hard fans of the book will surely deny, is that "Ready Player One" is basically a rehash of maligned "The Emoji Movie." It's an attempt to portray an invasive technology as fun while completely ignoring the real societal harm it's done. Sure, we see how crappy futuristic Columbus, Ohio looks, but there's no awareness of cause-and-effect, that the existence of the OASIS was itself responsible. It's blamed on some nebulous global cataclysm like the equally-awful "Maze Runner" films. Even one of the villains is actually played by T.J. Miller, the main character from "The Emoji Movie."
Near the end of the film - which runs about an hour too long - the film's internal logic starts to crumble, making you ask questions like---
When a bad guy plugged into the OASIS is just about to complete the Atari 2600 game that unlocks the final key, why does the hero girl in the same room plug herself into the game instead of walking the ten feet up to him to stop him?
When the main character is trying to virtually stick the key in the final lock, all the while trying to keep his balance in a truck driving through the real world, why isn't anyone else standing around in the truck trying to help steady him?
And when the main character finally prevails, why are all the minions researching pop culture for the bad guy celebrating? Didn't that moment mean they'd failed?
Also, let's face it - if a virtual reality video game system became this prolific, there's no way we'd all look like movie stars. Yes, I get no one would pay to see that, but if you think you can spend nearly every hour of the day playing video games and look like Tye Sheridan, you're kidding yourself.
On top of all this, the film is just depressing. It's completely ignorant of the emotional weight of its own premise. The defeatist attitude of the main character saying "There's nowhere left to go. Nowhere but the OASIS" is itself shocking. To think that any generation would be so jaded to think that the rest of the world isn't worth exploring just because others have is just sad. It made me think there are people out there like that already, fat and unhappy as they spend hours on end playing video games and ignoring the outside world. To this film's credit, there is a brief moment where the main character's uncle is shown having wasted the rent money on the game, but this doesn't make the main character reflect on his own choices. And, minutes later, both his uncle and aunt are killed, aborting any satisfying resolution.
The film also took a dismissive attitude toward depression itself. The film makes light of suicide, showing a person so distraught over losing his credits in the game that he attempts to throw himself out a window. The plot is also driven by the depression of Mark Rylance's character as Halliday, the co-creator of the OASIS. Each one of his clues left to the gamers was a clear cry for help, pointing to his mistakes and regrets in life. But, again, there's no reflection on the part of any of the characters, no realization that they, too, could be like Halliday in the future, and perhaps want to change their ways in a "Christmas Carol" kind of way. Nope - it's just on to the next ridiculous action scene.
Finally, it was depressing from a cultural standpoint. I found it strange that in 2045 people would not only be obsessing over nostalgic pop culture, but exclusively pop culture from the 1970s and 1980s. It made me truly wonder about the permanence of anything created from the 1990s onward, particularly today, when trends seem to rise and fall quicker than ever. I think the film could've helped itself by having the bad guy be the one focused on older pop culture from the '70s and '80s while the heroes reference things from today. It wouldn't have fixed all the film's problems, but it would've been a start.
Overall, "Ready Player One" painted the bleakest picture of the future in any film since "Idiocracy." The visuals and the world of the game (what surprisingly little of it we actually see) is little more than the peeling paint job covering a stark reality. Even the resolution to close the OASIS two days a week couldn't get me out of the depressed feeling I had walking out of the theater. This isn't simply a matter of a film not being for me - it was a genuinely shocking realization of what the world is for some people.
The OASIS is fast becoming a reality in our world, and we should take this work as a cautionary tale.