It does not matter if it is the film or the book, it is plane sludge.

Rating: 3/10 (31 July 2018)

Now bare in mind, most of my life is stuff exactly like this: popculture salads of explosions and nostalgia sold to me as big budget video games and movies. We got this in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Wreck it Ralph, Kingdom Hearts, Lego Movie, Marvel Vs Capcom, South Ppark in Imagination Land and god knows what else. This is FAMILIAR TERRITORY to explore the jungle of our collective imaginations.
AND IT SUCKS IN THIS MOVIE.
It is Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but no other kids get eliminated with any moral to it, Slugworth has an army of machine gun toting thugs and no cops in the way to stop him, and Willy Wonka is sitting in the corner chewing on his own clothing quietly like a kid with pica. And throw in a hot girlfriend who is sad because of a contrived backstory and she is not pretty enough in real life.
Oh, you think this film is better than this? Well, if you see any love on the screen it is not in the main plot. The cameos, the in jokes, the references, and all that were given to the post production and special effects teams and were added like bumper stickers to the back of my ugly broken car. It is still an ugly broken car no matter how many stickers I put on it. But unlike my car, you might see my car for 2 minutes in traffic. You are not locked into starring at the back of my car for 2 hours to analyze why Marvin the Martian, Robocop, and Chun Li are standing next to eachother. There is no juxtaposition to give these cameos relevance.
It is not an army of heroes vs an army of villains. It is not an army of souless robots vs fanciful whimsical creatures. It is not werewolves against vampires. There is no difference between the machine gun touting army of soldiers, robots, and wizards and the good guy machine gun touting army of soldiers, robots, and wizards. FAIL. ARTISTIC FAIL.
And one last tangent: in a game world where people can apparently use the Oasis with a keyboard at their desk.............why have full body virtual reality slave phone booths? Shouldn't they just be in cubicles? Are cubicles more expensive than the full body VR doom chambers?