Would You Take the Red Pill or the Blue Pill? Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” and the Triumph of Postmodernity

Over the recent holiday break I found myself in the movie theater to watch The Last Jedi. Given how profoundly disappointing and unimaginative the movie was (something I may explore in another post), I left the theater thinking about an entirely different movie.

In fact, I began to think of this other movie before The Last Jedi even started. One of the movie trailers at the beginning was from Steven Spielberg’s forthcoming Ready Player One. And it looked genuinely innovative and culturally fascinating.

During the many moments of boredom during the main attraction, I began to reflect upon what this new movie says about the world we live in (or, for some, the world we pretend to not live in).

Based upon the 2011 book of the same name by Ernest Cline, the film is a futuristic dystopian drama set in 2045. An energy crisis has destroyed the world, creating a miserable existence for millions.

In order to escape the world they live in, people have turned to a virtual reality world fittingly named OASIS. In this world they can take on new identities (AVATARS) and live a life of fulfillment, excitement, and pleasure.

The protagonist, Wade Watts, lives almost his entire life in the virtual world–even going to school in simulation. His relationships and his identity are all bound up with his online existence.  In the film, he is drawn into a life or death competition to find an “easter egg” hidden in the OASIS worth billions.

Ready Player One and The Matrix

Of course, a plot line like this will draw quick comparisons to other virtual reality movies, The Matrix being one of the most obvious.  But it is precisely here that Ready Player One reveals that it is notably different from what has come before. Ready Player One is very much the product of the present cultural moment.

In The Matrix, the goal of the heroes (and the values expressed in the movie) was to free people from the virtual reality world. Even if the Matrix was more pleasurable and more comfortable for people, the goal was still to release people from it. It was viewed as a prison.

Although it is a bit ironic (and perhaps counter-intuitive), The Matrix is really a movie that values the real world above the fake world.  What matters is not personal pleasure, but truth.

This is most evident in the contrast between Morpheus and the Judas-like-betrayer named Cypher.  Morpheus is willing to live in a cold, dark world because it is the real world.  In fact, before Neo takes the red pill, Morpheus reminds him, “Remember. All I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”

In contrast, Cypher hates the real world. He even betrays his friends so he can be reinserted into the Matrix.  For him, the lie is better than the truth.  He even states, “I think that the Matrix can be more real than this world.”

Cypher laments, “Why oh why didn’t I take the blue pill?” (For thus unfamiliar with the film, the ‘blue pill’ keeps a person in the virtual reality world of the Matrix).

Ready Player One and Postmodernity

It is here that Ready Player One takes a different path. From what I can tell (not having seen the film, obviously), this is a movie where people willing and voluntarily enter a virtual world.  In other words, they have purposefully placed their identity in a fake world.

And people do this not only because the fake world is better than the crummy world they actually live in, but they do this because the fake world is, to some extent, controllable. They can make themselves who they want to be. They can change their looks. Their sex. Their talents. Their wealth.

In short, in the virtual world, we are the creator. We get to play God.

Needless to say, Ready Player One, seems to be a film where postmodernity has come of age. People are no longer trapped in virtually reality. They run towards it. They celebrate it.

Put differently, the average citizen in 2045 (and 2018!) would quite happily take the “blue pill” offered by Morpheus. They like their fake world just fine, thank you very much.

Apparently, in the nearly 20 year gap between The Matrix and Ready Player One, much in our culture has changed. These two films exemplify the cultural shift we have all been seeing over the last generation.

Ready Player One and Christianity

For our present world–mired in conversations about transgenderism, the fluidity of sexual identity, and the ability to “self-identify” as virtually anything–this new film will no doubt strike a chord.

Even more, it will resonate with people who now care very little about truth.  What matter is what I feel, or what works, or what satisfies.  For postmoderns, truth has got nothing to do with it.

And for others, the movie’s premise will no doubt justify their lifestyle.  “If Wade Watts can create his own reality, then by golly so can I,” they might think.  “If I want to ‘identify’ as a woman, even though I am a man, who can say otherwise?”

But it is precisely in this context that Christianity proves to be so distinctive.  We cannot and should not offer people a utopian world in the present (that is the mistake of the health-wealth movement).  But we can offer them the real world.  And we can also offer them a glorious world in the future.

Thus, Christianity offers two worlds, so to speak, and both of them are genuine.  We are honest about the problems of the present world.  We do not pretend it is something other than what it is.  And we are honest about the greatness of the world to come.

In contrast, Postmoderns only have one world–their own manufactured one.  And it is fake.

In many ways, then, postmodern people are living in a fashion similar to someone on a drug-induced hallucination.  It may feel good at the time.  But it is temporary.  It isn’t real.  And eventually they will come crashing down.

And when people do come crashing down, we can offer the truth of the Gospel to heal them.