Next week marks the arrival of the film adaptation of Ready Player One, based on the 2011 novel of the name from Ernest Cline. Because it’s been heavily marketed, is packed to the brim with pop culture references spanning nerd culture from the last 30 years, and has Steven Spielberg in the director’s chair, it’s drawn a lot of attention and hype. It looks like a video game movie that is unashamed to be a video game movie, which is honestly something of a rarity for that particular genre.

However, as the movie’s gotten closer to release, some fans have taken to claiming that this movie is for nerds and gamers in the same way that Marvel’s Black Panther has been for black people in terms of impact.

Yes, really.

The meaning of this comparison primarily stems from the logic that Player One has the possibility of bringing a particular “culture” to the big screen that mainstream audiences have never really gotten to see before. And you know what? That’s actually a solid point. It’s almost always nice to shine a spotlight on a perspective that audiences haven’t seen before. In this day and age, representation matters, and there are plenty of minority cultures which deserve to be properly represented. 

But the idea that this extends to Ready Player One is foolish, and blatantly ignores everything going on in the world right now in relation to video games. This film is coming out in theaters just two weeks after Tomb Raider, itself based on a long running video game franchise that is iconic in its own right, no matter how audiences reacted to the actual film.

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And the ubiquity of video game culture this month doesn't stop there. Not long ago, Canadian rapper Drake spent a night playing Fortnite with a famous Twitch streamer, and even brought along a bevy of other rappers along for the ride. The idea that gaming needs any kind of “legitimacy” in 2018 comes off as both ironic and ignorant, as though a trailer for the upcoming God of War game didn’t premiere literally on the floor of a Golden State Warriors game just a month ago. Video games are a multimillion dollar industry that stopped needing to be legitimized around a decade ago, and even if they did, a movie that just has cameo after cameo wouldn’t be the way to do it.

To compare Black Panther and Ready Player One is a gross misunderstanding of what made the former the juggernaut that it is and will forever be remembered as. Yes, there were black superhero films before, both good and bad, but Black Panther aimed to be something different, and still something that was specific to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s a genuine celebration and examination of black culture from the perspective of both Africans and African Americans, and that’s something that shows throughout the film, from the costuming to the music to the dialogue. It's clear just from that first trailer alone and the venom with which Andy Serkis’ Ulysses Klaue talks about how Wakanda is a “golden city” originally thought to be in South America instead of Africa.

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Conversely, one has to ask: What exactly is meant to be celebrated in Ready Player One beyond the number of licenses that Steven Spielberg and Warner Bros. have the rights to use? There’s no introspection of gaming culture in the present day and how that would affect the future of 2045 beyond “everyone needs to go outside and live a little,” and that’s just... basic. There’s no insight into why a virtual world full of pop culture and the things we loved in our youth would be a needed comfort in our lives reaching all the way up to adulthood. The film just looks to weaponize the most popular or eye catching things from the last 30 years and hopes it’ll land a headshot to satisfy the audience.

RELATED: Black Panther Rescues One of Marvel’s Most Problematic Characters

Black Panther is no stranger to weaponizing nostalgia and blackness, since it’s based on a comic book stretching back to the '60s, but it feels less insidious here and more like a result of using common sense. Anyone can see that superhero movies are desperately lacking in representation for anyone who is not a white person, and it’s even more glaring in the MCU since that's the most popular superhero film franchise around. Black Panther would’ve been a hit no matter what, just by being an MCU film, but its impact was particularly strong because it appeals to different facets of black people. It appealed to black women who haven’t really been represented in genre films by introducing Nakia, Okoye and the Dora Milaje; older black communities who know and love Angela Bassett; young black girls into STEM via T’Challa’s younger sister Shuri, and so on. This is a movie that is literally appealing to an underserved minority.

The same can’t be said for Ready Player One and gamers.

Gamers are not and will never be a minority endanger of experiencing violence simply for existing. Wearing a Pop Team Epic shirt or t-shirt from Dark Souls is not going to get anyone shot in the chest while they’re shopping in Walmart. Presenting Ready Player One as some sort of much needed respite to celebrate gamer culture as being on par with what Ryan Coogler and company provided with Black Panther is just absurd.

RELATED: Black Panther Buries Tomb Raider as Marvel Film Achieves Avatar Record

Everyone is playing video games these days. Everyone knows someone who plays video games these days. If gamers need to be taken more seriously, they need to take themselves seriously instead of demanding it from an audience who has learned to live and let live with the interactive medium already.

Ready Player One will not be Black Panther for nerds, because they’re not even operating in the same star system, let alone the same level of ambition and thematic depth. It serves no favors to Player One in particular, given the distaste that appears to have grown around the original book and the film’s marketing. If for no other reason, it's a good idea to keep Panther out of Player One’s sights, because coming at the King will all but guarantee a miss.