10 Exact Moments Movies Stopped Trying
6. "The Third Puzzle - Ready Player One
The set up of the film is simple; a community of video gamers must solve three separate puzzles in order to win a vast fortune and control over the intense virtual reality world. In between the video game and movie nostalgia; the film finds time to give audiences a narrative and action set piece around two of three of the puzzles.
That's right, only two puzzles have clues. In the film's third act, the location of the third puzzle is revealed without any mystery clues to solve. The film rushes to the climactic battle in a gothic fortress, and all the audience has to go by is that the film's antagonists, IOI worked out the third clue and located the challenge.
This news comes to us from the character who heard this information on the grapevine. This movie had time for a Saturday Night Fever dance sequence and a real-world romance sub-plot, but not enough time to create a third riddle for the heroes to work out.
It's a sign the filmmakers stopped trying when they couldn't be bothered to write a third puzzle, and instead just fast-forwarded to the smash-em-up it had been building up to and teasing in the trailers.