So. I'll say this much. Looked at purely on a surface level, this is a pretty okay modern action blockbuster. Spielberg knows how to put these things together in a way that's entertaining. It only really drags during one insanely overdone endless battle sequence.

All the same, I really don't like this, for a handful of somewhat interrelated reasons:

The story of this thing is really just "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" with technical bells and whistles and an endless stream of pop culture references. That isn't necessarily a problem. The elements grafted onto the familiar story could add some thematic resonance absent in the original story. They don't.

I don't buy this film's virtual world. To be clear, I'm not griping about whether it's technically possible. Clearly it's not by modern standards, but maybe it will be some day, but I don't think a story like this is obligated to stay inside the realm of technical possibility anyway.

What I don't accept is that this is a world that people would spend time in and that it would make it's creator rich. Setting aside all the superficial wish fulfillment elements the film throws at you constantly, what I see is a world where there's a constant threat of not just death, but effectively perma-death, even if you're just sitting in a dance club or something. What I really see in most of this film's big sequences is a frenetic, unplayable mess that would constantly be throwing away even the smallest amount of progress anyone made.

Why do I harp on this? Because I don't think that the movie has any interest in actually engaging with it's setting. There's no thought of what anyone is actually getting out of this world. There's no consideration of how anything is monetized, so how owning it could be worth anything. There's no real thought put into why Ben Mendelsohn would be the villain here aside from the fact that he's ... oh no ... corporate and played by Ben Mendelsohn. The worst thing that the people can think of Mendelsohn doing is putting ads in the game ... you know, attempting to monetize nostalgia??? (The irony has escaped them I guess)

The film's biggest sin is not attempting to engage with why any of this nostalgia might matter to anyone. It vaguely suggests that perhaps it's more than a little sad the sum total of Mark Rylance's existence reduces to some 80's movies and some vintage video games, but all of these suggestions are thrown away pretty quickly because they'd really highlight that this film has nothing to say about what role these things may have actually played in his life. It ultimately just retreats to the mild admonition that maybe you should get out more, but you know ... after you've bought all the stuff this film has thrown at the screen.