Estimated Reading Time: 11min
It’s time! Book vs Movie, and I finally got around to Ready Player One. I have been sitting on this one for a while, but after watching half the movie, I was forced to halt it out of annoyance. So, let’s talk about it. Before we do though, spoilers! You’ve been warned.
The Ready Player One movie was drastically different than the book. Some of the decisions I understood for logistics purposes, and others… I don’t quite know what the point was. Let’s go over some of the major differences, and then decide which won the battle – the book, or the movie.
The Biggest Difference: The Team Dynamic
The way the “team” found each other was interesting. The book was clear (on many occasions) that the hunt for the keys and the egg was a solo venture. There weren’t many teams or clans that got together for the honour, it was everyone for themselves. In the movie, they were a team from almost the beginning. They somehow already knew Daito and Shoto, and they worked together in the online world (The Oasis) and the real world. This was a large difference from the book. Wade spends almost the entire book by himself in the real world, and sometimes engaging with the other players in the Oasis. There was no kidnapping in the book, and the team did not meet IRL like that, especially not so early on. I will say, this made sense if you wanted to give the real life actors more chance to actually have screen time as themselves, but it was still quite a difference.
The Challenges Were Completely Changed
Timelines are always screwed up in the movies, sometimes because of condensing for a 1.5-2 hour movie, and sometimes because they wanted to focus on something specific from the book that they could delve into for the film medium. This one had things placed in very unusual spots. For example, talking about artefacts very early on, when it wasn’t really relevant yet and the book didn’t bring it up for a long time afterwards.
The challenges themselves were ALL different. Nothing from the original book challenges survived. No car races in the book, no Shining anythings, and the game challenge at the very end, while closer than the others, was still wrong. There was nothing about the challenges in the movie that was bad, they were just pointlessly different. The whole idea of the book is to geek out about video games, but the movie shied away from this for some reason. There were some really cool things in the book that would have been great in a movie, like the characters having to act out specific movies to get to a certain place… they just didn’t decide to include them.
What the Movie Added (and Changed)
Some things were very movie specific, like Wade’s fame, Clark Kent glasses disguise, Artemis’ dad’s backstory, and the fact that Daito and Shoto were actually present IRL. In the book, they’re in another country so this doesn’t really translate (but again, for the sake of human actors being in film as themselves, it makes sense). Super spoiler, but not all the characters actually survive IRL in the book – the movie decided on the Hollywood ending where everyone lives. I also didn’t feel like the movie spent enough time with Wade and Samatha (Artemus) for the ‘love’ storyline to feel real. The book happened over a lot longer period, with the characters spending a lot more time together (granted, most of it was in the OASIS and they didn’t actually meet for real until almost the end of the whole book).
The movie also saw a lot more from Sorrento’s POV. We got a lot of his side of things, actually, in the film. Not a bad thing, and it certainly added drama, though the ending was a little… unnecessary in my opinion. (We’ll come back to the ending in a bit)
The IOI & Indenture Storyline
The IOS indenture situation was insanely different. The point of this in the book was that Wade specifically got a ton of debt so he could get pulled into that ‘prison system’ and hack them from the inside to be able to shut them down and win. For some reason, the movie decided that Artemus should be the one to be pulled into that, and certainly not on purpose to hack anything. Then, when she was inside but free, she decided to stay and work from the inside to help them in the big battle at the end. This was nowhere in the book. Another example of the movie taking elements from the book and twisting it into something pretty different. It was almost like watching shadows of the real story, but pulled into something new.
The old business partner of Halliday (Og) was interesting. In the book, he grabs the people IRL and helps them by giving them a safe place to try and get the final key (and thus, the egg) because he believed in the idea behind the game. The stakes for the kids winning was a lot higher in the book, and thus, his help was a lot more meaningful. In contrast, he’s barely in the movie and really only pops up towards the end (or at least, you see him pop up). Not sure why they made this change.
Let’s Talk About the Ending
Now, let’s talk about the two main elements of the ending: The van chase, and the way that Wade won the whole thing.
The Van: I don’t know why there was a van chase in the movie, instead of them being able to get away from the Sixers who were trying to kill them and just focus on playing the final part of the challenge. I suppose, drama. It felt oddly unnecessary though.
Wade’s Extra Life: Now, in the book there is an artefact that is used which basically wipes out everyone in the vicinity and they’re dead. Like, dead, dead. You have to start again from nothing in the Oasis after that. This was the Sixers final death blow if they thought they couldn’t win, and someone else was going to. Like a nuke. Earlier in the book, Wade finds a pac-man machine. He’s hoping it was relevant to the game, but turns out the only thing he did after winning a perfect game, was get a coin that didn’t make sense. It didn’t seem to do anything and wasn’t related to the game at all. That coin, was an extra life. It saved him from the ‘nuke’ and he was able to get the last key when everyone else had died. I am impressed that the film still kept a version of this, however, the way he was given the coin waaaaaay back in the film, was so random that it wasn’t even something that entered your mind as relevant. At least in the book, you could store away that he had a coin that he didn’t understand from the Pac-man machine. This was just such a throw away moment in the movie that when this was revealed, it actually made me mad, rather than say ‘ooooh I see what you did there’.
The ending with the bad guys IRL, the way the team all lived, how things ended up afterwards, even the interaction with Halliday in the Oasis… it was all different but with no real reason that I could see as to why. Why change it? Who knows. Because you could, I suppose.
Final Verdict: Book vs Movie
So, those were some of the major things different and contrasting from the book to the movie. It was almost like watching something unrelated to each other. I don’t know why some of the changes and choices were made… but they were.
The book actually hooked me in, I was engaged and loved the little geek references that were scattered throughout. I actually felt the danger and the stakes were high and understood. The relationships were earned, and felt better rounded. Honestly, the book was WAY better than the movie. If I wasn’t going to do this post, I wouldn’t have finished the film. For the sake of science, however, I have done it just for you.
Have you watched the movie or read the book (or both)? What did you think? Am I on the money, or totally wrong? Share your thoughts.
See You in the Adventures!
Christy Grace
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