Revealing mistake: Just after Wade gets threatened and his home is about to be bombed, he leaves his van trying to call his friends. After this shot, the camera pans over a load of scrap cars. Whilst the movie is meant to be set in America, at least 3 UK registered cars are visible in amongst the scrap cars, still wearing their UK plates. These 3 rather unremarkable cars, a Ford Mondeo, Fiat Punto, and Ford Fiesta Courier van, are unlikely to have ended up in the US.
Suggested correction: Though unlikely, not impossible. This is a future scenario and it's not far fetched to think that some economic crisis prompted people to buy import cars and then never given US plates. Or they were imported for parts. Or some UK workers using their own car.
This is a ridiculous correction. Why would Americans seek out right-hand drive cars from the UK when Canada, Mexico, and South America all use left-hand drive and are significantly closer than the UK? It would have been at least plausible if the vehicles were in some way special, but none of the three vehicles are in any way special; they would cost more to transport than they are worth.
Question: When the guy playing as Jason Voorhees gets killed in the OASIS, he throws off his goggles in a fit of rage and attempts to jump out the window to commit suicide. He's at work with other workers and surrounded by Dell computers. Am I mistaken... or are those modern day Dell computers? This movie takes place in 2045 and to me it seems unrealistic for a Japanese/Chinese company to be using almost 30 year old computers. (00:06:50)
Answer: It is not uncommon for movies set in the future to include technology or brands from the era that they were made. For example, futuristic movies like Back to the Future Part II, Blade Runner or Alien include technology and brands that were popular when they were made, as well as appear just as they appeared at the time their respective movies were made, but become outdated as the years go by. This is done mainly because the filmmakers do not know what the real technologies or brands will be in 2045 so they have to use modern technologies and brands of our time to include in the movie. Though sometimes the technologies and brands can be incorporated with the technology the future setting in the movie has established to make it feel as real as possible.
Answer: I didn't notice the computers, but yes, you're right. They could have put Plexiglass boxes with glowing lights inside on everyone's desks where an electronic device might go, no wires, with maybe a place to put the headset onto for charging. I think that would have looked futuristic and been acceptable to the movie viewers. (Or maybe a pyramid design instead of a box design.) But someone else might suggest that the owner of the business where all the people work (if it is a business) might have opted for the "retro look" even though the computers/electronics inside are far beyond what they look like.;-).
Answer: 25 years from now a computer will still need an input device, a display device, and a box to hold the processor. Why would computers change all that radically? As the old saying goes: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Computers have changed appearance radically over the past 10, 20, 30 years. Yes a computer from 1999 would have had an "input, display and box" but there's a stark difference in technology and design between that era and the modern day.
Since most people play on their own in their own homes and only on the Oasis, what a computer looks like seems much less important.
Question: How did IOI figure out how to get the first key? I doubt Wade or his friends sent them an email telling them how to do it.
Answer: They all witnessed Percival and his friends do the race backwards, they just copied the act. Eventually everyone knew how to do it.
Answer: Actually, they never got the first key. They even talked about that they didn't need to since Parzival found it. If they did start getting the keys, they would appear on the leader boards also. So only the High Five found it.
Actually they did need to get the key. The second key can only be acquired by someone who has received the first, and the same thing with the third key. Also, the High Five is simply referring to the first five to actually make it onto the leader-board. The simple fact is that once the secret was discovered, it was only a matter of time before it was general knowledge for everyone to do.
Question: How are you supposed to ride a motorbike at full throttle in reverse? That is what Art3mis must have done to win the first Quest and to earn her copper key. You can see her bike standing beneath the fountain while she receives the key.
Answer: It's a virtual reality world. Machines can do anything the programmer wants them to.
Answer: In addition, it isn't specifically stated that the vehicle must actually be traveling in reverse. It could be that all she had to do was turn the bike around and drive forward, but the opposite way of the track.
Ironically, even if Halliday stated that he doesn't want to make rules, he also says particularly to go backwards, at full throttle, not forward in the opposite direction. So I will not go with that thought of yours.
Perhaps she turned around on the bike and rode it in backwards?
Answer: It wouldn't take too much in the OASIS to modify a motorcycle so that it could drive backwards to complete the race. Driving it would be difficult though.
Corrected entry: At the end, when he's in the room where Halliday grew up, with the younger version of Halliday, Young Halliday is playing Yar's Revenge with what appears to be an Intellivision and Intellivision controller. Yar's Revenge was an Atari game.
Correction: Since Halliday created the Oasis, he could have altered any portion of it to his whims, especially a portion not accessible to just anyone, so it's not much of a stretch for him to have altered a tiny detail such as which games he was able to play on any given console; he could have chosen this particular setup for any number of reasons such as personal preference, aesthetics, nostalgia, etc.
Plot hole: During the final battle, we see all the other players charging over the hill and running into battle. We later see that these are just players standing on the streets wearing VR visors. But unlike our hero who is dangling on wires (and used a treadmill earlier on)...nobody on the streets is using any such thing. Which means when they are charging or running, they would all be crashing into walls or any obstacles that get in their way. Certainly nothing like the film.
Suggested correction: How much you have to move in the real world depends on how much and what kind of haptic gear you're wearing. If you have a boot suit and an omnidirectional treadmill, for example, you do all your own walking, running, and jumping, because you have the space to do it and the haptics to respond to your movements. People with minimal gear-like those we see on the streets-might have only a visor and gloves, say, and they have to do all their "running", "fighting" etc. with signals from their hands. It's like if you don't have a joystick, you have to use the arrows on the keyboard.
I disagree with this. At one point during the big fight you see a group of players as Spartans running along the street, with visors on. They definitely would have run into a wall or other person at some point. I'm sure they were not the only ones. I'm sure it's possible to use something for movement control besides actual physical movements but that scene shows not everybody is using it and there should be a lot of accidents with people running into things and each other. At the start of the movie you see a mom climb upon her couch to imitate climbing up a rock in the game, physically imitating the movement. The lack of showing this disability for players on the streets might not be so big as to be a plot hole, but definitely a factual error.
Here's a clip of the Spartans https://youtu.be/D_eZxSYRhco?t=1m36s that shows they are definitely moving in exactly the same way in the Oasis as they are in real life, so even though yes it would make perfect sense for there to be different control schemes depending on the level of technology a person has, the film appears to show that it's a one-to-one translation of movement regardless of practicality or safety.
I don't think it's an issue. Note that several times in the movie people are also shown to be playing the game while just sitting down at a table. Case in point, the guy that dies on Planet Doom and then immediately jumps up from his work desk and tries to run to the window to jump out. He was sitting down but still playing in the PVP on planet doom. Same is true for right as Wade is telling that when you die all your money and everything you work for is gone. The scene shows Sho stabbing a person's avatar on Planet Doom that then shows the person who was playing that character falling out of a chair he was sitting in. With another person sitting across from him also in a chair.
I think in the end we can all agree its a mistake in the movie but not as big as a plot hole. Some people running, some people sitting down whilst playing, could be a matter of taste, but the Spartans running across the street with a visor on is definitely not logical.
The players have the ability to see the real world because the glasses of most people are transparent, Art3mis even looks at Sorrento approaching in IOI, which Wade even asks why she is looking in that direction if there is nothing there, so the players would not hit the wall when running.
