Ready Player One: A Game Of The Future

Post By: Sarah Barclay

Ready Player One in one sentence is basically Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with video games, but instead of winning a chocolate factory, the winner gets ultimate control of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) OASIS.

Based on the sci-fi novel of the same name by Ernest Cline, it follows Wade Watts, an awkward, nerdy, video game obsessed 19-20 year old who spends a majority of his waking hours in the OASIS with the rest of the population as there’s nothing left to do in the real world. It isn’t until the creator and owner of the OASIS, James Halliday, dies that anything interesting happens. On the day of his death, Halliday sends out a video explaining that there is an Easter Egg hidden somewhere in the OASIS with clues and keys leading to its whereabouts. The first person to find this Easter Egg would be the winner of Halliday’s fortune and become the new owner of the OASIS, having complete control over it. With this challenge in place, we see Wade and other characters compete to find the egg.

As I read the original novel, this review will be split into two parts, each with their own individual score. The adaptation portion won’t be as long or in depth as I’d like because pointing out a few of the differences will result in not only spoiling the book (which happens anyway), but will spoil a large part of the movie due to the amount of changes that were made.

My Thoughts On Ready Player One As An Adaptation

(Contains book spoilers - you’ve been warned)

Before I rip the movie a new one for being a terrible adaptation of the book, the author Ernest Cline co-wrote the screenplay, so any changes that were made were approved by him, but with that being said, I feel it’s necessary to point out the changes made from the book as there are fans of the book who will see the movie and expect it to be just like the book. To be simply put, it’s not. I also feel it’s important to note that just because it’s different from the book doesn’t mean that I think it’s a terrible movie overall and the only way it would’ve been a good movie would be for it to follow the book exactly. That doesn’t happen, and there are some changes that make the movie better because of visual storytelling. So if you’re looking for me to destroy the movie because it’s so different from the book, you’re not going to find that here.

It’s understandable why so many things were changed, especially when it came to trying to find the keys. The quests were changed to be more cinematic, to grasp your attention and keep it as the action happened. If I’m being honest, I’d rather watch an intense car race rather than two people sitting down, trying to defeat each other in the game of Joust. If they went with Joust, they’d end up with a theater full of people bored out of their minds.

They kept Wade in the same place the entire time, rather than having him travel from Oklahoma City to Columbus, he stays in Columbus the entire time. This is a small change, and it eliminates the need for a travel sequence, which would’ve used more time and made the movie seem a bit disjointed. We could have easily wound up with a ton of action, a weirdly calm travel break, and then more action. It would’ve felt weird, and this isn’t the kind of movie that would contain a travel montage. It was definitely a smart move on their part.

Ludus is completely removed from the entire storyline. Wade and Aech are no longer students and I-r0k plays a completely different role. Because there is no Ludus, Wade actually has the means to travel, as well as having more gear in the beginning than he initially did in the book. The removal of Ludus bypasses an entire subplot which most likely would’ve made the movie more confusing. It gets an honorable mention, but other than that, it’s nonexistent.

Ogden Morrow had a different involvement in the movie than in the book. He’s not as present, but I can’t go into details without spoiling the entire thing, so I’m going to leave it at that.

The main characters don’t meet each other at the end like the book. They actually meet each other much earlier on, and with this, the overall hunt went from being solo missions to the group working together, despite them saying they didn’t want to create a gunter clan.

There are quite a few other changes from the book, but they deal with major spoilers of both the book and the movie. If you’ve seen the movie, you know what these changes are, but I can’t discuss them here.

★☆☆☆☆

My Thoughts On Ready Player One As A Movie

(Spoiler Free)

If I had to describe Ready Player One in one word, it would probably be ‘breathtaking’. This movie was directed by Movie Wizard Steven Spielberg, and he really deserves the title ‘Movie Wizard.’ If you weren’t already aware, majority of this movie is CGI, with most of the action taking place inside the OASIS, a video game, and each character having their own avatar.

CGI is one of those things in movies that either work to enhance the movie or it does the opposite and makes the movie worse. Fortunately, here, it works so well. The OASIS is absolutely stunning to look at. Each world is unique and it really shows how expansive the OASIS really is. Because the movie isn’t entirely in the OASIS, my main concern was the transition from being in the OASIS to being out of it, but I didn’t have a problem with it. There wasn’t a sharp contrast between the two, so going in and out flowed seamlessly.

Speaking of going in and out of the OASIS, I liked what they did when it came to showing the OASIS as a video game. Rather than just showing people in the OASIS, they showed people in real life while they’re in the OASIS, and it’s very entertaining. Since the OASIS is fully interactive, if you move in the game, you move in real life. It’s interesting being immersed in the OASIS and then being shown the people playing, in their homes, wearing their visors, punching and kicking the air, completely ignoring everything that’s going on around them in their real lives. It’s definitely a comedic aspect that I appreciate.

I thought the overall story was well written, important details were given at the appropriate times, and questions raised during the overall story were answered by the end.

I really enjoyed the casting choices, I felt each character was well portrayed and represented. They each had a part to play. No one got pushed into being a background character. They all had dimension to them. We learned a lot about them through their interactions with other characters instead of a long winded explanation as to why a character is a certain way. The characters felt like real people instead of people who barely know what they’re doing, just there to move the story along.

Ready Player One is a PG-13 movie which means there can only be one, maybe two F-bombs in the entire thing. They used it once, and boy, did they use it well. It was said by a minor character during a time of distress, but because of the situation and the timing, it was absolutely hilarious.

For some reason, whenever the camera panned over the Sixers in the IOI office, it kept focusing on one Sixer in particular, making me think she was important in some way, but she doesn’t do anything for the story. I wasn’t entirely sure what to think of that, unless she originally had an important scene that later was removed from the final cut.

I only had one complaint with the movie, post-production wise. I thought it was a little hard to understand Aech at times. Aech’s voice in the OASIS is supposed to have a bit of distortion to it, but there were times that there just either too much distortion or not enough enunciation, but of course I know if it’s an enunciation problem, it’s much harder to fix in post-production.

I would personally like to give a medal to whoever decided to release this movie Easter weekend because this movie is full of Easter Eggs, not just the main one in the plot, and other references that anyone would recognize regardless of when they grew up. This movie is heavily influenced by the 1980s, from video games to movies to music. As someone who was born in the late 90s, there were so many references that I understood. I saw this movie with my dad, who graduated high school in the 80s, and, naturally, he found more references. My only other note on this was I found the lack of Voltron unfortunate. They can’t put everything in there, but it would’ve been nice to see.

Ready Player One is so action packed that when I left the theater, I suddenly realized how mundane my life is. Driving around after seeing the movie and constantly expecting things to jump out at you is a really weird feeling. The race scene really sticks with you. I felt very disoriented after seeing it, but that’s not a bad thing, just really strange.

I highly recommend seeing this movie whether you’ve read the book or not. It’s only been a week since I’ve seen it, and yet, I’m ready to see it again. It’s another masterpiece from Steven Spielberg, just utterly fantastic.

★★★★★