Rules: explain why
Ready player one.
That has to be one of the cringiest movies I’ve seen, is tries so hard, too hard with it’s “WE LOVE YOU NERD, YOU’RE SO COOL FOR PLAYING GAMES AND GETTING THIS 80S REFERENCE” message and the whole “corporation bad, the people good” narrative seems written for toddlers… The fan service feels cheap and adds nothing to the story.
Finally, they trying to make the people believe that very attractive girl with a barely visible red tint spot on her face is “ugly”… Like wtf?
Yet it received decent reviews plus being one of the most successful movies of that year.
I had the same experience as you and even bounced off it entirely and didn’t finish the movie. But I would highly recommend Matt Colville’s series of video essays on 2001. It can’t change how you first responded to the film, but it’s really well-reasoned and definitely gave me reason to think more about the movie.
(It’s an 8 video playlist, but only 3 are actually about 2001. Sorry, I just figured this was easier than linking each video individually.)