Ready Player One

Saw Ready Player One.  It was set in an alternate universe where the only internet that exists is a VR MMO.  Why they don't use text and images I don't know, but whatever.  In this internet, there's a series of 80s-themed puzzles that must be solved to get keys to the founder of the internet's stock.  This gives controlling power over the internet, okay?

This film is mostly just a 80s nostalgia trip.  It's fun watching these plucky teens solve internet mysteries and although it's fairly campy, it never takes itself super seriously, so it's not discordant or anything.

I still have some misgivings about the film's 80s worship however.  That era was marked by excess and ego.  Greed was good and business was booming.  The films depicted rich powerful men as a matter of course.  Why would our hero be anything but?  Today, 80s nostalgia is a literally conservative past-time, obsessing over ephemera of childhood, always grabbing the most facile entertainment.  We're revisiting The Shining, not Kramer Vs Kramer.  It's all surface-level engagement.  No critique, just worship.  Bleh.

Anyway, there are worse things to indulge in than half-remembered childhood pop ephemera.  The film is mostly entertaining with a minimum of bad cheese.