Hyperlink Your Heart - Movies

COVID Movies

2024-06-30T13:30:00+02:00

Well it happened - I finally caught the ‘rona. Actually I think I had it quite early on, but it was a mild dose. This time I was basically insensible for two weeks and maybe even still not fully recovered two months later *. Quite the nasty bug.

To pass the time while I was couch-bound, I watched various comfort movies and movies I haven’t seen since I was a kid.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

One of my all-time favourites. I appreciate it for it’s examination of flawed characters and their very real and relatable relationship. I appreciate its message that even bad experiences sometimes have lessons to teach us, and that if we don’t integrate them we will be doomed to repeat them.

Much of the movie resembles the recollection of memory, wandering back and forth through time, finding and losing details and emotional attachments as it goes. The largely practical effects (or so I understand) contribute excellently to this surreal quality, with literally disappearing details, spatial and temporal distortions, and even a sense of things being just on the tip of the mind, yet unreachable. It was particularly enjoyable in my delirious fever state.

The Wizard

“I love Powerglove. It’s so bad.”

This glorified ad for the NES is still a good time. I was obsessed with the Californian dinosaur statues after watching this movie when I was a kid.

One notably frustrating aspect of watching this movie now is how terrible all three finalists are at SMB3. Right at the beginning of the second level there’s a koopa coming towards them, and they all stand still waiting for it. One of them even has the tanooki suit, but waits patiently for it to move into range to jump on its head instead of just spin attacking it. They all also missed the power-up box on the ground in the same level that they could have used the shell to get. Just awful to watch.

Flight of the Navigator

I used to love this one when I was a kid, but I barely remembered it - I didn’t even remember the “time-travel” aspect, or as one character exclaimed: “light-speed theory!” Yeah ok champ.

It’s quite a poignant story until the titular navigator boards the ship, at which point everything is explained by Max (the ship’s computer) and the plot is basically over. The final third of the movie just consists of flying around, meeting cute alien creatures, zany antics and an increasingly annoying Max. It’s fun and looks great, but I’m not sure I would say it holds up for adult viewing.

One thing that definitely doesn’t hold up is Sarah Jessica Parker’s adult character flirting with a 12 year old. Women are only supposed to flirt with robots, aliens and weird anthropomorphic ducks!

Wargames

Still amazing. Probably my favourite aspect of this movie is its realistic no-nonsense portrayal of hacking. There’s no dumb made-up jargon or macguffins, no self-conscious cyberpunk mythologising, just a kid with a modem studying a target to guess a password, with his only motive to learn and have fun. It’s so… pure, so unencumbered.

The performances reflect that as well, with Ally Sheedy and Matthew Broderick really capturing the goofy, carefree energy of youth at the beginning of the movie.

One thing that has always bugged me is that WOPR/Joshua isn’t actually playing the game he’s supposed to be - if he were, he would only make moves as America. Instead he fakes a series of Soviet attacks, which should be David’s prerogative, seemingly to goad a real-life response.

Thankfully, whatever his motive, he ultimately fails, and instead learns a lesson about the futility of nuclear war in an incredibly powerful climax.

Star Trek: Generations

I understand some people hate this movie, but I love it. It’s the only movie that really captures TNG-era Trek at all, and it was incredibly exciting to see “my” trek on the big screen.

Probably my favourite aspect of this movie is Data’s subplot of acquiring emotions and coming to terms with them. Sure, a lot of it is just comic relief (good comic relief though), but it also feels like a culmination of the character’s arc from the series.

Star Trek: First Contact

There are aspects of this movie that I like - I like the Borg, I like Picard’s relationship to the Borg, I like seeing the pivotal moment of first contact, and Zephram Cochrane’s warp ship looks awesome.

However… there is much more about it that I don’t like.

I think this was the introduction of the Borg queen, and while Alice Krige is amazing in the role, I think the existence of a queen changes the nature of the Borg somewhat - from something truly alien to something much more prosaic and uninteresting - and I don’t appreciate that.

Much worse than that are the changes to the character of Picard, who went from being a diplomat and a scholar to an action hero.

Also the Borg time-travel plan as a last resort doesn’t make any sense - if they have the means and will to assimilate Earth in the past they could do the time travelling from anywhere, there’s no reason to barrel into the Sol system and do it only if their cube is destroyed. And they could just try again. But then, it’s a common problem in Star Trek that things that are really easy to do one moment are impossible, or forgotten about, or work completely differently in the next.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

This movie mostly consists of the Enterprise crew bumbling around San Francisco in the 80’s and trying (and often failing) to grasp the cultural differences and blend in. It is ridiculous and hilarious, and I love it!

One thing this movie does really well is make the characters feel like they are from a very different time than the one they are visiting. Other Star Trek time-travel stories, such as the Voyager crew’s visit to 1990’s LA, Sisko and Bashir’s visit to San Francisco in 2024, or the Enterprise D crew’s visit to 19th century San Francisco (boy, they sure visit San Francisco a lot), don’t quite capture the gulf of time in the same way - they generally come across as a little too savvy.

Another great aspect is how little fucks they give about telling people they are from the future, or even sharing technology with them. I bet the boys from the Department of Temporal Investigations had a heck of a time sorting this mess out!

It’s also brilliant that there’s no real villain except for our society’s indifference to environmental degradation.

Star Trek VII: The Undiscovered Country

I think this was the first Star Trek movie I got to see in the cinema. I was definitely too young to understand the political allusions at the time, but I seem to remember enjoying it anyway. The themes are classic Star Trek stuff - overcoming prejudices, working to secure peace, etc.

One striking aspect of this movie is how differently the Klingons are portrayed than they are in The Next Generation, particularly the early seasons. In this movie they are erudite, sophisticated, and almost Romulan in their sneakiness. In TNG’s early seasons I guess we mostly just see Worf, but he is almost bestial, without the temperance and nuance of character that he would develop later. It’s interesting that the releases overlap with this apparent disconnect.

Back to the Futures

I used to watch these once a year, but it has been a while since I’ve watched any of them, and even longer since I’ve watched all three in a row.

I had some really weird misconceptions about these movies when I was a kid. In particular, I thought that every era had versions of the same characters - not family members who happen to look remarkably the same, but actually incarnations of the same characters. For example I thought 1885’s Doc was a different Doc than 1985’s Doc - and that Seamus was actually “another Marty”. It’s hard to even grasp now what I was thinking with my undeveloped child brain, but somehow I also remember it really clearly.

Of course, now that I understand it fully, half the fun of a movie like this is poking holes in the time-travel logic. Obviously I’m not saying anything new here, but a couple of the things that stood out to me on this viewing were:

The way “artifacts” from other timelines change is ridiculous. If the future has been changed, why would they ever be in an intermediate state where things are fading away?
Marty has a picture of himself and his siblings, and after he changes the future they all fade away because they were never born - but why would the picture even have been taken then?
Similarly, Jennifer takes a fax from the future indicating that future Marty will be fired. After the timeline is changed, the contents of the paper are erased. Why would she have even taken the paper in this new timeline? It’s a blank piece of paper, what are you doing Jennifer??
Also LOL when she holds it up to the Doc at the end of III and says “It erased - what does it mean?” He has no context for what this piece of paper is!
The same thing happens with the picture of the headstone in the third movie. It changes between showing different names, and then in the end it becomes a photo of an empty patch of ground. Why would they have taken a photo of an empty patch of ground?
Also hilarious is when newspapers are shown changing from one story to another, very conveniently about the same person!
There’s a big question of why changes effect objects, but not people. Why does Marty not remember being raised by his new, cool parents, or that he has his dream truck? Why does he not remember his dad dying and his mom marrying Biff when that becomes the new reality? The only effect we see on Marty is when he is about to fade out of existence when it seems like his parents aren’t going to get together - but he should also become a different person, like his siblings did.
The oft criticised scenes where Marty appears to inspire black men to achieve and create are really bizarre. His other actions change the future, but Mayor Wilson was already Mayor before the time-travel antics, and Chuck Berry had already made his music. They can’t be time loops if Marty never changes along with everything else.

The other half of the fun is, as it has always been, Christopher Lloyd’s wonderful face:

Despite having seen these movies so many times, this was the first time I realised that Marty’s future daughter in BTTF2 was also played by Michael J. Fox! And I still didn’t even catch it when she was on screen, I only noticed it in the credits!

The Warriors

I’m not sure what age I was when I saw this before - probably too young - and all I really remembered about it was that there was a bunch of outrageously costumed gangs running around, and the bit at the end when they make it back to Coney island.

I get the impression that the violence depicted was shocking and realistic for the time, but now it seems quite tame - just some light, bloodless brawling.

One thing I can say after watching this now is that we don’t have enough mime gangs or Star Trek alien baseball gangs around these days. I think crime would be a lot more fun if people injected some theatrics into it.

The copy I watched this time was the director’s cut, so I got comic-book style transitions and a voice-over opening which apparently weren’t in the initial theatrical release. The transitions in particular suited it well because the gang uniforms are so cartoonish.

Short Circuit

The impact this movie had on me as a kid was to make me want to be friends with robots - and to be Ally Sheedy’s boyfriend.

As with the character Max in Flight of the Navigator, Johnny 5 becomes increasingly annoying as the movie goes on, though he remains somewhat more endearing. His repeated insistence that he is alive and that he wants to remain so, and doesn’t want to be involved in hurting any other creatures, was a powerful message to receive as a kid.

Unlike Flight of the Navigator the plot continues all the way through to a fantastic fake-out downer-upper ending.

The Rocketeer

A barely controlled rocket-powered superhero foils the plans of some horrible Nazis - what more could you want from a movie? How about the gorgeous Jennifer Connolly also kicking ass?

The action set-pieces in this movie lack the impact of those from more recent superhero movies, but it’s also somewhat refreshing that he’s just an ordinary guy who can take an ordinary amount of abuse. Also the art-deco Iron Man aesthetic is amazing.

Except… how does he not burn his arse? Forget the helmet, what he needs are some thermally insulated pants!

Note: Once I was feeling better I got into other things and never finished off this post. It has actually been over six months now since I originally intended to post it, and therefore the opening paragraph is a bunch of lies. I’m finishing it off now because I think I have COVID again for the second (or maybe third) time, though less severe! Back to top.

Recent Movie Watchings

2022-05-09T14:00:00+02:00

I’ve watched a lot of movies recently that I have a bit to say about, but not enough for a big post dissecting them on their own, like Wrong Turn and Ready Player One, so I’m just throwing them all together here.

Kimi

Kimi is a 2022 psychological thriller about an agoraphobic woman, Angela, who works from home for a smart speaker company - creators of the eponymous “Kimi” - listening to supposedly anonymised audio clips that the speaker’s AI couldn’t understand. On one of the clips she hears what she believes to be an assault in the background, and when her employers are reluctant to investigate she has to (gulp)… leave her apartment!

The main thing that I really liked about this movie was the portrayal of her struggle to leave her apartment, and the paradoxical sense of claustrophobia when she does. I felt much the same at one point in my life and it rang true to me.

On the other hand, when it gets down to thriller time, the action is quite repetitive and pointless. She gets captured, escapes, captured again almost straight away, escapes again right outside her building, and then there is somebody waiting for her in her apartment anyway. Boring. It gets better from there, but too late.

One thing I really didn’t like was the role of the smart speaker, Kimi. Although the plot early on does highlight a lack of privacy and data protection when Angela is able to find out whose speaker recorded the clips, and obtain further recordings, this is undermined by the plot being fundamentally about solving a murder thanks to the speaker’s ubiquitous surveillance. It then takes on a heroic role at the climax when Angela is able to outwit several hired goons by ordering it to do various things like cut the lights and play music and so on. Overall, I would say the movie comes down on the side of being pro corporate surveillance.

Mary Shelley

This 2017 historical drama is about the life of Mary Shelley and the sources of inspiration for her novel Frankenstein. Turns out men are the real monster??

I enjoyed this one a lot. I read up about her a bit after watching it and it seems like it was a bit loose with some of the details of her life (like how many children she had, and when they died), but what am I a Mary Shelley scholar?

Like Frankenstein, it explores the theme of men’s irresponsibility towards the procreative act, and neglect of their progeny, but more explicitly, and as such it’s a great complement to the book. Interestingly, the male characters don’t really seem to get it, and focus on the idea that Frankenstein is about Mary alone feeling neglected, rather that a more general lack of responsibility on their part. She doesn’t correct them.

The Death of Stalin

The Death of Stalin is a political black comedy from 2017 about the aftermath of Stalin’s death. I found it pretty funny, but it was also deeply weird to hear a bunch of undisguised American and British accents from characters in a movie set in the Soviet Union. Probably it would have been worse if they put on stereotypical Russian accents, of course, but Cockney Stalin?

As usual, I would probably prefer to see something from post-soviet creators examining their own history, through a satirical lens or otherwise.

The Batman

The Batman is the latest in the saga of the Bat-men, this time starring Bobby Battinson. I think it might be my new favourite Batman movie, though I didn’t see the Ben Affleck one so I am not qualified to declare it the objectively best Batman movie.

The movie leans heavily into noir and gothic aesthetics, and imagines Bruce Wayne as a moody orphan who is uninterested in much outside of being a bat - including the effect his inherited wealth is having on society. Having become, under his father’s watch, a sort of slush fund for corruption, Bruce Wayne’s wealth is the underlying cause of much of the violence that Batman seeks to combat alongside his friends in the police.

His main adversary is the Riddler, portrayed here as a vigilante serial killer with shades of Seven’s John Doe and the Zodiac killer. While Batman is beating up common criminals and thugs, the Riddler targets the powerful and corrupt, and as such it’s hard to identify the villainy in his actions for much of the movie (aside from the fact that he’s, y’know, doing murders and all that). The general public certainly see him as a hero. Meanwhile, he sees himself and Batman as partners, playing off each other in a common crusade to clean up the city (and who else could, but the only two men smart enough to appreciate a good riddle). It isn’t until his plan to “wipe the scum off the streets” by flooding the city is revealed that we see his contempt for the innocent as well as the guilty.

Unfortunately the overall politics of the movie could probably be summed up as “we just need more good billionaires”. Bruce comes to realise that his vast wealth comes with responsibilities, and it seems like he’s going to do some philanthropy alongside his nightly costumed kickpunching. I guess we’ll find out in the sequel if enlightened liberal capitalism is the solution to capitalism’s problems.

I didn’t even realise that Colin Farrell was in this until I saw his name in the credits. He’s completely unrecognisable as the Penguin.

Choose or Die

Choose or Die is a 2022 horror thriller about a cursed retro video game. This seemed like a fun premise, but unfortunately the movie as a whole was fucking crap.

My main fault with it is that the game (named CURS>R) has apparently boundless powers to reshape reality to its whims, and that the choices it presents players with are seemingly arbitrary, and differ wildly in terms of their consequences. For example, the first choice the main character, Kayla, is given is between coffee and cake in a diner, with apparently no negative consequences. Another character’s first choice is between eating a computer or eating their own arm - both potentially fatal, one would think. For one of the “levels” of the game, Kayla is asked to choose between a blue door or a red one, with no other information. It reminded me of the first text-based video game I wrote when I was 7, which was just a collection of random scenarios where every path ultimately ended with the player being eaten by a tiger.

The climax sees Kayla facing off with a previous player (who we are introduced to in the opening scene, but learn very little about). At this point a moral is shoehorned in about white male entitlement in videogaming - which would be a fine theme if it wasn’t introduced so late and handled so clumsily.

I did like the grungy 80’s aesthetic, and that it seemed almost self-aware about how played out that kind of nostalgia is at this point. Also Asa Butterfield is great as a basement-dwelling retro video gaming obsessive. I do love me some Asa Butterfield…

Wrong Turn… into Wokeness

2021-07-05T19:40:00+02:00

Beyond woke, yet the unintended result is the victims are punished for being woke. Skip it. This is not a Wrong Turn movie.

David J, May 02, 2021 - 1.5/5 stars on rottentomatoes.com

Content warning: homophobia, misogyny, racism, spoilers for the movie Wrong Turn (2021)

It seemed pretty clear to me after watching Wrong Turn that it had a conservative message. I haven’t seen the previous movies in the franchise, but I understand they are based on some unfair stereotypes about Appalachian people, so it seems a fair enough twist even if it doesn’t resonate with me personally. When I looked at the audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, however, I discovered that a good many people who seemed like they would be on-board with that perspective instead understood it to be “woke” propaganda.

The Message

In Wrong Turn (2021), a young, white, American woman, Jen, throws off the shackles of a guaranteed prominent position in her father’s construction business to hike the Appalachian trail with her boyfriend and their friends. Despite warnings from the locals, they stray off the well-worn path, and fall victim to a primitivist cult known as The Foundation.

It’s clear from the start that Jen is the character that the audience are supposed to relate to. She’s torn between the path her father has laid out for her and the ideals of her friends, and is never shown to have taken those ideals to heart personally. She is more down-to-earth and capable than the other characters - she is the one that has to change the tyre when they get a flat en-route, for example, and later she is the only one able to think on her feet in high-pressure situations.

Her boyfriend, Darius, is an idealistic, politically active black man who expresses socialist and environmentalist ideas. Their friend group are well educated young urbanites, and include a gay couple - pretty much every review of the movie describes them as “diverse”. They’re incredibly cringey to be honest - when an aggressive local accuses them of never having done a day’s work in their lives they actually start bragging about their educational achievements and white-collar jobs - all except our hero, Jen, who is just a little lost in life.

Not long after setting out they divert from the trail to find a civil-war fort that one of them is interested in. They quickly become lost, and fall victim to various traps before finally encountering, and murdering, a member of the Foundation. Shortly thereafter they are captured and taken to the Foundation’s camp.

Finally we learn what the villains of the piece are all about - not inbred hill people as expected, but an egalitarian, primitivist, socialist cult whose leader has an impeccable hipster coiffure. The surviving friends are put on trial, and their every defense is twisted back on them - they are the intruders! They rushed to judgement based on appearances! They murdered someone in cold blood! They need to respect the Foundation’s culture! Such hypocrites!

Far from being inbred, this cult thrives on the recruitment of wayward travelers who they either brainwash into accepting their ideology, or blind with a hot poker and leave to fumble in a dark cave. Really subtle stuff.

Jen and Darius are the only survivors of the trial, and only because Jen convinces the group’s leader, Venable, that they could be useful members of the community. Jen, considering herself to have no relevant skills apparently, is only able to offer herself, as Venable’s wife.

As I mentioned earlier, Jen is actually the only member of the friend group that is portrayed as having any degree of competence or skill relevant to life in the real world. The rest of them are useless, out-of-touch, and varying degrees of obnoxious. But in the woke socialist utopia of the Foundation, she is only valued for her body.

As a result of her relationship with Venable, Jen ends up pregnant. Of course she never considers a termination.

It’s true that “woke” people are amongst the victims in this movie, but more importantly it is “wokeness” that is the monster, leading good All-American girls like Jen off the conservative middle-class path and into a life of bondage, exploitation and sin. She’s the character we’re supposed to find relatable - the rest of them deserve their fate because of their embrace of “woke ideology”, and their deaths are likely intended to be entertaining for that reason. They are so in tune with the villains that Darius chooses to stay with them instead of taking the opportunity to escape.

Let me have another go at summarising what I think this movie is trying to express.

In Wrong Turn (2021), a young, white, American woman is led astray by her “woke” boyfriend and her “woke” friends. While seeking to dig up civil war history that is best left buried, they encounter the logical end-point of “woke” ideology made manifest, and it abuses them horrifically. Jen escapes thanks to the savvy and skills instilled in her by her conservative upbringing, the refusal of her father to abandon his search for her, and the kindness of the misunderstood locals. She returns to her middle-class path through life by working in the family business, and violently rejects further attempts to lead her back to the horrors of “wokeness”.

In short, this is a conservative movie espousing conservative ideals. I disagree with David J, quoted above - the characters are intentionally punished for being “woke”.

“Hollyweird is dying a slow death”

Let’s take a look at some of the audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes from people who seem to have missed the point.

Its just more hand fisted political bs with pretty crappy character development.

Gage S, Apr 14, 2021 - 1.5/5 stars

I guess you could interpret “hand fisted political bs” to be referring to the conservative political messaging. I choose not to.

“Woke” America is destroying our culture Absolutely irredeemable

James A, Mar 14, 2021 - 0.5/5 stars

It might seem like James gets it, if not for the 0.5 stars.

I would have given this a four, if it wasn’t for the “over the top” libtardation seen in the movie that Hollyweird so much loves these days. The mixed race couple, the gay couple, the Arab guy, the Asian guy, Black guy wearing “Black Owned” T-Shirt, The racist Sheriff, White-Guilt guy gets mad, calling Confederate monument “Racism” like a White-Knight. Pretty embarrassing stuff. Original from 2003 was better, this wasn’t bad. Hollyweird is dying a slow death, stuff like this in movies is asinine…

Davis H, Mar 06, 2021 - 3/5 stars

It’s like this guy stopped watching a third of the way through. Also a pretty explicit example of how the mere existence of characters who are not straight or white is unacceptable political content to some people.

Another woke joke bad movie

michael b, Mar 07, 2021 - 0.5/5 stars

Joke’s on you, buddy.

This next one’s pretty gross and misogynistic, and you won’t miss much if you choose to skip it.

Revolves around a queer braindead friend group, which just so happens to have every single race in it. Due to the fact that the whore with the least amount of brain cells becomes a rambo bitch and survives till the end makes me not able to give this more than 4 stars. Giving this 4 stars because you get to see a dumbass friend group suffer. Also in the foundations court room they never mentioned how the foundation drew first blood with the gay dude getting a big log to the face for the last time.

the b, Jun 10, 2021 - 2/5 stars

I had to highlight this one because they understood at least part of what the movie was about - watching “woke” straw-people being punished. I can’t give this review more than 4 stars however because of their views on Jen - I guess because she has sex she must be a “dumb whore”. 2/5 stars.

Final Observation

What strikes me about these reviews is that they reveal how the movie reinforces a conservative (or more broadly right-wing) worldview regardless of whether the viewer actually understands the messaging. Either the messaging is understood and received as intended, or the mere presence of POC and gay characters reinforces a perception of a liberal Hollywood elite pushing a “woke” agenda.

Cybercentrism

2020-12-12T19:26:00+01:00

This post contains spoilers for the movie “Ready Player One”

I finally gave in and watched Ready Player One, prompted by seeing the Internet dump on the sequel to the novel. I avoided it before now because the commentary on the novel made it sound like pandering nonsense, and I assumed the movie would be much the same. But, I wanted to see for myself.

Perhaps as a result of those lowered expectations, I actually found it quite entertaining on a surface level. The pop culture references were certainly omnipresent, but maybe not as tiresome as having them explained in writing would be. In movie form, a lot of them that are not plot-relevant just form a visual backdrop that actually help define a plausible metaverse, albeit one with a culture that is inexplicable stuck 30 years in the past.

But on the other hand, the centrality of pop culture to the plot, and why it is central, is also what leaves a bad taste in my mouth. In the universe of Ready Player One, the online world is dominated by a metaverse-like virtual reality game called the OASIS, a game owned and controlled by a single corporation, and ultimately a single man, its creator, James Halliday. When he dies, he decrees that his successor will be decided by a tripartite fetch quest within the virtual world. In a monumental act of narcissism, the quest’s challenges are not based on the skills required to run a massive company or a piece of essential infrastructure, or tests of morality or wisdom, but on intimate knowledge of his own life and his pop cultural obsessions. This might be an interesting setup if Halliday were the antagonist, but he’s not, he’s practically worshipped by the users of the OASIS.

Wow!! Cool Future!!

This movie has the trappings of cyberpunk, but little of the critique. Victory in this story is not the smashing of a corporate monopoly or frustrating of its goals, but the passing of the reins of power from a virtuous benevolent founder to a handful of virtuous disciples, through an absurd faux-meritocratic process where merit means liking the right books and games and movies.

The antagonist, Sorrento, is the CEO of a company that runs debtor’s prisons, yet somehow the movie gives the impression that his greater sin is being a poseur who’s only pretending to “get” the stuff that Halliday liked. The denouement even reveals that Halliday could have used his monopoly power to end the practice of indentured servitude at any time, but apparently chose not to, or just didn’t think to, and this is not framed as a critique of monopoly capitalism, but is just a throwaway line to demonstrate how benevolent the protagonist is in his new role.

The third act involves an epic battle in the OASIS, with the user-base coming together to fight Sorrento’s forces and prevent them from completing the quest. It’s presented as an empowering grass-roots uprising to save the OASIS from an evil corporation, and fine, they are pretty evil… But the status quo is also intolerable. They’re not fighting for their own empowerment, but merely to keep the unaccountable corporate power that dominates their lives out of even more abusive hands. It’s a pretty uninspiring cause.

The movie’s true feelings on the nature of power, and the relationship of ordinary people to it, is revealed most starkly at its climax. The conflict in the OASIS has spilled over into the real world, with our intrepid heroes being chased through the streets in a van, exposed at every turn by CCTV tracking technology and drones. While Sorrento sets out to confront them personally, they put out a call for aid, for their supporters to gather in the slums and defend them. When Sorrento reaches them, a huge crowd of people stream out of the stacks to oppose him.

For a moment, it seems as though the plot really is going to be resolved by collective direct action. People power, woo! Instead, Sorrento pulls out a gun, and the crowd parts. They could easily disarm him, there are hundreds of them all around him. Instead they gawp uselessly at him, right up to the point where he is threatening to shoot some children in the face. It is only the police arriving that prevents him from committing murder right in front of them.

With Sorrento out of the way thanks to the police, a bunch of lawyers arrive to certify the protagonist’s completion of the quest and acquisition of complete control over the OASIS. The crowd are reduced to placid spectators in a boardroom drama that doesn’t involve them or empower them. This is, I feel, the perfect encapsulation of the movie’s worldview. The crowd are the audience - expected to worship and trust benevolent CEOs, to react strongly in defence of a commodified culture where they are otherwise passive consumers, but to look on silently and not interfere as control over that culture changes hands, maintaining the status quo.