Enjoyable movie, solid acting, great direction and impressive visuals. All that you can expect from Mr. Spielberg at this point. But as great as all the things before are, I think this movie suffers a similar syndrome to Avatar in which great directing and visuals cover up a fairly generic story. If you analyze the story it’s actually fairly simplistic and not much is done to expand it from that point:
You have an orphan main character that’s living in a toxic environment and therefore uses a device (in this movie’s case the OASIS) as a distraction from the shitty situation he’s in. Meets a curious girl through weird circumstances who he hastily falls in love with and declares it instantly. An evil company with a villain type character with a few henchmen (at least one being comic relief) that do most of the dirty work. Then you get to the different steps of the always three step quest and our hero, despite all odds and a final battle beats the quest only to get to another surprise test™ which he aces without any issue only to discover the true intentions of the creator. The villain gives up like a chump despite being pretty determined 30 seconds ago and not being really convinced to give up on what he was doing. Characters get what they want, end of movie.
I understand that there’s only so much you can do to vary some storylines but I appreciate when people at least try which I felt wasn’t really the case here. I don’t hate the movie, I think the OASIS is a very good concept of a possibility of the future but I feel the some of the characters, especially the opposition could have been polished more. As a gamer I can appreciate nods to the community as well as topics like online friendships that I can identify with myself. Of course you had some other nice nods to pop culture I can also appreciate.
All in all a good movie if you can ignore the more generic aspects of the story, 7.5/10
Review by superrob1500VIP 7BlockedParentSpoilers2018-04-16T04:11:17Z
Enjoyable movie, solid acting, great direction and impressive visuals. All that you can expect from Mr. Spielberg at this point. But as great as all the things before are, I think this movie suffers a similar syndrome to Avatar in which great directing and visuals cover up a fairly generic story. If you analyze the story it’s actually fairly simplistic and not much is done to expand it from that point:
You have an orphan main character that’s living in a toxic environment and therefore uses a device (in this movie’s case the OASIS) as a distraction from the shitty situation he’s in. Meets a curious girl through weird circumstances who he hastily falls in love with and declares it instantly. An evil company with a villain type character with a few henchmen (at least one being comic relief) that do most of the dirty work. Then you get to the different steps of the always three step quest and our hero, despite all odds and a final battle beats the quest only to get to another surprise test™ which he aces without any issue only to discover the true intentions of the creator. The villain gives up like a chump despite being pretty determined 30 seconds ago and not being really convinced to give up on what he was doing. Characters get what they want, end of movie.
I understand that there’s only so much you can do to vary some storylines but I appreciate when people at least try which I felt wasn’t really the case here. I don’t hate the movie, I think the OASIS is a very good concept of a possibility of the future but I feel the some of the characters, especially the opposition could have been polished more. As a gamer I can appreciate nods to the community as well as topics like online friendships that I can identify with myself. Of course you had some other nice nods to pop culture I can also appreciate.
All in all a good movie if you can ignore the more generic aspects of the story, 7.5/10