Review: Ready Player One
tl;dr: For yet another techno-corporatist dystopia, I found Ready Player One a surprisingly refreshing, hopeful, humanist story about uncynical protagonists whose only superpowers are earnestly caring about something. The visual effects are pretty well on-point, the action is well-done, and the dialogue is inconsistently but occasionally witty. I went in expecting the most vapid of action movies, and was pleasantly surprised.
I'd read plenty of thinkpieces explaining ways that Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One was shallow, bad, and/or problematic, but I had an evening to burn, so I went to go see it with a friend of mine.
I'm glad that I did; I enjoyed it a lot. (I'm going to say ~nothing about the 'and/or problematic'; just not going to go there today.)
spoiler note: Mild spoilers for references, worldbuilding, and visual style. No significant plot spoilers.
(1a)
On its face, it's a effects-rich action-romp. And in that genre, it felt reasonably well-done, if not particularly deep (though it had its thematic notes, see 2A