Looks like a rip-off in more than one way, can't believe it's a Spielberg film

Rating: 6/10 (23 April 2018)

Yes, "is this really a Spielberg film?" was the first question I asked my friend after the movie just ended.
It's just that bad, having watched other Spielberg films like the MIB series, Jurassic World and especially Bridge of Spies. In fact, the best part about this show was the angles shown in the first minute of the show when the main character was going down from his apartment.
The storyline is simply too simplistic to make the movie great. There are basically 3 premises to this movie:
1) Cameos and references to other games, which is similar to movies like Pixels and Wreck-it-Ralph (and hey there is even a racing component in here). I guess this is one of the main pulls towards gamers, since the cameos range from retro (Atari 2600 games) to modern (Overwatch).
2) Saving the world through video games. Well this is quite often used to a much better degree of success. Take Star Wars Episode VI: The Force Awakens for example, there were some parts where the cast use virtual reality to "save the world from the evil clutches of the Empire".
But a more apt example clearly could be seen from Sword Art Online instead, there are simply too many similarities. First: the main character don't join clans (guilds), though for Ready Player One it wasn't explained why, at all. Secondly, the guy meets a girl he's in love with. Thirdly, this is VR, though Sword Art Online's version is more immersive and sensible, unlike the one Ready Player One, as they could somehow still be fully aware of their surroundings. Well the list goes on, but towards the end, just think of the "Seed" and Kobayashi's final encounter with Kirito in ALO. If this isn't a rip-off I don't know what it is.
3) The villain is over-simplistic and the main character is over-complicated. Wait... this sounds like every action movie, actually scratch that. That sounds like every Marvel movie right? Wrong. Cause in this case, there are too many hints of what is going to happen before a huge revelation or climax. Thus it totally shatters any suspense or expectations in the following scenes.
Take just one scene for example, the villain uses drones to blow up a building but with so many drones capable of surveillance, the villain failed to realise that the main character is not in the building. But ends up motivating him to shut them down instead by killing people he lives with but don't really care.
To be honest, this movie is the opposite of deep. So much plotlines are so shallow, the development of each main concept seems deep at first but less than 20 minutes the direction changed. And moreover, it is so predictable that it goes in the pattern of MC succeeds-> Villain succeeds-> MC succeeds ->infinite loop.
The reason why I can't simply accept this film being under Steven Spielberg's hands is that simple. Yes, this movie is adapted from a book, but the way the race had no background music or the way a lot of scenes were shown and presented simply made the movie so predictable and boring it was unbearable.