10 Movie Messages Everybody Misunderstood

10. Pop-Culture Shouldn't Define Your Identity - Ready Player One

What Everybody Thinks

With Steven Spielberg's CGI-fuelled adventure blockbuster being filled with crowd-pleasing cameos from beloved pop-culture icons - ranging from Back to the Future's DeLorean, to The Iron Giant, to Overwatch's Tracer - many fans assumed that Ready Player One was really nothing more than a feature-length love-letter to every nerdy piece of media you've ever interacted with.

And though it certainly is that, it's also far more of a cautionary tale than many of its devotees will ever care to admit.

The Real Message

As much as the film is aesthetically defined by the lush VR expanse known as the OASIS and everything within it, there's also a firmly subversive streak running throughout.

After all, the real world in which Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) resides is a near-future dystopian dump, and the OASIS is a primary source of escape for people - quite understandably.

But if you look past the digital recreations of classic heroes, the film is ultimately about embracing pop-culture and entertainment, yet not allowing it to fully define your identity, to the extent that you scarcely even exist in the real world.

As the eventual custodian of the OASIS, Wade even decides to shut it down twice a week so that people are forced to tend to the crumbling world around them, rather than shield themselves from global devastation with a fancy headset.

For a film so flagrantly dining out on nostalgia and brand awareness, it's quite daring that Spielberg's real message is so counter to that - even if it largely fell upon deaf ears with audiences.