Permanently Deleted
There was actually an interesting setup in the beginning of the film. The “city” that the main character lives in is essentially a giant landfill, and people have fled to VR en masse to avoid having to deal with reality. There’s a Matrix-like direction they could have gone with it, where humans were essentially choosing to be plugged in all day and ceding control of the world to a cyberpunk corporation, but instead they chose to make the most predictable Hollywood narrative imaginable. Literally every single plot element is exactly what you figure it will be, and the moral at the end of the story (which I’m 99% sure was shoved in by Stephen Spielberg) was just to stop playing video games.
(which I’m 99% sure was shoved in by Stephen Spielberg) was just to stop playing video games.
Read the book. Can confirm.
It doesn’t even make sense in the context of the film, let alone the book. A huge chunk of the world building in both is spent spelling out that for all intents and purposes: the economy of the oasis has become the defacto world economy. People use it to go to school, work remotely, engage with other people for trade, etc. Shutting it down two days out of the week is less analogous to turning off a videogame, or even the internet, and more akin to shutting down ALL commerce in general for two days out of the week.
