Ready Player One is about Privacy, Digital Rights and Ageism
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
A lot of people have a mixed bag of feelings when it comes to Steven Spielberg's 2018 masterpiece Ready Player One. They dislike the nostalgia bait, and the countless references. They poke fun at logical inconsistencies. Yet nobody can deny the fact that Spielberg apparently is incapable of making a terrible movie. Still, how many of you actually looked at Ready Player One seriously? How many of you thought about it's messaging? How many noticed the politics that Spielberg is hiding in plain sight? ↩ Reply
Ready Player One on the surface is a film made for gamers ( and movie-buffs ). It ( similarly to something like Spy Kids 3 ) is set pretty much in a virtual reality world called Oasis. And ( similarly to films like Scott Pilgrim ) is filled with references, visual gags, and an intense sense of flow. If you think Egar Wright's flow is top-notch in Scott Pilgrim, you have yet to experience the flow perfection that Mr. Spielberg is capable of, and is demonstrating in this movie. ↩ Reply
Spielberg always was famous for shooting movies with the edit in mind. In Minority Report ( which strangely has similar themes to this movie ), Spielberg made a very cool cut towards the end of the film. We see the face of Tom Cruise going left-to-right, cut to, a face of one of the pre-cogs going left-to-right in a different location and time. The way the two shots were staged, made them a perfect example of Spielberg's sense of flow. ↩ Reply
In Ready Player One mostly due to the movie being set in a virtual world, and therefor allowing for any shot the heart desires, Spielberg goes for such a flow-perfection that it is very hard to think of any other movie that ever came close ( apart from maybe Spielberg's own Adventures Of Tintin ). But that doesn't mean that the flow is not present when it comes to the live action parts of the movie. He is good no matter what medium he uses. And the CGI team on the movie is good enough that he can make some truly wacky shots even in the real world section. Like the first time we see Wade ( Tye Sheridan ) go into the Oasis. ↩ Reply
While the film cost just shy above the budget of Shazam! 2, the visual effects in this movie are phenomenal ( in Shazam! 2 there was a serious issue when it came to visual effects ). Spielberg knows how to do what he wants. He was able to make photo-realistic CGI in 1992. Apart from him ( and James Cameron ) there is nobody else who comes close to his ability to use visual effects. Yet still, the amount of bad-assery in the film is fucking insane compared to the money spent to make it. The movie is set in a virtual world that has a constant battle going on between very unique looking characters all the damn time. Yet somehow the visuals are always good. And Steven's direction is always on point. ↩ Reply
In some perverse way Ready Player One is a movie that let's you imagine what would a Steven Spielberg version be of movies such as: The Shinning, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, King Kong, Gundam, The Iron Giant, Godzilla and even Alien ( with a chest buster scene actually present in the film, to some extent ), to name a few. ↩ Reply
But I get it. You don't actually want to read about how good the movie is. You want to know why I think the movie is about Privacy, Digital Rights and Ageism. Well let's dig into it. ↩ Reply
I believe Spielberg is starting to experience a sort of weird cognitive dissonance. I talked about his interview with Cameron and Abrams and how they seemingly almost agree with the views of Richard Stallman. And other films from Spielberg ( like the mentioned above Minority Report ) is a great example of what I'm talking about. ↩ Reply
In the world we live in today, with social media and video games being such a huge part of our lives, yet in the same time being that corporate profit squeezing machine that never cares about you, Ready Player One is rather profound balanced look on the issue. Spielberg is not saying that video games are evil because they have micro-transactions or ads or even mass surveillance built into them. He agrees that video-games are in fact art. And there is something good about it. Yet he still agrees that all those other things I mentioned are really bad things. ↩ Reply
The movie is straight forward about telling the audience to shut up and never reveal anything about yourself online to anyone. And it shows devastating, borderline traumatizing consequences, to those stupid enough to disregard their privacy. Wade, being stupid enough, having a crush on a girl in the game Art3mis ( Olivia Cooke ), tells her one thing, that his name is "Wade". And that gets his family literally killed by an evil tech corporation. ↩ Reply
The whole resistance in the movie, which is lead by Art3mis, is a cinematic re-imagining of something like the Free Software Movement, or people like the EFF. While here in reality we fight for software to be libre and for the internet to remain under the user's control, in the world of movie, everything is in the Oasis. So helping it ( the Oasis ) become "Libre" to some extend ( by not letting an evil tech corporation take control over it ), it the mission of the in-world digital freedom activists. ↩ Reply
And think about this even more. The whole character arc of the main character Wade, is that he starts as this clueless idiot enjoying a game. And end up understanding the real life implications of a powerful technology. He joins the forces of resistance, because he ends up understating why they matter. And this is a cinematic technique to get people ( who identify with Wade in the beginning of the film, aka gamers ) to become freedom fighters, like what Wade becomes in the end. ↩ Reply
Spielberg wants games to join the FSF. ↩ Reply
And then there is Zhou ( Philip Zhao ), a literal 11 year old kid on the team of the resistance. I remember the first time I watched the film in the cinema, back in 2018, and saw the reveal of Zhou's real face, being this kid. I remember that people in the auditorium yelled at me to shut the fuck up, because I couldn't hold myself and probably yelled something along the lines of "I love you Steve". ↩ Reply
You know I am very passionate about children's rights and representation of children in film as something more than just a cuter version of a "damsel in distress". My films like Moria's Race show that sentiment very clearly. And knowing that one of the greatest film-makers living today is, to some degree agreeing with me on those issues is a fucking great feeling. ↩ Reply
So here you go, Ready Player One was never focused to begin with on things like the world of the game, or the consistency of the gameplay. It was never focused on making sense as something that could happen. It was focused with all its might on the political issues. It was focused on Privacy, Digital Rights and yes, even Ageism. And all that was masterfully disguised by the legend of cinema, Steven Spielberg, as a summer blog-buster ( I know it came out on Easter, come on, the film is kind of also about Easter eggs ), a blog-buster, that makes the regular movie-goer not realize that they just watched a political thesis. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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