Ready Player One better than expected

When I first saw the trailer for Ready Player One, it looked like the kind of movie only gamers could enjoy. Not being a gamer myself, I figured I would find the movie extremely boring. For one thing, I expected there would be so much gamer references and jargon that non-gamers would not be able to understand -- much less enjoy -- the movie.

But I was wrong. There are a lot of references to 80s culture and music -- which is just fine for me cos being a child of the 80s, I love the culture and music of that era -- but not a whole lot about the whole gaming sub-culture. I mean, I'm not a gamer but I was able to follow the story fine without having any gamer knowledge.

I generally dislike it when movies have lots of plot holes but this one didn't. There were a few things that didn't make much sense but these were too few to mention, really. Certainly not enough to irritate me.

The movie is largely a CGI fest with real life actors appearing maybe only 20% of the time. The rest was all CGI but it was so well done. I actually found the car race sequence through the virtual city exciting. I never would have thought that was possible. I generally find car chase sequences in real life movies quite boring, what more virtual ones. So, it's a testament to the skills of the special effects team that they were able to create a truly thrilling sequence out of that.

The movie moved along at a steady clip and was never boring. What I would have liked to see more of is how the rest of society lived because we saw the slum that Parzival lived in. Apparently, in the book that this movie is based on, the timeline is a lot longer and we learn that Parzival is a student and that he attends classes via his VR gear, as do other students. But in the movie it's not clear at all what he did for a living. Was he a student? Did he have a job? Was he unemployed? And if he wasn't working -- cos he's playing the Oasis game all the time -- how did he get the money to play the game? All this was left unanswered.

But overall it was a good action movie with an interesting story line. Nice happy ending too. Much, much better than I thought it would be.