@rvcanuck said:

How is shutting down the OASIS two days a week supposed to fix anything? And isn't the OASIS is supposed to be the world economy's prime mover?

It doesn't. People circumventing this measure is the subject of the sequel.

It doesn't solve anything because the protagonists and people in the movie are still unaware that they are slaves to the game and it's consumerism...

The ultimate stakes in the movie, what people were risking their lives, and their families lives for was control of advertising* in a virtual reality video game.

They weren't fighting against the fact that they were living in indentured servitude due to their video game addiction, or being financially indebted to the video game. That is incidental. The main motivation is to stop the ad-installing guy, because the ads would make their virtual reality game less pleasant. This is key, the goal was to keep the game.

At the end instead of emancipating themselves and one another from this virtual cage, they simply de-couple it from the indentured servitude and maintain it as ad free. That is the extent of Watt & co's political awakening. They don't even realise that they are still living in virtual prisons... By choice...

Or... Maybe, the actual subtext of the movie is that this virtual utopia of the Oasis is being sold to us as an audience as a cure for our 'problem' of identity and of society. We are no longer trapped in our imperfect human bodies, in our biological sexes and ethnicities, etc... Our physical living conditions as well as how we relate to one another... Instead we can escape into the narcissism of the video game, with our custom avatars and toys in a virtual consequence-free world...

A thoroughly dystopian and dehumanising situation...

'* The irony of this movie is that the whole thing is a consumerist advertisement of epic proportions, with countless toys and brands referenced, as well as having objects of consumer lust (fictional and actual) not only displayed, but endorsed... The gamers lust after Sorento's gaming rig, or Watts X1 bodysuit, etc...

@Renovatio said:

It doesn't solve anything because the protagonists and people in the movie are still unaware that they are slaves to the game and it's consumerism...

The ultimate stakes in the movie, what people were risking their lives, and their families lives for was control of advertising* in a virtual reality video game.

They weren't fighting against the fact that they were living in indentured servitude due to their video game addiction, or being financially indebted to the video game. That is incidental. The main motivation is to stop the ad-installing guy, because the ads would make their virtual reality game less pleasant. This is key, the goal was to keep the game.

At the end instead of emancipating themselves and one another from this virtual cage, they simply de-couple it from the indentured servitude and maintain it as ad free. That is the extent of Watt & co's political awakening. They don't even realise that they are still living in virtual prisons... By choice...

Or... Maybe, the actual subtext of the movie is that this virtual utopia of the Oasis is being sold to us as an audience as a cure for our 'problem' of identity and of society. We are no longer trapped in our imperfect human bodies, in our biological sexes and ethnicities, etc... Our physical living conditions as well as how we relate to one another... Instead we can escape into the narcissism of the video game, with our custom avatars and toys in a virtual consequence-free world...

A thoroughly dystopian and dehumanising situation...

'* The irony of this movie is that the whole thing is a consumerist advertisement of epic proportions, with countless toys and brands referenced, as well as having objects of consumer lust (fictional and actual) not only displayed, but endorsed... The gamers lust after Sorento's gaming rig, or Watts X1 bodysuit, etc...

I get what you are saying. There appears to be some dual messaging. On the one hand: "The virtual world is really great and fun and better than the real world, so maybe the real world doesn't matter so much, why not be happy in the Matrix". But, at the same time: "Reality is... reality, you can eat there and have sex there etc... I guess"

Also, what do you expect them to do? Overthrow capitalism? This is a kid's movie. It's not the type of film that is supposed to shove Das Kapital down your throat and make the proletariat recognize the comodification of labor and the stealing of surplus values by the hands of the bourgeois.

@Geff said:

... I get what you are saying. There appears to be some dual messaging. On the one hand: "The virtual world is really great and fun and better than the real world, so maybe the real world doesn't matter so much, why not be happy in the Matrix". But, at the same time: "Reality is... reality, you can eat there and have sex there etc... I guess"

Also, what do you expect them to do? Overthrow capitalism? This is a kid's movie. It's not the type of film that is supposed to shove Das Kapital down your throat and make the proletariat recognize the comodification of labor and the stealing of surplus values by the hands of the bourgeois.

Haha... You have a point. A Marxian awakening would probably be too much to ask for, but I did expect some kind of spiritual reckoning, or awareness given that it is Spielberg. I suppose I had watched Empire of the Sun recently and it was fresh in my mind how well Spielberg had handled the context as well as the sentimentality in that movie...

@Renovatio said:

At the end instead of emancipating themselves and one another from this virtual cage, they simply de-couple it from the indentured servitude and maintain it as ad free. That is the extent of Watt & co's political awakening. They don't even realise that they are still living in virtual prisons... By choice...

Or... Maybe, the actual subtext of the movie is that this virtual utopia of the Oasis is being sold to us as an audience as a cure for our 'problem' of identity and of society. We are no longer trapped in our imperfect human bodies, in our biological sexes and ethnicities, etc... Our physical living conditions as well as how we relate to one another... Instead we can escape into the narcissism of the video game, with our custom avatars and toys in a virtual consequence-free world...

A thoroughly dystopian and dehumanising situation...

'* The irony of this movie is that the whole thing is a consumerist advertisement of epic proportions, with countless toys and brands referenced, as well as having objects of consumer lust (fictional and actual) not only displayed, but endorsed... The gamers lust after Sorento's gaming rig, or Watts X1 bodysuit, etc...

Dayum, @Renovatio bringing the HEAT!