Ready Player One, a Critic of Today’s World

Ready Player One is set in the close future in a world where the outside world is decrepit. The impression that we have is that Spielberg decided to create this movie, based on the book of the same name by Ernest Cline, to make a critic of todays society. The movie is a critic of our way of living. The frist lines are some of the most powerful, I am born in 2027, after we have given up on the world. This is the overall feeling of the movie, people realized that the world was in such a bad place and they stopped trying. That is when Hallyday, the “wizard” of the movie create the Oasis, the second reality where everybody lives. What I find to be most interesting is the different aspects of society that the movie critics. 

The main critic that I see is the critic of capitalism. IOI, the main “Bad Guys” want to win Hallyday’s contest for one reason, to gain control of the number one company and trun the game into a money making machine. AT one point, we hear a glimpse of the idea of IOI’s big boss’s intention, to have ads everywhere in the game. The movie depicts an idea that cpaitalism is the system that makes it so that people will stop at nothing to get more money. We are somewhat told that capitalism is the end of one’s dream. One of the heratwarming scenes happen at the end of the movie when Wade is finally in the room with the contract and the IOI researchers are all cheering him on, although they have been workig day and to night to fight him. When one’s dream is accomplished it warms everyone’s dream. That is also the case in one of the final scenes when the IOI boss sees Wade collect the Egg and is not able to shoot him and instead smiles, he can only feel happy in a way. That is what capitalism destroys, or at least that is the impression I had.  

The next critic that I see is one which is particularly interesting to lok at today, is that of technology dependence. Throughout the movie we are shown the Oasis as being a place where only great things happen and where people are happy, which is true. But in the final scenes, Hallyday’s ghost explains that reality is the only place where stuff is real. It is the only place where “one can enjoy a good meal”. This is particualarly interesting now as Apple have released the Vision Pro which normalizes wearing VR and AR material out in our everyday lives. That is one of my worries with this device amongst others, will us as humans one day forget that the world is worth fighting for. The only reason why things gto so bad in the real world in the movie is because people stopped trying to save it. IN our world todays where there are more and more wars, we cannot give up. We need to never stop fighting for what we are and what we mean, that is the tru essencr of humanity, or at least that is what the movie is trying to tell us, as I see it.