Or you could take it further and turn it into Alien, only Chris Pratt is playing the role of the menacing predator who wants to ensnare and impregnate the hero. Now you have a tense cat and mouse game through this glitzy futuristic cruise ship, culminating in Jennifer Lawrence blowing Chris Pratt out of a goddamned airlock. Then you just sit back and wait for the Oscars to roll in.
4
Ready Player One Should Have Been About Art3mis
In the book and the film Ready Player One, we follow Wade Watts, a nerd whose main personality trait is that he can memorize a lot of trivia about pop culture. He wants to find three keys and win billions of dollars through a scavenger hunt set up by the creator of the OASIS, a digital realm where everyone spends much of their time.
Over the course of the movie, Wade learns he can't win this by himself, and he needs to join a team, including a woman who goes by Art3mis. In the story as we know it, she ends up being the token prize Wade get to have as a girlfriend after learning his lesson, which is that there's more to life than pop culture fandom, even though it was pop culture fandom that got him there. On one hand, it's true that Art3mis is fleshed out to a degree, with her own backstory and motivation ... but in the end it just winds up highlighting how much both she and the movie don't need Wade at all.
Art3mis, aka Samantha, knows as much about pop culture as Wade does. But her father died as an indentured servant under IOI, the evil corporation that serves as the antagonist, giving her a personal reason to win the hunt and take control of the OASIS. At one point, Wade is taken to Art3mis' sweet secret hideout, where we see she has already amassed a sizable number of people for the rebellion. Think about that for a moment. She went from a nobody with no family to leading an army against the all-powerful corporate overlords. So ... why isn't this her story? As it is, the only reason Wade comes into the picture is that he happens to be the first person to figure out he should try driving backwards in a big race. It suddenly becomes hilarious how awkwardly the token dude is wedged into the plot.
184 Comments