Steven Spielberg’s new film Ready Player One presents itself as a party to which everyone is invited, its fictional VR dimension playing host to familiar faces from every blessed corner of the pop-culture universe. The way Ready Player One deploys the character undermines everything we understand about him. Ready Player One goes a step further, ironing out everything unique about the characters it takes from elsewhere, until they’re faceless icons. Ready Player One reduces these characters to figures stripped of all meaning, intended to produce a satisfied smirk of recognition and little else. Ready Player One treats it like war.

Source: The Guardian March 30, 2018 15:22 UTC