Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” has generated a lot of attention for its seeming obsession with references to other pop culture media like “The Iron Giant” and Blizzard’s “Overwatch”. The film’s trailers all promise a tsunami of that bitter sweet feeling of nostalgia in every frame. The internet has been flooded with breakdown videos and articles that try and spot every reference jammed into the trailers. The question is, can a movie survive if all it sells itself as is a virtual slide show of references to media you enjoyed before rather than something you will love now?

The most recent marketing strategy was to take classic posters from pop culture movies that were well loved and swap the characters for those that appear in the new movie.

The trend of making movies that focus on hitting that sweet spot of nostalgia and an entertaining story has largely been propelled by the profits that these movies make. For example; J. J. Abram’s “The Force Awakens” (2015) and Colin Trevorrow’s “Jurassic World” (2015). The former being the top domestic box office earner and the latter being the the fourth highest earning movie domestically. Even when adjusting for ticket inflation both movies fall within the top 30 movies of all time.

The machine that pumps our brains full of that delicious nostalgia didn't start with these two box office juggernauts but in 2015 the machine peaked. After that year of nostalgia peddling blockbusters we were graced with such gems as: “Independence Day: Resurgence”, “Ghostbusters” (2016), and “Vacation” (2015). While it is true that some movies pumped out of this machine have been great (see “Blade Runner 2049") most of them have been critical and financial failures. “Independence Day: Resurgence” made 53% less than the original and “Ghostbusters” (2016) lost Sony $75 million.

The machine sputtered into 2018 after the financial failure, despite critical success, of “Blade Runner 2049”. The machine has drawn in its deepest breath and has exhaled a movie so dripping in nostalgia that you might as well just rewatch the originals this movie “references”. I put references in quotations because I am not sure that taking charters from better media and using them for no other reason than because people like them counts.

The machine only knows how to feed people back what it thinks we like but the returns on its product are constantly diminishing. “Ready Player One” is heading for a disappointing $35 million opening. It seems that the machine that resurrected two franchises in 2015 is going to lose its steam in 2018.