I am aware I am super late when it comes to talking about this movie, but I felt like that, now that I have analysed it, anal-ized it, and pretty much picked out everything about this film, I feel like now is the perfect time to discuss this film and see what it’s worth is. So with that being said, let’s talk about Spielberg



In the recent years, Steven Spielberg has been seen as an old coot who can’t make it with the times, hides all his bad writing behind a ton of CGI, and just some guy who should probably retire with all of his money and join the ranks of washed up directors like George Lucas. But there was a time when Spielberg was the best of the best when it came to making movies. He made thrillers, adventures, sci-fi, pretty much a ton of movies that impressed and fascinated people all over the world, like Jaws, E.T., Jurassic Park, and Schindler’s List (I don’t think that last one can just fit anywhere, but whatever). But if you were to tell me that Spielberg was going to make a movie about video games, pop culture references, and virtual reality, I would’ve said…. “Huh?”. And now here we are, with the movie Ready Player One, based on the book written by Ernest Cline, from Ohio……. Oh. Well, I’m sure Ready Player One isn’t that terrible, right-

I: Oasis, AKA VR Chat 2.0



Well flick my sack and call me Jack, what a painfully average film this was. Let’s talk about all the terrible things that are involved in this movie. So let’s talk about it. In the not so distant future, everyone is given these big VR headsets, because like Polygon, AKA the greatest and totally not-biased video game journalism site out there, virtual video gaming really was the future of gaming. Everyone has it, from kids running down the streets to evil businessmen to people living in trailer parks. They all own these virtual reality headsets, but none of them own guns, like when say a crazy businessman comes waving a gun around to kill a group of kids after blowing up a portion of the park. But I’m getting ahead of myself. So in the world of Oasis, they say that anyone can be whatever they want. As long as that someone was in the legal rights, so no Nintendo characters. I guess Nintendo just up and died around that time. Hell, when I think about it, music and movies just kinda up and fucking died around the 80s in this movie. All there are is references to old music like A-Ha, Duran Duran, and Michael Jackson, and film references like Star Wars, Back to the Future, or talking about the Iron Giant as he does a Terminator 2 thumbs up. Remember when Iron Giant wasn’t a gun? Well, fuck it. Iron Giant is a huge gun. Get in that business building and light the fucking place up, Giant



But hang on, cause there is a lot about the Oasis I don’t get. Like, why is it that some people can just sit around in a chair or in one room to play the game, but everyone else has to run around like fucking fools with these headsets on to be in the game. The main characters just gotta sit around in a big chair, or at the very least, are limited to one room. But in the big final battle near the end of the movie, you have people running in the streets with these headsets on, doing karate kicks and judo moves out in public, which if this was any other world, these kids would get laughed at. But in all seriousness, what is stopping these kids from running into walls, or hitting each other trying to play the game, or running into oncoming traffic. There is a scene where the businessman can see them from his car window as they are playing the game right next to the street. What’s stopping these kids from running into the street and dying? And this is more of a nitpick, or rather, a NikPik (Fucking kill me), but are you telling me there is no one in this game that would be a meme character? No trolls or nothing. There is an item in the game that kills everyone in the game once it is activating. Fallout 76 is proof that anyone with that kind of power can do some destruction. They steal the launch codes for rockets, and launch them to the tutorial town, ruining the playthrough for newcomers. And at the least, there is not one grown man playing as an anime girl or even, god forbid, a painfully unfunny Ugandan Knuckles.



II: Can’t Make an Omelette...

So there is an actual plot in this movie. It’s not very good, but it’s better than nothing. The game designer, this autistic cuckling of a man, has set up a challenge in his game. He has three easter eggs hidden in his game world, and the first person who can collect them will be given the rights to his game and can run it however they please, as long as they don’t make the same mistakes he did, because game design is bad. And the challenges are a fucking plague on everything. The first challenge is the biggest joke in the world. The riddle is that, at the race for the egg, you aren’t actually supposed to race through a race track that is stopped by King Kong with his Expanding Dong. No, you are supposed to back up and go in reverse. A riddle that can be found in the games hall of records in one scene. In the years that people have been searching for this thing, the answer was in this single hall, and the main character found it so damn fast. It would’ve taken the community not even a fucking year before they cracked the code and found that first egg. So, that’s one egg that is a real annoyance to me. How about that second one. I hear in the book that they had to repeat an entire 20 minute song by the band Rush, which would sound fun, but for the sake of not having the rights to use that music, they had to go with the next best thing. Use the hotel from The Shining without Jack Nicholson. And now Nikpiks Nik is gonna shut up for a second, cause now it is time for Corner of Horror Nik to come out of his coffin to talk about what this scene is an insult the haunting beauty that is the film The Shining. Now I like what they were trying to do. I liked how they gave the scene a more film grain look to it and I like how they replicated the hotel, but my god do I just hate this scene. I hate how it has to force these characters into the area when they could’ve used something else. I hate how they spoil every great scare in the movie from the two twin girls to the woman in the bathtub to the elevator of blood to Jack Nicholson who isn’t really Jack Nicholson chasing them through the hedge maze. Any kid who looks at this film today isn’t going to be scared by this scene like the originally film intended. It’s just gonna be a bunch of dumb points that are brushed on so damn fast. I wouldn’t even have a complaint if it was just one of these but they go through the entire fucking movie that I can’t help but feel insulted as to how they rush and still spoil one of the greatest horror movies out there. Also that part where the girl is jumping around on zombies in a ballroom like it’s Mario makes me ill. But hey, let me sidetrack for a second and talk about said girl for a brief period, cause boy does this irritate me.

III: DeFormed, DeSgusting

So the girl in the movie is played by one Olivia Cooke. This is her in real life.



I’m not the kind of person who drools and goes to town to photographs of celebrities, but it’s clear that she is a relatively attractive young woman. But in the movie, she is said to be a hideous girl, going on about how the main character could never love her because she is nothing like she is in the game. And when we meet her in real life in the movie, this is what she looks like



So as you can see by the look of this fucking Quasimodo creature, clearly I wouldn’t stick my dick in that. Absolutely foul and disgusting. But no, seriously, what? The movie makes her out to be this really ugly character, and all they can do is slap a birthmark on her eye which she hides with her hair and they make her kinda socially awkward. It’s such an 80s trope to just use a scar or a birthmark or something to make a character look ugly so the main character can be all, “Looks aren’t everything, it’s what’s on the inside that counts”. What sort of fucking old coot that can’t get with the times made this movie… Oh right, Spielberg.

IV: ...Without Cracking a Few Eggs

So after two eggs were a bust, the last one, the very last one, where all the characters have to get to it. The businessman is on them, they are down one teammate, and they are now nearing the last egg. This is their all or nothing gambit. All the chips are on the table now. How do they do it. Well, they gotta go and discover the first easter egg. But what could that be. Oh, it’s just Adventure on Atari…… Of course. Fucking…. Fucking goddammit Spielberg. I know you aren’t exactly a writer and more a director, but could you be anymore predictable? And this is dumb too, cause not only does the main character bring a suit that comes with the VR headset that allows him to feel everything, from pleasure to pain to the final fight, which is really dumb, kinda lik how Oro from Street Fighter uses one arm in a fight to give his opponents a fair fight but even more retarded, but the way the main character deals with getting to it so no one else, say the businessman, can blow his brains clean all over that Atari 2600 is that he uses the fucking Killer Queen’s Bites the Dust cube on everyone, which sends them all back by an hour. So how does that work? It doesn’t erase people’s memory of the events. And the girl doesn’t get sent back either, just the villains. Unless that really was a Bites the Dust thing.



V: Wasted Potential in Mirroring

But here’s something that I feel like the movie really had going for it, something that could really make it work, and that was the mirroring between the two characters, the main character and the game designer for the Oasis. The game designer is seen as this brilliant genius who is worshipped like a god, kinda like real world celebrities. But in reality, he is a socially awkward dork who likes pop cutlure from his time and had his funeral flowers arranged to look like the Star Trek logo. Honestly, this character was the most interesting part of the movie. Because despite being hailed as a genius, he has a ton of mistakes in his life from his game ruining his chances with a girl he liked to ruining his friendship in the real world all over this game. And as I saw that the main character was heading down something similar, I thought that this could be something really interesting. Allow me to suck my own dick as a writer for a bit, but the idea of this idea of failure being imminent was interesting to me. But the problem is that, despite the main character doing exactly the same thing, he works it out because he doesn’t become the worst thing you can be: A sell out



So yeah, the hole dynamic fails, and the main character manages to succeed in every aspect where the game designer failed. Call me a cynical asshole, but I would’ve loved it a lot more if the main character at least succeeded in some regard but still had to make sacrifices. But he makes no sacrifices. Oh, he lost his aunt- No, sorry, he lost his mom’s sister. He wasn’t even sad. He was more surprised than anything, kinda tired, but that’s it. You didn’t react to nothing. But hey at least he’s a good kid with a good head on his shoulders- Oh wait, no, he’s an idiot and a dick, and I will explain right now

VI: We Sold Out

So the movie ends with the main character getting tested by the game designer to sign the contract to own the company, but he realises that it’s not worth it, cause all he wants is to be with his friends and his slimebeast of a girlfriend. So the businessman comes to the trailer park of fun, whiping out from his pocket a fucking gun, ready to blow the kids brains out all over the back of the van. And again, none of these trailer parks have any firearms, or are doing anything to stop him from walking towards these kids. I know for a fact they have guns. I live in Ohio. I go to Columbus. I’ve seen trailer parks, with fucking crazy amounts of shotguns. Don’t bullshit me movie. Don’t bullshit me with this movie. But hey, the businessman is taken away by the cops who were probably too busy dealing with the kung-fu generation going around, and the gang are able to get the ability to run the Oasis. So what do they do? Oh, nothing much. They close down the Oasis on Tuesdays and Thrusdays- Wait, pardon me, cuckling!? Hold the fuck up, my dude. You close down the entire thing, on Tuesdays and Thursdays!? Are you fucking me with this!? He says that his reason for this is because it’s nice to not play games all your life and that you should experience things in the real world, he says as he sits in his high rise building with a fuck ton of cash in a nice suit as he makes out with his hot girlfriend. Oh, you can suck a wet fart from my fucking ass, movie. That is so stupid in so many ways? If you want to have people experience things in real life, that’s fine, but don’t force them to do it by closing them out of the game completely. Give them an option to quit. What if there are people who work a shit job on the weekend (Like me) and only get days off on Tuesdays and Thursdays (LIKE ME), and have nothing else better to do in their lives (This is getting too real now). What is stopping these people from filling their mouths with the cold barrel of a shotgun. I really hope to see the suicide rates increase because of this decision. What a terrible decision.

VII: Judgement



So what do I make of this movie, aside from the fact that it is just bad in every way regarding it’s ideas. Well, I can say this for sure, I wasn’t disappointed, cause that would assume I was even remotely interested in watching this movie, but I swear to god, so many people in school and in my group of friends told me how good it was and yet here we are, a bland, uninteresting film that gets the most generic storytelling across. Honestly, and I can’t believe I have to say this, but The Room is a more fun movie to watch. Now, is it a better movie, in terms of writing, acting, camera work, sound design, all that stuff. Fuck no, The Room is a mess. But it is so much of a mess that it is a fun movie. Ready Player One is just average. So average that it comes off as boring that it just isn’t a fun movie to watch. Spielberg, listen, you have talent (Most of the time), and despite the fact that I have been giving you a hard time in this article, I want you to make good movies, cause I know you can. But dear god, Ready Player One is not one of them. Please just stick to more sci-fi and adventure films. Never make something like this again. Ready Player One, an average, nothing movie, and that is the worst thing you can be to me. So in short, yes, Ready Player One is the second worst movie ever. Still right behind Divergent.