Ready Player One is a movie for braindead normies of the sort who watch Rick and Morty and throw fits in McDonaldses when the store fails to deliver on a promise to stock their stupid meme sauce (even though they supposedly hate corporations). Set in a future where a complex VR video world is so immersive that the majority of daily life occurs there, the movie misses every opportunity its premise offers to explore the struggle of the human spirit with the wonders and horrors of ever more pervasive technology. Instead, it delivers a feel good, action-packed adventure, in which the bad guys are corporate goons beholden to their shareholders, the good guys are a naive but multicultural group of millenials leading the "resistance," and, surprise surprise, one of the main characters is a mechanical genius who (((happens to be))) a black woman. I actually don't have any problem with black women, hell. But why, EVERY TIME, does the mechanical/tech wizard in a movie have to be a woman or black or both? Is it because if there weren't a black actor in a leading role then social justice/media types would attack the movie for not having enough diversity in their cast? Probably. And also because if the black character were not extra special in some way they'd call it a 'token' or stereotype? Probably, yes. And also do they want to erase stereotypes by always stereotyping the opposite? Sure. BUT IF THEY DO IT EVERY FUCKING TIME THEY VALIDATE THE STEREOTYPES THEY'RE TRYING TO OBLITERATE. YOU'RE BRAINWASHING YOUR OWN SOYIM TO INTERNALLY ACCEPT THE STEREOTYPES YOU'RE SUPPOSEDLY TRYING TO DESTROY, ALL THE WHILE REQUIRING THEM TO VEHEMENTLY DENY THOSE STEREOTYPES EXIST. And where does it end, huh? Oh, so you had a black woman in your movie? Only one? Why not two? Why weren't there any faggots, huh? I do declare there WEREN'T ANYWHERE NEAR ENOUGH FAGGOTS IN READY PLAYER ONE. IN FACT A TRANSSEXUAL MUSLIM CHARACTER WHO'S ALSO A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER WOULD HAVE MADE THE MOVIE PERFECT. WHERE ARE THE WINGLESS YELLOW DRAGONKIN? I digress. What really bugged me about this movie other than the typical forced narrative tropes was how good it could have been if it had just tried a little. It opens in the midst of a bleak ghetto of manufactured homes stacked up on steel scaffolding. An impoverished, filthy place that is so depressing people take to the VR world "The Oasis" to escape whenever they can. By contrast, The Oasis is like the best game you've ever played. Because the solution to the world's problems seems so perfect and facile at the outset of the movie, you would expect this to be a part of the story's arc. Maybe there's a problem with living in an artificial reality? Maybe turning their backs on real life leads people down a path of meaninglessness and banality? Nah. Instead, the virtual world is glorified. The good guys are its defenders while the bad guys want to turn it into something like a freemium platform with lots of ads. The keys to unlocking control of the virtual world, left uncontrolled by the game's late creator, are found via pop culture clues surrounding the creator's life. Unlike the Matrix, where virtual reality is a trap, something perceptually pleasant but ultimately treacherous, this movie's virtual reality is the safe harbor -- more real than the concrete and steel world outside. Real life, instead of a refuge, is a place of danger, where the corporate goons are able to chase the protagonists and threaten their lives. (The protagonist, like a total chump, doxes himself like 10 minutes into the movie.) The virtual world is the protagonists' home, where they are powerful and the suits are too obtuse and out of the loop to keep up. Naturally, they win. But the way they do, through studious observance of pop culture, and adherence to their escapist reality, struck me as antithetical to the anti-corporate ethos of the movie. Granted, the virtual world they fought for supposedly had no ruler, but in our world on this side of the fourth wall, it *is* the suits who hold the reins to the virtual world from the beginning, and we inhabit it and are mostly bound by their rules. It's the suits who make the pop culture the fictional protagonists worship. The suits who would have owned the game and wanted you to use it as the solution to your problems. And that's why this movie is for tools. The kind who think they're too smart for religion yet subscribe unquestioningly to every secular dogma their masters spoonfeed them. The kind that "hate corporations" but line up around the corner for iPhone releases or fucking meme sauce from a tv show. The kind that secretly know black women are almost never mechanically inclined or gifted yet fervently pretend they don't. The kind that browse Reddit and think they know what memes are. In conclusion, this movie was nothing more than another tawdry offering laid at the altar of pop idol worship. Full of the usual forced narrative tropes and YA fiction-tier indulgences. And it didn't have enough faggots.