Ready Player One Review

Nostalgia, Video Games, and Geek Culture have dominated the zeitgeist for over a decade. Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One smashed these ideas together and after it was a publishing success, led to it being adapted as a big-budget film by Steven Spielberg.

In 2045 a lot of people escape their troubles by going into the OASIS, a Virtual Reality simulation that allows people to do pretty much anything they want. The creator of the OASIS was James Halliday (Mark Rylance) and he created the most elaborate Easter Egg hunt in history within the OASIS. If someone is able to find the three keys in OASIS they would inherit Halliday’s wealth, shares, and control of the OASIS.

The hunt has created a subculture of people who have become obsessed with Halliday’s history and be the first people to find the keys. One of them is Wade Watts/Parzival (Tye Sheridan), a poor kid from the slums of Columbus, who sees the quest as his ticket out of poverty. However, his success makes him the target of the corporation IOI and its CEO, Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn).

Ready Player One was essentially a futuristic version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. They have a similar premise and there are about people who have to prove themselves worthy to win. The film version of Ready Player One was a loose adaptation of the novel, which was surprising since Cline co-wrote the screenplay.

Some changes were reasonable because some scenes needed to be more cinematic. An example of this was the first challenge because in the book to get the first clue Parzival had to play a game of Joust. The film was more action ordinated. All the references in the book would have been a copyright nightmare so some changes were bound to happen. Warner Brothers mandated that the film couldn’t use Blade Runner which was a major plot point in the novel. Many of the film characters were made to be more good-looking than their book counterparts and some things were changed to help to condense the plot.

The biggest change that was bound to happen was the portrayal of Parzival. The character from the book has been criticised for stalking Art3mis. Even if people saw his actions as nothing more than teenage naivety the book version of Parzival was obnoxious, which was annoying because he narrated the novel. The filmmakers aimed to soften the character and make him more likeable. His romance with Art3mis was treated more as mutual attraction and the filmmakers aimed to make it into more of a love story. The other major change was in Parzival’s outlook because in the novel he was a self-centred nihilist whilst the film version was pretty much the chosen one who would lead the resistance against IOI.

The film did take away a lot of the darkest aspects of the novel. In the book, the world had gone to hell due to a fuel crisis and climate change. Extreme poverty and violence were rampant. Public Schools were like A Clockwork Orange, The Stacks were gang dominated, and travel across America required an armed escort. This chaos led to people going into the OASIS as an escape and made Hikikomori more than a Japanese phenomenon. This was the stuff I found to be the most interesting aspect of the novel. The film version toned this down. This was partly due to the filmmakers were aiming for the sweet PG-13/12A rating.

The film also had that Spielberg touch because there was a lot more humour, both in the real world and the OASIS. An example of this was near the beginning where a mother was playing a game and a pan fire was happening behind her. Because of this, the world in the film didn’t seem anywhere near as bad as the book and the film did miss out on some potential social commentary.

The mystery was dumbed down for the film. There was logic in the filmmakers’ decision because they wanted to make the clues more personal to Halliday and less obsessed with ‘80s culture, especially the first clue. But the first clue was so obvious that it was surprising no one figured it out beforehand.

Where Ready Player One excelled was the action scenes and special effects. The filmmakers used the full force of ILM, and they created a visual feast. The opening race and the final battle were eye candy and there were absolutely bonkers. The race had challenges where racers had to get past a T-Rex and King Kong, whilst the final battle had a throw everything and the kitchen sink approach. Your inner geek can’t help but smile when seeing The Iron Giant and a Gundam Robot fight Meta-Godzilla. Spielberg clearly got to have fun recreating The Shining for the middle of the film.

Ready Player One was a superficial film because the action and special effects were fantastic, but the characters, world-building, and mystery were barebones.