Ready Player One
It pains me to put Amblin’s own Steven Spielberg on this list but Ready Player One was simply atrocious and contrived. And that’s on the book and not the legendary director’s fault. It was a complicated ask to give material that was not as smart as it thought it was to the person who inspired the Easter egg shell thin plot. Ultimately, the film didn’t so much play as Spielberg finding magic in a greatest hits sort of medley (don’t get me wrong, some moments were breathtaking in a good way), it just fell flat. At least he had the foresight to not pay tribute to himself in big ways. Who was this movie for? The core of an Amblin film is to speak to kids growing up or have adults reminisce about their youth but there was nothing for new generations within the material to latch onto. Mostly, it was just a bunch of “Oh, look, it’s [fill in the nostalgia blank]!” moments.
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