Transcription
Hey guys, real quick. Sorry about the audio quality on this one. It's a little different than usual because I don't have my usual recording setup right now. Just bear with me. It's not that bad.
Just letting you know, for the past year or so, I've been saying how I plan to watch Ready Player One and make fun of it incessantly. I've honestly been looking forward to it. I talked about how it looked horrible, how it seemed pandering and uninspired. I was talking on Twitter for months.
But then the movie came out and I watched it, and it wasn't even really that bad. Yeah, man, go figure. Stupid Spielberg, you can't even make a bad movie like I wanted. Now, don't get me wrong, I would never call this a good movie. There's way too much awful crap in here for me to say it's actually good, but it is far from being bad.
Now, I will preface this review by saying I did not read the book. I'm an adult. I read real books for real grown-ups. I remember a few years ago, I actually read a paragraph or two from the book, and I cringed so hard that I swear I traveled through time. That's part of the reason why I would make fun of this movie before it even came out. The book is the lowest level of nerd gatekeeping in my mind, with references and Easter eggs just for the sake of it.
Now, this movie has that too, but it's done more to set the stage than anything else. The biggest problem with these references is that you can tell that Spielberg really had no part in their inclusion. There's a scene where the characters enter a classic horror movie, and in this scene, you can tell that Spielberg plays with the elements from the film to create an over-the-top theme park version of it. It's actually one of the cooler parts of the movie.
But when it comes to any video game references, I feel like they were just thrown in randomly. Chun Li and Laura Croft are hanging out just because. There's no actual reason for it. And this is where I'd like to praise a movie that does this well: Scott Pilgrim. Edgar Wright knows his video games. The first thing he made was Spaced, which has a whole episode that revolves around Simon Pegg playing Resident Evil 2.
In Scott Pilgrim, the references enhance the story. The Zelda fairy theme plays, not just so that you can say, "Oh, it's the Zelda song." It plays during a dream sequence to truly elevate the scene. And half of the references are that normies wouldn't even get. This is mostly due to the author of the comic, Brian Lee O'Malley. The dude puts in stuff for himself, and only the elder god losers like myself will notice them.
Remember when Ramona says, "This dude, I'm totally waiting on you"? Yeah, it seems like a normal line. Oops, you thought. It's actually a StarCraft reference. "I'm waiting on you." He confirmed this in an interview. I'm not making this up. That's how you do references that aren't pandering. I know there are a lot of drooling idiots who lose their minds when they recognize stuff like this in a movie, but when it's every frame of the movie, it isn't really that special anymore, is it?
But anyway, as I mentioned before, this movie does have some good stuff, right? So let's look at what this movie does well. Now, I remember when the trailer first came out, I thought the special effects looked like I thought a movie that's primarily computer-generated like this might end up looking kinda yucky. Movies like this usually don't work.
But to my surprise, the effects actually looked really good, to the point where the live-action segments were actually pretty shitty in comparison. Like, every time they went back to the real world, I lost interest pretty heavily. Most notably, the first challenge that revolved around that little race around the city was actually a lot of fun to watch. Spielberg already likes to do shots that are only slightly longer than average, and here, since the movie is computer-generated, it allows for smooth and engaging shots that don't cut, so you can see everything that's happening.
My worry with movies like this is that the fast camera work mixed with the computer-generated images just lead to visually confusing garbage. But honestly, I forgot that Spielberg knows how to direct movies, even if they are computer-generated. Some scenes are way better than others, but overall, I had no complaints as far as the visuals are concerned.
The second big thing I liked was the performance by Mark Rylance playing the creator of the Oasis, James Halliday. This character is mostly shown through recordings, flashbacks, or the NPC in the game world that shares his face and mannerisms. Now, it may seem weird that one character takes up a whole slot of what I like about this movie, but I like this character and performance that much.
When I saw the first trailer with him, where he says this line, "If you're watching this, I'm dead," I actually laughed out loud because I thought that was some of the worst line delivery that you could ever put in a trailer. What I didn't know was that the character is technically supposed to be on the autism spectrum. They never outright say it, but it's very clear just through his interactions with other characters and his mannerisms. Rylance is putting on such a convincing performance that I was literally blown away, for lack of a better term. He makes everyone else look like absolute amateurs by comparison.
However, while the performance of his character receives high marks from me, the actions of the character are another thing entirely. And here we get into more of the "I don't like." Now, while I like the character of Halliday, I'm kind of annoyed with how the movie treats him and, by extension, the main character, Wade, who idolizes him. Wade and Halliday are effectively the same person, minus the fact that Wade isn't on the spectrum like Halliday is, which gives Wade way less of an excuse for his shitty personality. They're self-absorbed and, to some degree, entitled, significantly more in Wade's case.
When they make references to old '80s movies or arcade games, you don't think, "Oh, this character is so cool and smart." Because when Halliday does it, it's meant to be kind of sad and melancholy. It's supposed to demonstrate how he's a social outcast. When Wade does it, it's annoying because he doesn't have an excuse. However, the movie seems like it's going to show you that his behavior doesn't pay off forever. In the Halliday flashbacks, we see how his obsession with pop culture pushes him away from his loved ones. But with Wade, that doesn't happen. As such, Wade doesn't actually learn anything by the end of the movie. By the end, he never sees how his traits are technically bad. We see Halliday constantly be punished for his traits, but Wade never is, even though he does the exact same stuff.
This is also readily apparent in how these characters treat women. Now, don't worry, I'm not gonna go on a political rant or anything. I'm just gonna talk about inconsistent character writing without spoiling too much. The characters in this story are kind of presented as a reward for the two characters that I've talked about already. Halliday has a troubling relationship with a woman from his past, and Wade likes the main girl in the movie, Artemis. Halliday puts this woman on a pedestal, but it's excusable given his condition and the way that it works in the plot.
When Wade does it, it's not excusable, and there's really no reason for it, and nothing bad ever happens to him. He likes her in the same way that any cringy neckbeard would lust after someone that they barely know. He is, in fact, rewarded with her affection. I liked this girl at first because she was self-reliant and capable and pretty interesting. She also has a more interesting backstory than anybody else that we see. She works on her own and she gets done.
But once she gets closer to Wade, she takes a backseat to him. Yeah, he's the main character, but she literally stopped developing halfway through the movie. It seemed like she was gonna have an arc, but it just didn't happen. In fact, there isn't much character development at all in this movie from anyone, and I found that to be pretty disappointing. I'd say that that's probably the biggest problem here.
When the movie begins, it seems like a fun action-adventure movie, and for the most part, it is. But if it had that little special Spielberg touch, it could have actually been pretty good. There's one scene early on where we see Wade get abused at home, and it was actually really grounded and emotionally moving, but we never see him experience that subplot again. This movie isn't devoid of emotional moments, but the few that are here aren't tied together in a coherent way. There isn't an emotional line through the movie, and it's kind of annoying.
This leads to the movie getting boring around the third act. Like, you kind of just stop caring about what's actually happening because the characters aren't experiencing anything different. As the movie goes on, it actually just gets worse as a whole. I'd say it's definitely not a worthless experience. Make sure that if you do watch it, you're in a full theater or you're with friends, because watching it alone would probably be pretty miserable.
I feel like I have a lot more to say about the movie, but I want this to remain kind of spoiler-free. So when the movie gets released digitally, I might do a breakdown if the demand is high enough. For now, I'll just say that you guys should go watch yourself and make your own judgments on it. And I'll give this one a six out of ten. A good time, yeah, but it still has some problems.
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