Could have been great. Greed and cowardice make a wonderful book into a forgetable film

Rating: 3/10 (4 April 2018)

I wanted to see a digitally rendered Molly Ringwald and Matthew Broderick! It would have been the only place where their being digital renders wouldn't have mattered so much, since it was all taking place in the Oasis.
No AtAt's or X-Wings?
No RUSH?
I wanted to see the inside of the Blade Runner world and that little replicant testing machine!
I wanted to see D&D and Joust!
We got what..? The Iron Giant and a bunch of cheap B-Side pop culture references. You could smell the compromise.
They had a budget for licensing and all the greed-bots got greedy. Imagine how much fun this film could have been if everybody had just kicked in and said, "Go for it! Let's make something spectacular! Let's celebrate our medium!"
Instead we not only got a bunch of budget licenses, (obviously with strict limits on the number of tenth-of-seconds of screen time they could be used), and a dumbed down story for general admission, because the demographic which had actually lived and loved in the 80's sure isn't going to be paying to see *this* twice.
All around, a smart economic decision.
"The film won't make the people happy it's supposed to make happy, so let's just make a general film for kids and hope we make our money back. Which we wont."