★★¾
Wade Watts is The One
Ladies don't get much to do
Not a great copy
When the creator of a virtual reality world called the OASIS dies, he releases a video in which he challenges all OASIS users to find his Easter Egg, which will give the finder his fortune.
It's been a while since I saw this movie (like two months ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ), but I wanted to play catch up on my somewhat recent trips to the theater, and this was at the top of the list.
Let me preface this review with the fact that I didn't love Ready Player One, the book. I thought it was a fun novel, and I enjoyed all of the nerdy pop culture references—even if I didn't get all of them—but I really disliked Artemis' character and their "romance." (It felt very self-satisfying, as though author Ernest Cline was putting a fantasy to paper, rather than thinking about how to make their romance believable.)
I felt much the same way about the film adaptation. Fast-paced and great nerdy references, but terrible lack of depth to the female characters, even though I do appreciate that Artemis got more to do. The romance was actually worse in the movie, if you can believe it. I also didn't like the changes they made to the secondary characters; they had semi-fleshed out backstories in the books that were nonexistent in the movie.
Like I said, however, the many, many, pop culture references included in the film were impressive. I guess it pays to snag a director like Steven Spielberg, who just maybe has some connections. Tye Sheridan was a good Wade/Parzival. Lena Waithe could have been amazing as Aech, were she given more to do. And Ben Mendelsohn was great as
I tried not to go into this movie expecting a perfect adaptation, and I wasn't disappointed. I just had hopes that the few things I found fault with in the book would have been addressed or improved.
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