A Sort-of Review of Ready Player One: "Am I an Easy Mark?"

There's a moment during the climax of Ready Player One that caused me to have a revelation. It was during the final battle in the Oasis, the film's virtual world, where one of the heroes dives into the melee in the form of the classic RX-78 Gundam from the 70s to fight the main villain, who was piloting Mechagodzilla at the time. Watching this made me cheer and laugh in joy, probably to the confusion of my fellow moviegoers, but as the moment passed and the film continued a thought came to my mind. I asked myself, "Why did I just cheer at that? Is it just because I know what a Gundam is and thought it was cool to see it? Is throwing a semi-obscure nerd reference like that at me really enough to get me going? Am I an easy mark?"

This thought stayed with me throughout the rest of Ready Player One and after I had left the theater. I began to rethink the movie in these terms, of whether I enjoyed it more because I was able to recognize all the shout-outs, cameos, and easter eggs peppered throughout. I certainly enjoyed the film more than I was expecting, but was this part of the reason? Thinking on it led me to a bigger question, as a critic am I more forgiving to movies and entertainment that play to my sensibilities? Can my objectivity be fudged by playing on shallow eye-candy like seeing a Gundam fight Mechagodzilla? Am I an easy mark?


This is a question a lot of critics with nerdy backgrounds like myself have been grappling with since the Turn of the Millennium, as more and more movies are made out of comic books, video games, and obscure sci-fi novels that go on to dominate popular culture. But there's really nothing better than Ready Player One as a place to start examining this question from, as both the original book by Ernest Cline and Steven Spielberg's film adaptation are built on the kinds of shout-outs and call-backs that got me thinking about this in the first place. Indeed, it was kind of the reason I read Cline's book to begin with. Scanning through what I tend to write about on this blog will show you that I dig obscure pop culture esoterica, so I got the book to learn about some new stuff in that regard and get a theoretically engaging sci-fi adventure story along with it. And more or less, that's what I got.

The Gundam appearance that inspired this post.

Even though I liked the book well enough and enjoyed it, the criticisms still rang pretty true. Weak prose, familiar plot, too many long lists of references, unexamined subtext about the toxicity of nostalgia, and an ending that didn't quite work. That's part of what played into my mixed feelings about Ready Player One being turned into a movie in the first place. The story in and of itself wasn't anything audiences hadn't seen before and the fun stuff, the stuff like seeing a Gundam fight Mechagodzilla (though it was Japanese Spider-man's giant robot Leopardon in the book. Look it up if you have no idea what I'm talking about), there was no way any studio was going to be able to pay for licensing rights to all of the things referenced. And without the nerdy toy box, why even make the movie? Steven Spielberg signing on alleviated some fears, but even then a movie of Ready Player One seemed beyond the point.

So imagine how everybody felt when the movie turned out to be pretty good. It's not spectacular or anything, and it's definitely not one of Spielberg's all-time greats, but it's better than a lot of similar big colorful sci-fi adventure movies of recent years. It almost plays like one of his Indiana Jones movies, being a similar clue-solving treasure hunt with a small team of good guys and a larger, faceless group of bad guys, but with old movies and video games filling in for bible stuff. Spielberg seems to have zeroed in on what the actual core narrative of the story is, what is appealing about the Oasis concept Cline created for the book, and actually examined that subtext about nostalgia the novel left unexplored. All of this is to the film's better and makes for a richer, if not quite deeper, experience.

Ready Player One the movie does have flaws though. Many of the side characters don't get fleshed out quite enough. Art3mis, the female lead, thankfully has much more of a character than she did in the book but this also makes her more interesting than Parzival, our protagonist, and just makes me wish the movie was about her. The Oasis itself and the characters' in-game avatars all look great design wise, with some very good motion capture for the actors, but they are much more colorful and vibrant than the film's "real world" which I get is the point but that also kind of undermines the story's theme of "You can't spend all your time escaping from reality." It just made me want to spend the whole movie in the Oasis. The bad guys are pretty stock Evil Megacorporation as well, but in works in context.

Parzival & Artemis having a dance in the Oasis.

But a strong point of the film, in my opinion at least, is that Spielberg doesn't let the shout-outs and easter eggs which Ready Player One is built on overwhelm the story he's trying to tell. But they are still there, they are still a selling point, and they bring me back to my original question. Am I an easy mark? Did I give this movie, or other movies like it that do the same thing, a pass because I'm the kind of person who catches the reference to John Boorman's Excalibur or knows who Buckaroo Banzai is? Did I cheer for that Gundam just because I know what is and like Gundam already?

In the case of Ready Player One the movie, I'm going to have to say no. Chalk it up to Spielberg's skill as a filmmaker and storyteller, but after thinking on it, it was more how invested I'd become with the characters and their struggles that made that cavalry charge at the climax cheer-worthy. It was because I cared more about what was going on than the fact that it was a Gundam. Now I'm not going to lie, it being the classic Gundam was cool, but that was just a nerdy paint job on a moment that would have hit even if it wasn't a Gundam. That's really how you should use a shout-out like that. The Gundam's arrival itself works in the context of the story even if you don't know what the hell a Gundam is. As a Gundam fan, I do get a little more out of it because I do know what is, but that's just something extra. It's not the reason that moment is there and it would still work if you swapped out the Gundam for any other giant robot, or superhero, or what have you.

So in the case of Ready Player One, no I'm not an easy mark. But I think this is something to be aware of going forward. As more and more of the stuff myself and other enthusiasts of pop culture esoterica (i.e. nerds) dominates the mass entertainment landscape, it behooves us to be aware of this kind of voluntary blindness. Just because something is vaguely connected to something we already like doesn't mean we have go easy on it. Just because we have our own inclinations flattered doesn't mean that we have to give something our time and money. Just because something is cool doesn't mean it's good. Don't be an easy mark.