Ready Player One’s film adaptation isn’t even good enough as a kids movie

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The film adaptation of Ready Player One bares its broken, disappointing nerd heart better than any negative review possibly could.

The telling moment takes place nearly halfway through the teen-adventure romp, when unlikely, awkward hero Wade Watts begins winning a major contest within the futuristic film's virtual-reality universe (mirroring the same plot as its namesake book). An evil corporate overlord named Nolan Sorrento swoops in with designs on recruiting Wade, and to do this, he lays out tantalizing geek-iverse offers (like a Millennium Falcon to use in the film's "Oasis" VR world) and trades blows in a nerd-trivia exchange about '80s films. All the while, a lackey feeds nerdy factoids into Sorrento's ear so that he sounds legit.

Wade calls BS on this rattling of nerd credentials and reminds Sorrento that a real fan of the Oasis wouldn't try to win its control-swaying contest with trivia alone. Sorrento's response, upon being called out, is to lash out with senseless violence.

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