Okay, so I’ve recently finished reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and I have to say frankly, I’m surprised at the sheer amount of pop-culture research done for this book. I do, however, think that the movie is better than the book from a narrative standpoint.
For those who don’t know, Ready Player One is basically a story about Parzival and his friends searching for an Easter Egg in the world’s largest open world Minecraftesque video game called OASIS, (I should say the world’s largest realistic VR simulation) which allows them to inherit its creator’s wealth of half a trillion dollars and total control of the entire OASIS.
However, everyone else in the world is looking for it as well, including the evil corporation that wants to buy off the simulation and initiate microtransactions, petty monthly payments, additional downloadable content, ad space and other typical deadly sins committed by real-life bloodthirsty gaming companies such as EA and Activision. The stakes are high in this game because the money earned in the game can be used in the real world, hence you don’t want to die or you’ll lose everything.
The movie does a marvelous job of cramming as many easter eggs as possible from the get-go, which is exactly what the book did, except the book has tons more. After a point, I stopped googling them and went with the flow because it’s the whole 70s’ and 80s’ worth of pop culture crammed into it; movies, books, video games, songs, everything you can think of that started in that era.
However, I think the book bogs down in the middle because of the relationship between its lead characters, Parzival and Art3mis. I personally thought that was the only major flaw in the book. The movie, however, focuses more on the egg hunt because frankly, that’s how it should be. Parzival spends his entire life finding the egg, and now he gives it up because he’s smitten with an avatar (a videogame character) he doesn’t even know in real life? The movie ignores the tedious relationship quarrels between them, without sacrificing its emotions, which is probably one of the best decisions director Steven Spielberg has made.
Both the book and the movie fail to explain the struggle outside OASIS though. We’re just given a brief explanation that there’s an energy crisis, global warming and humanity’s gone to the dogs, corrupt government and all that typical dystopian young-adult gobbledygook in one brief plot exposition in the beginning. I didn’t dig it. I also couldn’t dig the fact that the money you win by shooting a few computer-generated characters can be used in real life to buy real things. That way, n00bs die of poverty and pros become multi-billionaires. You really can’t tell them to “git gud” if they’ve no money for food or rent when the internet is full of online trolls and idiots who can frag you just because you looked at them funny.
Ready Player One is a marvelous piece of entertainment. If you’d go for either the movie or the book, you won’t be disappointed. If you’re a gamer or are familiar with the video game community, I guarantee that you will thoroughly enjoy it. Although the structure remains the same, some key pieces are different between them. Personally, I felt that the changes in the movie are suited better for the movie and would probably have been bad for the book and vice versa. But, pacing-wise, I definitely think the movie is better.
