2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
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Looks like this might be another Spielberg dud...
'Ready Player One' Review: A Dumb, Shallow Exercise in Toxic Metrosexuality
Control of the OASIS means control of…
And now we come to one of the movie’s biggest problems. The stakes are nonsense. We are actually supposed to care that Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), CEO of IOI (the second largest corporation in the world), wants to win control of the OASIS so he can make money by … placing … ads … in the … OASIS.
Let me boil Ready Player One down for you… It is as if the CEO of Netflix died and offered his company to whoever wins a Mortal Kombat tournament. Enter Bill Gates, who uses all of his corporate power to win the tournament so that he can interrupt all those Netflix shows with Microsoft ads.
Not exactly a Bwahahahaha.
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As far as empathizing with the so-called underdogs in the Stacks, to be perfectly honest, a big part of me was thinking throughout, “Maybe if these sorry assholes put down the VR glasses and do something with their lives, their lives won’t be so miserable.”
You sit in a trailer all day watching 3-D TV and I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?
Sorrento might be a jerk, but at least he works for a living.
And Sorrento really is a jerk, not so much because he wants to place ads in the OASIS, but due to the lamest corporate security system ever. Anyone can break into his office. And I do mean anyone.
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Our Dystopian hero is, naturally, a teenager — oh, and an orphan to boot (this is a Spielberg movie). His name is Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) and his deep knowledge of the minutiae of pop culture — most especially from the ’80s — puts him in a front pole position to win Halliday’s contest. Which is another problem…
Halliday, who we are supposed to empathize with (in flashbacks) as a geek who never found his emotional place in the real world, is arbitrarily handing the keys to the most powerful company in the world over to any sociopath, serial rapist, child molester, or Nolan Sorrento, who has the most joystick and Trivial Pursuit skills.
The movie itself tells us that our knowledge of John Hughes’ movies and old Atari games is a moral virtue, not just through the blander than bland character of Wade Watts, but in the mindlessly shallow way Spielberg wants us to pat ourselves on the back every time we recognize one the endless cultural references that fill the screen.
'Ready Player One' Review: A Dumb, Shallow Exercise in Toxic Metrosexuality
Control of the OASIS means control of…
And now we come to one of the movie’s biggest problems. The stakes are nonsense. We are actually supposed to care that Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), CEO of IOI (the second largest corporation in the world), wants to win control of the OASIS so he can make money by … placing … ads … in the … OASIS.
Let me boil Ready Player One down for you… It is as if the CEO of Netflix died and offered his company to whoever wins a Mortal Kombat tournament. Enter Bill Gates, who uses all of his corporate power to win the tournament so that he can interrupt all those Netflix shows with Microsoft ads.
Not exactly a Bwahahahaha.
-----
As far as empathizing with the so-called underdogs in the Stacks, to be perfectly honest, a big part of me was thinking throughout, “Maybe if these sorry assholes put down the VR glasses and do something with their lives, their lives won’t be so miserable.”
You sit in a trailer all day watching 3-D TV and I’m supposed to feel sorry for you?
Sorrento might be a jerk, but at least he works for a living.
And Sorrento really is a jerk, not so much because he wants to place ads in the OASIS, but due to the lamest corporate security system ever. Anyone can break into his office. And I do mean anyone.
----
Our Dystopian hero is, naturally, a teenager — oh, and an orphan to boot (this is a Spielberg movie). His name is Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) and his deep knowledge of the minutiae of pop culture — most especially from the ’80s — puts him in a front pole position to win Halliday’s contest. Which is another problem…
Halliday, who we are supposed to empathize with (in flashbacks) as a geek who never found his emotional place in the real world, is arbitrarily handing the keys to the most powerful company in the world over to any sociopath, serial rapist, child molester, or Nolan Sorrento, who has the most joystick and Trivial Pursuit skills.
The movie itself tells us that our knowledge of John Hughes’ movies and old Atari games is a moral virtue, not just through the blander than bland character of Wade Watts, but in the mindlessly shallow way Spielberg wants us to pat ourselves on the back every time we recognize one the endless cultural references that fill the screen.
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