13 Movies That Contradict Their Own Message
11. Ready Player One
The Intended Message: Nerdculture is great, but it shouldn't define your identity.
The Real Message: Remember The Iron Giant?
Steven Spielberg's action-adventure tentpole at least attempted to have something approaching a poignant message, as its conclusion argues that soulless, relentless consumption of pop-culture and integrating it into your personality at the expense of your humanity is intensely unhealthy.
The problem, then, is that it comes at the end of a 140-minute CGI-slathered explosion of nostalgia, where shiny, familiar commodities are key, and anything approaching actual, humanistic substance is pretty much left on the table.
Tacking this message onto the end of the movie makes it feel both hollow and cheap, and honestly, if you're gonna cynically plunder our collective childhoods, at least don't be disingenuous about it.