Ready Player One - Movie VS Book - Blog 7
As with what happens with all successful books, Ready Player One got a movie adaptation. And like all adaptations, there were some changes made. Some for the better and some for the worse.Â
The first thing that always bugs me about the movie is the removal of the establishment of the OASIS. Though Cline’s book, we learn of the society of the OASIS. The school system especially was something I found interesting about the OASIS in Cline’s book. In the book, the OASIS felt like a whole world, with ships, homes, and other such things. In the Spielberg movie, the OASIS just feels like a game world or an MMO like World of Warcraft. It doesn’t really feel like people can develop a real sense of being here. Like how in the book each of the main 5 have like a home base ship that they can call their own, in the movie it just seems like they just log in every once and a while. That goes along with another issue I have with the movie and that’s with the pop culture avatars. We see in the movie various avatars that are based off parts of pop culture, like the people playing as Halo’s Spartans or the Ninja Turtles, and we assume that these are the “avatars”. I much prefer the book's version of having the avatar at least somewhat resemble you. It makes a situation like Aech a little more downplayed cause we can assume that most people don’t look like their avatars in this version of the story.
On to the keys/eggs. There are some aspects that I like about one and some that I like about the other. Being a huge fan of DND and Joust, I love the book's version of the first key. It being on the home planet of a big school is something that I found was an interesting aspect. The film's version is much more of a visual spectacle which I liked and I can’t deny that I loved seeing King Kong and Jurassic Park. Though I had a problem with the solution since it seemed way too easy to solve. This segways into the movie’s biggest enhancement to the book. Artemis and Wade.
In the book Wade, put it simply, is a loser. And as I discovered recently and discussed in another blog post, kinda creepy. His weird obession with Artemis is thankfully cut out and the film does a better job of establishing any form of a romance when Artemis rescues Wade from Sixers in the stacks. While we miss out on the reveal of Artemis’s facial mark, we instead get more development of the two together. Wade in this film just seems like an average guy who’s had bad luck up until now.
I’m personally not a fan of either of the jade key quests/gates. The Shining thing seems kind of average to me even though the way they find the key’s location is cool. As a film aspect, I love how they recreated the Shining. The books quest isn’t much better in my opinion. While I liked the Zork playthrough, the second gate is where it falters for me. Not having heard of Black Tiger, it just felt like a dumb reference.
While Wade’s infiltration of IOI is given to Artemis in the film, I do prefer Wade as the spy. It shows more of the mundane life that IOI gives to people.
Onto the final battle. While I wish they included Leopardon (as a huge Spider-Man fan who recently read Spider-Verse where it appeared) I think the finale in the film is miles better. Just seeing all these iconic pop culture things fighting it out is just an awesome experience.
The simplicity of the movies ending made it stand out to me. Just having the final challenge being Adventure made more of an impact to me. Also the reveal of Ogg being the keeper of the Anorak Almanac in the film was more effective to me personally.