Ready Player One - Movie Review

 Ready Player One is a story about video games.

Retro games, to be precise, juxtaposed with the infinite possibilities of a futuristic VR paradise. It’s also a window into a grimy dystopian future where everyone just wants to escape into their avatars. This is the ultimate fan service movie, a love letter to Eighties pop culture. A story about defiant gamer underdogs taking on a massive corporation for the fate of the virtual world. It’s based off a bestselling novel, which I own and have read.

And you know what, I’m taking sides. For once, the movie is better than the book. Let the flame wars begin.

Right, so. This is not a normal position for me to take. It’s usually the other way around. Translating text onto the big screen inevitably requires compromises, sacrifices, characters cut and scenes compressed in order to fit a two-hour runtime. Much of the magic and majesty is lost. Trying to make everything line up exactly like the novels doesn’t work, but too many changes can lead the films astray from the originals.

They’re two vastly different mediums. (And let’s not even talk about video game tie-ins.) By their very nature, books are slower and more introspective, but also allow a level of immersion that I still believe is unrivaled in any other form of storytelling. Whereas movies are faster, flashier, and more visual. (Duh.) To make an adaptation work, you have to change things around. The end result might not match the source material word for word, but it will almost certainly stand out on the big screen.

And in the case of Ready Player One, I enjoyed the movie much more than the book. They’re both great stories. But this time, Hollywood did it better.

FIRST TO THE KEY

Set in a dreary mid-21^st century prediction version of America that’s been ravaged by climate change and other disasters, everyone spends their time in a virtual playground called the OASIS. Created by visionary game designer James Halliday, the OASIS is where fantasy and reality blur together. You go to school there; you work there; you live there. And when Halliday died, his last missive to the world was to announce a treasure hunt. Somewhere in the vast reaches of his creation were three hidden keys. Whoever found them all would win the ultimate easter egg: half a trillion dollars and full control over the OASIS. Kind of a big deal.

This kicks off an entire subculture of obsessed gamers hunting for the egg: egg hunters, or ‘gunters’. Wade Watts is one such fanboy, a poor kid living in squalor with his aunt and her abusive boyfriend who dreams of escaping his impoverished life for real. In the OASIS he calls himself Parzival after the knight who finds the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend. Joining him are his best friend Aech, a hulking mechanical modder; Daito and Sho, rocking samurai and ninja avatars respectively; and Art3mis, badass heroine and love interest.

Against them are Innovative Online Industries, a massive corporation with eyes on controlling the OASIS for themselves. IOI fields an army of ‘Sixers’ in numbered jumpsuits, the company grunts who aren’t even allowed to use their own names, led by their totally uncool CEO, Nolan Sorrento. When Wade and friends make a breakthrough in the quest for the keys, the conflict soon escalates into an all-out war for control of the future.

Let the games begin.

ALTERNATE REALITIES

After some opening exposition, the movie starts with a race for the first key along an insane course through New York City littered with death traps, a T-rex, and King Kong himself. It sets the tone nicely and marks a major contrast with the source material: this is not at all how the first task played out in the novel. The book places much more emphasis on arcane knowledge of pop culture trivia which only someone as obsessive as Wade would know. Dungeons and Dragons, traditional sci-fi/fantasy, and cyberpunk are all strong influences. There were also more details on the actual game mechanics, which was nice.

That said, something like half the book is one long chain of Eighties references. Wade spends a lot of his inner monologue geeking out over old movies and sitcoms and video games. No doubt it’s all meaningful for someone from that generation (the author himself, for starters). The problem is that I didn’t grow up in that generation. I was born in the Nineties. Most of these references meant nothing to me. And for a futuristic virtual reality world, all the Eighties vibes could make it feel weirdly unoriginal.

But it looks great on screen. Which is cooler, reading a laundry list of upgrades installed in Parzival’s souped-up DeLorean or watching it in action during a high-speed race sequence? There’s no question, is there. And the soundtrack of Eighties rock songs does stand the test of time. ‘I Hate Myself For Loving You’ was an awesome prelude to the action.

The movie wisely injects more modern pop culture references into the OASIS as well. In the book, Parzival is a devout reader of Art3mis’ egg-hunting blog; in the movie, he gushes over her walkthroughs and Twitch streams. Overwatch characters and the Spartans from Halo fight alongside Lara Croft and the Iron Giant. The fact that these things I deem ‘modern’ will someday feel as quaint as mullets and shoulder pads themselves is not lost on me.

Finally, the camaraderie between Wade and his friends gives the movie a warmer-hearted feel, which the book could often lack. Many pages are spent setting up Book-Wade’s actual life, his poverty, and going to school in the OASIS. He spends most of his time alone, constantly hooked up to the devices which are, ironically, his only form of human contact. The High Five only meet in person at the end. The book could be darker and more mature in many ways, something the film version seeks to remedy. References to VR porn and sex robots are excised for obvious reasons. IOI’s ruthlessness is toned down. Movie-Wade and his gamer friends hanging out and joking around right from the start makes the atmosphere much more lighthearted and approachable.

FIGHT FOR THE OASIS

Ready Player One is an excellent coming-of-age adventure all its own. This is a heady mix of virtual reality action and nostalgia for the real-life origins of video games themselves. It also finds time to remind us that getting lost in fantasies isn’t always a good thing. There has to be a balance. But honestly, the scales are weighted towards one side over the other here.

Definitely check out the book if you’re interested. Give it a read! Compare and contrast! And see if you agree that the film adaptation just works better. It takes the source material and builds something even cooler, more family-friendly, and more flat-out, action-packed fun. This is a movie that gamers young and old alike are bound to enjoy. I wholeheartedly recommend it.