A Constant Visual Feast

Any of my readers out there who call themselves bettin’ types, you’re probably about to rake in a ton of cash: I didn’t care for Ready Player One. Shocker. A movie warped around 80s nostalgia – and around 90s nostalgia, and also random references to cool things from the last ten years – rubbed me the wrong way. It’s not a secret that I find this kind of thing empty and distasteful, so it’s not a surprise that for so many reasons Ready Player One and I just don’t get along. 

By contrast, I really liked Wreck-It Ralph, which is in so many ways a cousin to Ready Player One. The difference is that Ready Player One doesn’t try to disguise all of its referential nonsense and Ralph has the decency to fold all of its referential nonsense into its own original world. I imagine this is a “your mileage may vary” sort of thing – for others, the exact opposite may be true – but we’re talking about mileage, so I don’t know why you’re fixating on other peoples’ mileage. That’s hurtful.

I put together a piece for The Hollywood Reporter on the divide between Ralph and Ready. That’s the moral of the story.