tl;dr: Not a disaster, but still a missed opportunity. Video game are terrible anyway.
I've been putting off writing my thoughts on Ready Player One here, a quote-unquote video game website, because I didn't think people would be interested in reading them. But I guess I have to impose myself...
I am not one of those people that think Spielberg has "given up" like Alex says; Lincoln and Bridge of Spies are straight-up great films, and I envy people that can completely enjoy War of the Worlds because it is the definite post-9/11 film - the first half in incredible. I am also not super serious about video games themselves, but more on that later.
Ready Player One is not terrible, far from it, but you can clearly see a better film in it. There are interesting threads that could have been explored a little more: the endless bungalows stacked on top of each-other, the sea of closed VR cubicle, the collective imagination entirely based on copyrighted material, or even the creepy animation of Spielberg/Zemeckis. These are pretty dystopian, upsetting things that could have made for a very critical work. But Spielberg is not a cynical, deconstructing filmmaker, he is an idealist. He couldn't destroy such a world, especially one that is so inspired on his own cinema. I guess having Ernest Cline work so close on the project hasn't helped. If it had been made by Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall), Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil: Retribution) or Tony Scott (Dejà Vu), it would have been this very in-depth, scatting view of the real world becoming more and more virtual, but instead we have this juvenile, naive view of the industry, and the duel between the passionate fans and the corrupt corporation - kinda similar to Speed Racer, another movie I don't like.
At least it's honest; Hollywood blockbusters have become such bloated orgies of CGI with endless intellectual properties mashed-up, and Ready Player One doesn't pretend to be anything else. This is the blockbuster of today, raw and uncensored, whether you want it or not. It is not some shitty Marvel movie pretending to make some grand political statement about immigrants or black people. Spielberg still knows how to direct an action in a way that you understand what's going on, and there's a scene near the end where he clearly says that cinema is still better than video games - and he is 100% right.
And finally, I just LOVE that the legitimacy argument has gone from "No man! Video games are important 'cause they're teaching me skills that will totally be useful to me in the future!" to "No man! Video games are important 'cause they're a real art form that should totally be taken seriously!" Fuck off! And fuck this industry!
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