Let me just say that I wasn’t a huge fan of the Ready Player One book. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think the film or book has value. IOI is a fantastic allegory for the importance of net neutrality and the value of the internet as a vital resource (arguably a right). I like the world-building, I think the Oasis is fascinating. The setting isn’t the problem for the book Ready Player One, or, I think for the movie Ready Player One. It’s just that both of these pieces of media are soulless. They are generic, inconsistent, pandering, and predictable. The book is a little bit better at dealing with the inconsistencies in the character’s background, and the movie panders less than the book does, but both suffer from a feeling of fundamental constructed-ness. These pieces of media feel constructed, they feel designed to appeal to a certain fanbase (in this case nerd/geek culture from the 70-80s & contemporary gamer culture). And while this, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, I believe that pieces of storytelling that are constructed for the express purpose of commercial appeal or to appeal to a certain group of people will inevitably suffer from a similar feeling of soullessness. I think this is because the structure of a narrative-driven piece of storytelling will inevitably fail to justify itself. When the narrative progression of a story is plotted out to convey a message or to present an appeal to a group of people, then the characters slotted into that larger story no longer have control over the course of the narrative. In a narrative that purports to be directed by its characters, the viewer/consumer will be able to tell when the course of the story, when the decisions taken by the story’s characters do not feel authentic to the character or don’t align with what the character would actually do. This, I think, causes the viewer to disengage emotionally from the content, inevitably leaving the media feeling soulless. Now, this is more true of the movie than it is of the book, but both suffer from a feeling of purpose. The book is an ode to lonely gamers who unconsciously want their vast stores of geek culture knowledge to be useful someday (I identify with this desire). The movie appeals to today’s gamers who feel that the joy has been sucked out of a medium they love by money-hungry corporations. These are not inherently bad messages. Who doesn’t want to have their passions validated? Who wouldn’t want to protect something that they love? Who wouldn’t want to be the white knight savior of a beautiful person who is unreasonably insecure in the real world because they have a birthmark on their face, I guess (That’s some incel shit right there). Who wouldn’t want to become the most powerful person in the world? It isn’t unreasonable to make a story appealing to the viewer, but too much and the story loses its authenticity, its soul.

Also, the narrative voice in the book is lame.