Honest Trailers turned its attention to the recent Steven Spielberg blockbuster film, Ready Player One, as the film is about to be released on BluRay and they really took the movie to task for its seemingly over-usage of pop culture references in favor of being creative on its own merits.
The most savage line is the one that opens up the latest installment of the popular YouTube series, which is that Ready Player One is “how imagination dies.”
REVIEW: Ready Player One is A Huge Spectacle with a Muddled Message
The lack of imagination is inherent in the fact that, in the virtual reality world of the Oasis, people can think of literally anything that they want to have happen and yet just make the same basic references to popular characters from pop culture. The same goes for the characters themselves. Like Art3mis looking like “a blend of David Bowie and Admiral Ackbar.”
Art3meis’ appearance also gets mocked as the real world Art3mis, played by actress Olivia Cooke, is gorgeous, but she has a birthmark (gasp!) and so the only way that the star of the film, Wade (played by Tye Sheridan), could fall for her is by getting to know her in her Art3mis form. That just perpetuates all sorts of reductive film tropes.
Ready Player One’s Comic Book Easter Eggs
Besides the teasing about the whole “snake eating itself” aspect of a film based on a book that was based on a bunch of films, comic books and video games, one of the aspects that get the biggest criticism is how the film treats the defense of the virtual Oasis as a huge deal while they barely address the fact that the real world in the film is in horrible shape!
Still, despite the mocking, it is fair to say that Spielberg’s film certainly connected with a large audience, as the movie has grossed nearly $600 million at the box office and is about to take in a whole lot more money on BluRay.