Rules: explain why
Ready player one.
That has to be one of the cringiest movies I’ve seen, is tries so hard, too hard with it’s “WE LOVE YOU NERD, YOU’RE SO COOL FOR PLAYING GAMES AND GETTING THIS 80S REFERENCE” message and the whole “corporation bad, the people good” narrative seems written for toddlers… The fan service feels cheap and adds nothing to the story.
Finally, they trying to make the people believe that very attractive girl with a barely visible red tint spot on her face is “ugly”… Like wtf?
Yet it received decent reviews plus being one of the most successful movies of that year.
Oh it’s worse. I read the book and it was very sad. And the movie was clearly changed from the book for sake of IP laws, reminding us of how sorry our own dystopia is.
It really needed an Oh Brother Where Art Thou ending where Wade and the gang fail to win but get well-off enough from their exploits and are seen by the public as leaders of the revolution against IOI’s monopoly, and the capitalist system as a whole.
One of IOI’s sixes gets the final key but when he signs the contract, it locks him out. The OASIS controlling stock remains in escrow pending ??? with IOI as the default benefactor when… something future undisclosed event happens.
Which would set it all up for RP2.
It’s one of those books like the Harry Potter series in which it feels more like it was intended to be easy-to-market, but is not very strong as a story.