One thing this movie needed: A Lawnmower Man reference

That movie was a complete UNWATCHABLE PIECE OF SHIT, even back in the 1990s.

The Lawnmower Man is 90's. Ernest Cline likes to masturb... yerm, write about 80's stuff.

Would have liked to have seen Voltron or Space Cruiser Yamato.

I initially liked LM when it came out back in the day as I was a fan of CGI like in Tron and Last Starfighter, but the story was incredibly DUMB. I mean, the primitive Virtual Reality back then, with a combination of drugs, turns a simpleton into the Most Dangerous Man on Earth? I thought it was beyond redemption when by the end, he could alter the state of matter at the molecular level in the most cheesy "real world" CGI ever. And yes, only a few years afterwards, the CGI already looks horribly dated. And no, I never saw the sequel, it looked like shit.

If that simpleton had seen the VR available these days, he'd've blown his MIND.