If a bunch of celebrities throws themselves a self-congratulatory awards party and nobody watches, did it really happen? Well, yes it did - reality isn't contingent on paying attention. But when you are an entertainer, the only thing that really matters is people paying attention to your antics. So, in the case of last night's desultory Academy Awards, I believe it might as well not have happened as last night's farce suffered the second-lowest viewership of all time (it was only eclipsed by 2017's comically bad lineup of talent and movies).
Now, why do I bring this up in a posting about Ready Player One? Frankly, I consider this classic bit of Spielbergian escapism to be more deserving of a Best Picture award than any of last night's nominees. Mind you, I am not saying this because I thought RPO was a great movie - it wasn't. At best I would say it was a feel-good fluff movie of middling merit. However, unlike last night's sorry lineup, it is a movie that will prove to have far more enduring popularity and value than anything on display last night.
{SPOILERS AHEAD}
Uh oh. I hear a bunch of angry fans of Ernest Cline's book, on which the movie is based, demanding that I denounce Spielberg's cinematic adaption because it mutilated the book in a number of important ways. I hear you, I hear you. 'Tis true. But let's also get something straight: Ready Player One was not the great book a lot of fans believe it to be. I found it to be a rather boilerplate cyberpunk tale of corporate tyranny and virtual reality rebels fighting for their liberty. Honestly, the only thing that elevated the story above its unremarkable plot was the copious references to '80's pop culture and video game nostalgia. But for those two crucial additions, Cline's novel probably would have been just another cyberpunk also-ran. So, no, this was not the new Ender's Game, as some fans would have you believe. Not even close. Having said that, it was an enjoyable story, especially if you are a Gen Xer like myself. And, yes, Hollywood...well, I won't say "butchered it" as that is a bit too harsh, but it did do to the novel what Hollywood almost always does to adult science fiction: it boiled the story down until it resembled little more than an inoffensive after-school cartoon. Did you really expect something else? Really? How many times does Hollywood have to kick you in the teeth?
Uh oh. I hear another angry mob forming, this time of people who have often heard me decry this juvenilization tactic. "Hypocrite!" is on their lips, and their charge is accurate. I mount no defense against this accusation: I am a hypocrite when it comes to Ready Player One because anyone who has read the book will immediately notice how the movie treatment has almost completely sanitized the darker themes of the novel. Frankly, I am amazed that the scene where Wade's aunt was killed by IOI's bombing of the stacks made it into the movie at all. (I really expected his aunt to stagger out of the wreckage with soot on her face and a joke on her lips - that would be more typical of Hollywood sci-fi these days.) The fact that an act of domestic terrorism made it into this otherwise kid-friendly film is remarkable. But that is about the only bit of true menace that made it into the screenplay. For example, the defenestration of Daito was cut entirely from the script, something that is a real loss for the movie because the death of Daito served as a strong emotional catalyst for Wade and Shoto to become more than just reciprocal admirers from afar. Likewise, the theme of "hikikomori," a psychological condition whereby people, particularly gamers and those addicted to the internet, become reclusive shut-ins, was likewise excised from the plot. This is another stinging loss as it is a missed opportunity for some somber societal introspection that goes beyond the movie's superficial observation that reality is the "only place to get a decent meal," a quip borrowed from Groucho Marx.
So, yes, the movie version of RPO is yet another example of Hollywood's inability to treat science fiction with the maturity it deserves. But - here comes the weaselly "but" - I think if the story was going to be substantially altered from its book form, Spielberg, with Cline's help, did it the best way possible: by delivering a tribute that managed to capture the essence of the book if not the actual form. We lost a lot in the translation - I am particularly heartbroken that Wade's exploration of the Oasis' virtual galaxy, a portion of the book that included some very Eve Online/Elite: Dangerous-like adventures with spaceships, was cut, not to mention the replacing of classic '80s video games such as Joust and Zork with more Millennial-friendly fare like Minecraft - but the gist of the novel's good stuff was present in spirit if not in actual form. What was done to the novel stings, but I have seen worst movie treatments in my life (I still bear the scars from Verhoeven's butchering of Starship Troopers.)
With that critique in mind, why does it deserve an award? Simply this: it is the first prominent example of a movie that proudly flies a Gen Xer flag in defiance of Hollywood's incessant love affair with all things related to the 1960s. This thought occurred to me when the contenders for Best Picture were announced. Not surprisingly, included in the list was a requisite '60s retrospective, this time known as Green Book. It is important to bear in mind that I am not critical of that movie specifically - having not seen it, I am in no position to argue its merits albeit I am sure it is far more entertaining than Best Documentary nominee, Period. End of Sentence. I am just critical of the incessant love affair that Hollywood has for this one decade.
Let's be honest here: despite what Baby Boomers might fondly remember of the 1960s, that decade is mostly remembered for what was wrong about America than remembered for what was right: hippies, communes, the drug culture, bad fashion, forgettable music, laughably bad movies, violent protests, the sexual revolution, a pointless war, racism, and political assassinations. With the exception of the civil rights movement and the moonshot program, it is a sorry record that is best forgotten than remembered. I think cultural critic Roger Kimball said it best when he wrote that the contemporary world is continually being shaped by the values of the sixties, something that has resulted in a "trash world," one "addicted to sensation, besieged everywhere by the cacophonous, mind-numbing din of rock music, saturated with pornography, in thrall to the lowest common denominator wherever questions of taste, manners or intellectual delicacy are concerned." Spot-on.
This is why I loved Ready Player One despite its many flaws. That movie showcased just how different the post-sixties culture was. While sixties culture has always struck me as being unabashedly angry and regressive, eighties culture (admittedly with a smattering of very late 1970's culture) struck a markedly different tone: one of optimism, of lighthearted fun, and of a true progressive vision of mankind's unlimited potential, an idea succinctly summarized by Ronald Reagan, the official President of All Things Eighties, when he opined that "there are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder." Ready Player One amply exhibits that credo in spades.
Ready Player One's score also is a testament to the iconic music of that decade. Unlike the music of the sixties that was already dated by the time the decade was over, music from the eighties lives on and is enjoyed by Gen Xers and Millennials alike. I found it very telling that the soundtrack for Ready Player One did not replace classic eighties rock with something more modern, but instead kept such enduring '80s hits as Joan Jett's I Hate Myself for Loving You, Hall and Oates You Make my Dreams, and a lot of other classic eighties hits front and center. As music journalist Chris William once wrote about eighties music, "The music world may not have agreed with the president on much, but there was accord on at least one thing: in pop, it felt like morning in America."
And the movies from that period...well, you just need to watch RPO to see how not just popular but iconic the cinema of that period remains with kids of all ages. It is fitting Spielberg directed RPO seeing how it was his films that largely defined the feel-good cinema of that era. Even if Spielberg passed on having callbacks to his films referenced in RPO (a credit to his modesty), other directorial titans of that second golden age for Hollywood (perhaps the last gasp for old Hollywood values) got their due, particularly John Hughes and Roger Zemeckis whose works are cited like holy texts by the film's protagonists. I will say that I am miffed that there were no references to John Milius's Red Dawn. Tragedy! Perhaps only John Badham's Wargames better embodies the Cold War and cyberpunkian fears of that decade. Speaking of, Wargames didn't make the cut either despite being featured prominently in the book. I suppose The Shining will have to do for our cinematic purposes (I suspect licensing issues were the villains here), but in my opinion, you can't really grasp the eighties if you don't also grasp the Cold War fears of that period that proved to be such a driving force in eighties pop culture.
Perhaps the most enduring cultural accomplishment of that decade was the rise of video games. From a niche hobby of Radio Shack nerds to a ubiquitous presence in contemporary culture, it was the eighties that nourished the fledgling video game efforts of the seventies into what is now an $80 billion dollar industry. Fittingly, Ready Player One kept our love of video games front and center. While the cinematic treatment of RPO did remove key references to the classic video games of the eighties, Ernest Cline's love for video game history nonetheless shines through the film, especially at the movie's finale where the Atari 2600 classic Adventure steals the spotlight. Again, I found it striking how differently Gen Xers and Millenials approach video games from their Baby Boomer elders. Unlike the unrelenting fear and derision that is often de rigueur for Baby Boomer cynics (when was the last time you heard a positive story about video games from the dinosaur media?), RPO presents a much more grounded view of this electronic world where, yes, excess can lead to a detachment from the real world, but also one where it can serve to unite people in a shared culture that transcends nationality, gender, and race. In other words, unlike the sixties regressive, clan-like social attitudes, gaming culture (in all its borderless forms) could well prove to be the great unifier and refuge of man, hence the "Oasis," a fitting sobriquet for RPO's virtual world that proves to be such an important escape from the downtrodden real world. As Wade says, Halliday, founder of Gregarious Games, "showed us we go could go somewhere without going anywhere." That's a pretty good summation of the allure of video games!
Yeah, by now you probably figured out that this posting is just a polemic; my attempt to paint one decade with gold while tar and feathering another. In short, it is my form of payback, my shot at those Baby Boomers in Tinsel Town who still worship the golden calf of the "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll" credo of the sixties. Be that as it may, my sentiments are honest, both in regard to the superiority of the eighties to the sixties, as well as about Ready Player One being a wonderful letter to an iconic decade that is proving to be far more enduring and far more beloved than anything the communal hippies from the sixties concocted in their frenetic, drug-induced perambulations. And that is why I believe it deserved to win Best Picture. In some ways, it represents the first serious shot across the bow of the hippie culture that old, decrepit Hollywood just won't put to rest despite an ever-shrinking interest in that period from non-Baby Boomers. Sure, RPO was not a great movie, not even a great example of science fiction, but it was something that is long overdue: a tribute to a period that has had a far greater pan-generational impact on pop culture than all the Woodstocks in the world managed to accomplish.
I've always considered it something of an irony that one of the banner songs of the eighties was Simple Minds, "Don't You Forget About Me." The lyrics' childlike demands about being remembered has always struck me as sentiment more befitting aging Hollywood Baby Boomers and their unrelenting demands that America never leave the so-called Summer of Love than it does the Ferris Bueller-like cool confidence of eighties culture. With that in mind, if I was to pick a song that best summed up the eighties, it wouldn't be that tune but rather another hit by Simple Minds:
Oh
You lift me up
To the crucial top, so I can see
Oh you lead me on, till the feelings come
And the lights that shine on
But if that don't mean nothing
Like if someday it should fall through
You'll take me home where the magic's from
And I'll be with you
The lyrics are from "Alive and Kicking," a song I believe better captures the ongoing influence, indeed, the ongoing optimism of the decade of Reagan than any other tune I can currently think of. Just as video killed the radio star, Ready Player One finally killed Hollywood's favorite decade.
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