So Ready Player One (the movie) is officially out. And (unfortunately) I’ve seen it. Now, guys, this is my favorite book of all-time so even though I told myself over and over that it wasn’t going to meet my expectations, I was still flipping excited to see it. So I saw it (stupidly)… and I have a lot of feelings about it. Let’s get down to it and discuss Ready Player One, book versus movie.

The quick and dirty:

The movie was basically NOTHING like the book. And because the book is my favorite thing ever, I hated the damn movie.

If I hadn’t spent $20 on my ticket, I actually would have walked out of the theater (30 minutes in!) I was so disappointed. 

Let’s hash-out the movie, starting with what I liked: 

  1. I liked the cast. I think the people they chose for the movie were great – especially Halliday! He was very well done.

Whelp, that’s it. What I didn’t like (with spoilers!):

  1. My NUMBER ONE complaint, the one that irks me more than anything else, is the loss of the 80’s pop culture. It was as though they wanted to avoid it completely. They even mentioned Halliday’s obsession with “a decade” by didn’t say it was the 80’s. WHY? I get that they are worried about alienating some of their audience, but guess what, I knew basically NONE of the references in the books and I still freaking loved it. Other people did, too! Why take the heart from the book?!It just eliminated the charm the book held. This could have been a cool, nerdy, Goonies-vibe movie. But nope. It was some shitty action film taking place in a lame virtual reality.
  2. I knew from the trailers it wasn’t looking good. I knew in our first introduction to the Oasis that it wasn’t starting off well… but then… when it talked about the task to get the copper key, and it was A FUCKING CAR RACE?! That was the first time I felt my feet itching to walk my ass out of there. I understand that we can’t watch someone play Joust on a video game screen, but can’t we do something more theatrical but keep to the original spirit of the movie? 

    So then basically every clue and challenge to get the key after that was fucked. Nothing was the same. I’ll forgive the movie for not having challenges to get the keys and the gates, because that requires extra time. I know ya’ll think I’m being too critical, but see? I am okay with some artistic license.

  3. Okay and then all the live-action stuff (which I could put into 500 different points but I’ll smash it all in here) was so awful. I understand you can’t have a movie entirely in a VR. That would be odd. BUT they really took artistic license with this and by that I mean they just changed the plot entirely.
    We meet Art3mis WAY early and in a bizarre context (another time I almost walked out of the theater, because guess what? THE WAY IT HAPPENS IN  THE BOOK IS SO MUCH BETTER).
    And then the whole scene with Art3mis going to IOI is wrong (but I’ll forgive it a little bit because it allowed the plot to progress quickly)
    All the stupid action scenes that they needed to create tension (I suppose? As if it’s not tense enough just having him search for the key!?!fdsjf;alsdkfjalsf), were just annoying and made it feel cheap and honestly, super dorky (not in the cool RPO book dorky way).
  4. I can’t not talk about the jade key task involving The Shining. First of all, it made me laugh because it alludes to Stephen King not being happy with the movie version of his book. It’s almost like they did that because they knew us bookish people would be pissed. But then it was just fucking weird and TOTALLY not with the spirit of the Halliday’s character (making his love for Ogdon’s wife the main point of a challenge? he wouldn’t have done that, SORRY). That whole part I look back on and am just confused by. WHY DID THEY MAKE IT SO WEIRD? I’m assuming that they had to change some of the 80’s pop culture references around due to copyright reasons (at least I hope that’s why), and I’m sure some of the changes were so a younger audience would know the reference…. but my goodness… I’m just… I can’t.Truthfully this scene felt symbolic of the movie itself: The RPO movie is a shell of the RPO book, just like our glimpse of The Shining in the movie was a shell of what the actual movie was (um, like why zombies and dancing people and weirdness?).
  5. At the end, when they’re in Halliday’s home, it’s like salt on the wound. You can see all the 80’s references that were supposed to be in the story around the room on posters and paraphenelia. It’s almost like, “Yeah, we knew we left it out. Here’s a poster on the wall to make you feel better.”
    And then the weird interaction with Wade and Halliday at the end about whether or not Halliday is an avatar? dafuq?

Final thoughts: 

The bottom line is that the point of the novel is that it is super dorky and fun. They changed all of the cool dorky stuff to make it more action-packed and epic, and by doing so, lost the charm and turned the movie into a truly dorky film – it was stupid. 

I want to be able to say I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. But I’m hella mad. It’s insulting because if you’re like me, and go around saying Ready Player One is your favorite book of all-time, people are now going to think of THIS TURD OF A MOVIE??! UGH NO.

Listen, so long as you know that this movie is NOTHING like the book, then go see it! But if you’re expecting to see your book in live-action STOP RIGHT NOW. Let me save you some money: skip it.