Earlier this year, Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, a popcorn blockbuster, became a somewhat divisive film when there was a backlash against its celebration of nostalgia and pop culture. While I found the complaints about the film's nostalgia misguided and argued against them, Ready Player One is far from perfect and there is plenty of stuff to make fun of it for. To that end, Honest Trailers are often the best at highlighting a movie's problems in a fun and entertaining way. With Ready Player One now on home video, we have the latest Honest Trailer that makes fun of the movie's pop culture references. Check it out:
"So this is how imagination dies." That's just savage. The ouroboros-like nature of Ready Player One's story that is based on the culture around tons of other pre-existing stories is definitely something to consider. The way this trailer highlights the lack of creativity by the characters in a seemingly limitless virtual world is pretty spot on too. A Holy hand grenade, a Gundam, Batman and a Hadouken (or Kamekameha, it was hard to tell), Ready Player One has no shortage of moments meant to elicit a cheap pop from audiences recognizing their favorite nostalgic properties. Even the Honest Trailer does it; I totally forgot that Power Rangers wannabes the VR Troopers were a thing.
This Honest Trailer also makes a killer point about how there was this grand fight to save the virtual playground of the OASIS, all while society is crumbling and overpopulated on a dying planet that we killed. The priorities were definitely problematic. And maybe I'm seeing a pattern that isn't there, but I feel like Screen Junkies' Honest Trailers are always super keen in picking up on situations in movies that would smell terrible. The whole bit about running on a treadmill in a skin-tight bodysuit in a van with the doors and windows shut is hilarious. Maybe there was dialogue about some kind of deodorizing technology in the suit that got cut in the edit.
Although probably the funniest part of this Honest Trailer is how it highlights the ridiculousness of Olivia Cooke's Samantha being seen as anything other than beautiful because of a birthmark, as if she is some hideous beast that Wade can only love because he got to know her personality as Art3mis first. Obviously someone could feel that way about himself or herself, we don't always see ourselves the way others do, but it's a little harder to buy when the character looks like Olivia Cooke. This is pretty common though in movies and TV, where some objectively attractive actor is given a small imperfection that their character obsesses over.
Ultimately, despite the backlash against the nostalgia in the film, Ready Player One still became one of the biggest movies at the box office so far in 2018. Steven Spielberg's blockbuster earned its place on the scoreboard with a $582 million worldwide gross, anchored by a great overseas performance. The visual feast was not cheap, possibly needing $500 million just to break even, so perhaps that performance was good enough for a sequel with more pop culture barrages to enjoy and make fun of.
Ready Player One is now on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD. For all your latest movie news, keep an eye on CinemaBlend.
