People are hating on "Ready Player One," directed by Steven Spielberg.

The trailers for the movie make it look like a confusing mess.

The backlash reflects audience exhaustion with nostalgic fan service.

Still, some Spielberg fans are looking forward to it.

"Ready Player One" will be released in less than a month, on March 28, and it's hard to find anyone excited for it. Depending on who you ask, the movie is "nerd culture gone awry" or a "depressing dystopia about how we can't make anything new."

The movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, is based on a critically acclaimed and bestselling book by Ernest Cline. In it, the creator of the OASIS — an enormous virtual reality world where everyone spends their time — dies, and the person who wins his Easter Egg challenge will be its ruler.

A guy named Wade Watts, played by Tye Sheridan, tries to win before an evil corporation gets there first and monetizes the OASIS. Along the way, Watts interacts with pop culture figures and concepts from the 1980s like Pac-Man, "Blade Runner," and Spielberg's own movies.

"Ready Player One" has an enormous scope, but the trailers so far don't inspire confidence or clarify the plot. The most recent one included a haunting cover of "Pure Imagination" from "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory."

Movie fans don't want pandering, manufactured nostalgia.

"Ready Player One" is rich with pop culture references. In a way, pop culture references is its entire premise: The characters get to live in a virtual fantasyland where their favorite movie and video game characters walk alongside them. It's like fanfiction.

But movie fans are tired of big studios manufacturing nostalgia from the 1980s. They've been serving this up for a decade now, with properties like 2010's "The A-Team" and 2016's "Ghostbusters." Sometimes reheating cultural leftovers works, as with "Blade Runner 2049" and "It." But sometimes you just know it's a lazy way of making movies.

The marketing for the movie makes it appear a bit like a string of references without a plot, and people aren't looking forward to that. It seems a bit like having a friend who's learned all the pop culture references in an attempt to appear savvy, but looped back to being uncool again.

—pixelated boat [ASMR] binaural ~4 hours~ (@pixelatedboat) March 6, 2018

The whole idea of mashing up a bunch of disparate characters seems childish anyway. To some people, it resembles cartoon crossover episodes.

It's also a bit like the 2005 viral video "Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny," where poorly-drawn characters from pop culture all fight each other.

Steven Spielberg directing "Ready Player One" shows just how much fan culture has taken over Hollywood.

Paired with the exhaustion of manufactured nostalgia, some movie fans are also upset with how much video games, comics, and other "nerd culture" properties have taken over virtually every big budget movie.

"Ready Player One" is nakedly about the fight against big corporations monetizing pop culture beloved by fans. Watts wants to secure control of the OASIS before a corporation can and keep things free for everyone.

The Iron Giant looms through the marketing in "Ready Player One." Warner Bros.

But the real-life world where "Ready Player One" exists suggests the opposite: Warner Bros., a big entertainment conglomerate, wants to make a ton of money from a movie that's filled with beloved characters from "The Iron Giant" and "Street Fighter."

Steven Spielberg is one of the few directors alive who could likely rustle up any budget he wanted for any project he wanted. The book even references a lot of Spielberg's own movies, which he'll be cutting from his adaptation But still, he caved and made something fan-servicey. And while, of course, many fan-referencing movies are great, like "The Lego Movie" and "21 Jump Street," this one doesn't look promising.

Many Spielberg fans are still looking forward to it.

On the other hand, there are still a lot of people looking forward to the movie. Spielberg is one of the greatest filmmakers in history, after all, and maybe he can pull it off — it's just the marketing that can't keep up.

Sign up here to get INSIDER's favorite stories straight to your inbox.