Ready Player One
Note: This was written in a kind of stream of consciousness style. I didn't take time to organize my thoughts or edit it thoroughly on purpose.
As a person that rarely reads fiction for pleasure, I can count on one hand the number of novel-to-film adaptations that I've seen in my life. I mean the ones where I read the book first and then saw the film adaption. Not like Wizard of Oz or something where I saw the film first. When I read anything, it's either about current events/pop culture or history. The idea of reading a novel almost puts me to sleep on its own. It's an archaic form of entertainment. However, I will admit that reading books does offer one very important advantage over film adaptations: detail. Since most of the time movies are limited to a few hours, they often have to cut out details that would simply make the movie too long. This of course, happened. Even with its subject matter being "right up my alley" and almost universal praise upon its release, I never considered reading Ready Player One. It was only after I somehow decided to try Audible, the audiobook streaming service, that I figured I'd give Ready Player One a try. So, for the next couple of weeks, I listened to Wil Wheaton read to me for a little over 15 hours while I drove around in my car. A couple of times I went on a long road trip, and let me tell you, audiobooks are amazing for that. In any case, I just wanted to own up to the fact that I never actually *read* Ready Player One, but I did listen to it read to me. And in my opinion, that bridges the gap between movies and reading books quite nicely. But you're sacrificing time for convenience and entertainment, I suppose.
So, yeah, the movie. I'm sure you're wondering how the movie was. It was... different. That's the best way I can think of to explain it. I guess this is how most people that "read the book first" feel when they see movie adaptations. But I mean, it almost wasn't the same at all. Sure, it had most of the big points from the book in it in some way or another. But everything was turned around somehow. Well, maybe not everything. But a lot of things. Characters acted differently, especially I-R0k. Names were slightly changed (why shorten Shoto to Sho... seems like no reason for it at all, and it impacted nothing.) People lived that should have died. And the quests were pretty much completely and totally different. There were, of course, parts of the book that were completely left out, and things that weren't explained very well which I'm sure was a requirement to getting this thing under 6 hours. Basically, if you read (or as in my case, listened) to the book first, just throw it all out the window. All of it. Take all of the references that you read in the book, and just assume they are replaced by new references. This isn't necessarily all bad, but it's hard not to be disappointed. The only thing that was almost spot on for me when it went from book to film was the dance club. It looked pretty much exactly how I envisioned it. Since a picture of the stacks was on the cover of the book when I listened to it, that was pretty close as well.
So other than being different, was it any GOOD? Yes. It was. Did I have very high expectations? Yes, I did. Were they met. No. Honestly, I knew I'd blown this up too much in my head, but I had high hopes that they'd do it right. I didn't mind the addition of 90s and even 2010s references. I minded that they changed things too much. But, if you've never read the book, you'll probably enjoy it more. The acting was fine for the most part. I thought that Halliday was mis-directed or mis-written. The actor that played him was fine, I suppose, but his personality was pretty off from the book. And as much as I like Simon Pegg, he was not who I envisioned as Og. The special FX... I don't know. It almost feels like they made the Oasis characters have that uncanny valley look to them on purpose. Like, hey, this is a game world they're in, this is how avatars look like in there. But then you look at everything else in the game world, and it looks totally and completely realistic. There is even a scene at the end that really drives that point home. But overall, I guess the effects were still pretty good. The feedback I got from my girlfriend's 15 year old son was that he really liked it. He never read the book, and I'm sure he didn't get many of the references. The feedback from my 40something friend who'd only partially listened to the audiobook was that he liked it as well. So, I guess, overall, it's a likable movie if you've never experienced the book or were even alive in the 80s. My girlfriend liked it better than I did, I think. She'd both listened to and read the book. She even wore her "Ready Player One" t-shirt to the movie. But even still, I think I was much more invested in it. It's currently got a 79% on Rotten Tomatoes. I think that's fair. Maybe add a few points if you've never experienced the book.
