Big shock - I'm a nerd. I grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons, video games, and writing goofy things in large spiral notebooks. As a child of the 80s, I enjoyed Space Invaders, the Rubik's Cube, and Family Ties. So when I first heard about Ready Player One, I was psyched. I hadn't gotten to read the book as of yet, but I knew I could see the movie...just as soon as it came on TV(my movie theater experience is ;limited mostly to cartoons for now). I watched it and enjoyed the movie pretty well, and I posted such on Facebook. That's when folks said that I just had to read the book...and that I should be grateful I watched the movie first.
Boy were they right.
(SPOILERS AHEAD - STOP NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM)
Let's start with the movie. Overall, a good flick, but I found a few holes that needed to be addressed, starting with all of the OASIS characters being located in the same city. The OASIS was online and could be accessed from virtually anywhere, so having main characters Parzival, Artemis, Aech, Sho, and Daito in the same city seemed...awfully convenient. I think a big part of the adventure could have been bringing them together(a plot point I found out would be used in the novel). I also wonder if anyone ever ate or slept in this world since they spent all of their time in the OASIS and didn't ever seem to leave.
The pop culture references were decent, but I saw a lot of stuff from the 90s(I was promised this was an 80s thing, not a 90s thing). The Iron Giant, Spawn, and Halo were never an 80s thing. I started wondering if I'd been lied to, or if the director, Steven Spielberg, wanted to change things up to get a younger audience involved(thus continuing the trend of Generation X being forgotten by everyone else). Playing the video games at the end to win the final challenge was great, and I confess that even a dork like me never knew about the easter egg in Adventure(I always played to win, not just walk around poking at stuff). However, the film's main villain, Nolen Sorrento, and his henchmen seemed to have no problem running around willy-nilly and shooting at people or blowing them up in real life. The police only showed up at the end, so I wonder whether law and order drew them, or if it was that there was suddenly a new richest man in the world they could try to get money from.
Finally, having one of the creators of the OASIS just standing around to dole out information and other goodies, like extra lives, seemed like an awful waste of time. Did Ogden Morrow just wait in the historical records section for people to randomly show up and ask him stuff? Might've made sense if there were thousands of players still using the archives, but by the time Parzival got the information he needed, no one was going into the archives any more. Morrow was also an incredibly wealthy man, so I think he might've had better things to do than hope that someone might show up and might need him one day.
All in all, a good movie, and the plot points I'm hitting are really nit-picky. Now...about the book...
All I can say is that I'm very glad I didn't read the novel prior to watching the movie, for I'd have come out pissed. The movie incorporated maybe 20% of the book. Maybe. The background was the same, but every challenge and nearly every character was different. As in the movie, you had to get three keys, but each key in the book unlocked a challenge to be completed, and the challenge wasn't near the place you got the key(something the movie ignored). Further, getting the key required you to play a series of video games, something not even alluded to in the movie until the final key. The ways/places you got the key were also totally different(in the movie, you got the first key by winning an unwinnable race; in the book, you got the first key by exploring a D&D module called The Tomb of Horrors.)
The characters were also dispersed across the world(as they should've been), but one of the main ones, Daito, is killed in the "real world," which would've totally changed the dynamic of the game in the movie. Parzival doesn't live in the same city(which is really important in the movie vice the book), and Ogden Morrow, the co-creator of the OASIS, isn't hanging around the archives to give away free lives(to get an extra life, you had play a perfect game of Pacman). Yes, maybe playing video games wouldn't have translated as well to the big screen, but they could've tried keeping it a lot more like the book if they wanted a better movie. It reminded me a great deal of how World War Z had only the title in common with the novel. Okay, so it wasn't quite that bad, but it wasn't much like the novel either.
My only gripe was that the author's politics kept creeping in to the book. Okay, okay, I get it - the writer thinks we're destroying the environment and big corporations are taking over the planet, but did we have to get preached at? Some of that was necessary for the setting, but throwing in the atheism and cartoonish big company greed part was just a bit over the top. I enjoyed the story, and most of this was in the background, but it came out often enough in the narrative to make me cringe.
Both of these - movie and book, were great, and I haven't enjoyed reading a fun novel like that in a long time, but they were definitely not related as much as they should've been. Watch the movie first, if you can, or accept that the novel and movie have about as much in common as John McEnroe and Serena Williams(both play tennis and were champions, but that's about it). It may not sound like it since I give some critiques, but I recommend these works to all geeks(and anyone else who just likes adventure).
Boy were they right.
(SPOILERS AHEAD - STOP NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THEM)
Let's start with the movie. Overall, a good flick, but I found a few holes that needed to be addressed, starting with all of the OASIS characters being located in the same city. The OASIS was online and could be accessed from virtually anywhere, so having main characters Parzival, Artemis, Aech, Sho, and Daito in the same city seemed...awfully convenient. I think a big part of the adventure could have been bringing them together(a plot point I found out would be used in the novel). I also wonder if anyone ever ate or slept in this world since they spent all of their time in the OASIS and didn't ever seem to leave.
The pop culture references were decent, but I saw a lot of stuff from the 90s(I was promised this was an 80s thing, not a 90s thing). The Iron Giant, Spawn, and Halo were never an 80s thing. I started wondering if I'd been lied to, or if the director, Steven Spielberg, wanted to change things up to get a younger audience involved(thus continuing the trend of Generation X being forgotten by everyone else). Playing the video games at the end to win the final challenge was great, and I confess that even a dork like me never knew about the easter egg in Adventure(I always played to win, not just walk around poking at stuff). However, the film's main villain, Nolen Sorrento, and his henchmen seemed to have no problem running around willy-nilly and shooting at people or blowing them up in real life. The police only showed up at the end, so I wonder whether law and order drew them, or if it was that there was suddenly a new richest man in the world they could try to get money from.
Finally, having one of the creators of the OASIS just standing around to dole out information and other goodies, like extra lives, seemed like an awful waste of time. Did Ogden Morrow just wait in the historical records section for people to randomly show up and ask him stuff? Might've made sense if there were thousands of players still using the archives, but by the time Parzival got the information he needed, no one was going into the archives any more. Morrow was also an incredibly wealthy man, so I think he might've had better things to do than hope that someone might show up and might need him one day.
All in all, a good movie, and the plot points I'm hitting are really nit-picky. Now...about the book...
All I can say is that I'm very glad I didn't read the novel prior to watching the movie, for I'd have come out pissed. The movie incorporated maybe 20% of the book. Maybe. The background was the same, but every challenge and nearly every character was different. As in the movie, you had to get three keys, but each key in the book unlocked a challenge to be completed, and the challenge wasn't near the place you got the key(something the movie ignored). Further, getting the key required you to play a series of video games, something not even alluded to in the movie until the final key. The ways/places you got the key were also totally different(in the movie, you got the first key by winning an unwinnable race; in the book, you got the first key by exploring a D&D module called The Tomb of Horrors.)
The characters were also dispersed across the world(as they should've been), but one of the main ones, Daito, is killed in the "real world," which would've totally changed the dynamic of the game in the movie. Parzival doesn't live in the same city(which is really important in the movie vice the book), and Ogden Morrow, the co-creator of the OASIS, isn't hanging around the archives to give away free lives(to get an extra life, you had play a perfect game of Pacman). Yes, maybe playing video games wouldn't have translated as well to the big screen, but they could've tried keeping it a lot more like the book if they wanted a better movie. It reminded me a great deal of how World War Z had only the title in common with the novel. Okay, so it wasn't quite that bad, but it wasn't much like the novel either.
My only gripe was that the author's politics kept creeping in to the book. Okay, okay, I get it - the writer thinks we're destroying the environment and big corporations are taking over the planet, but did we have to get preached at? Some of that was necessary for the setting, but throwing in the atheism and cartoonish big company greed part was just a bit over the top. I enjoyed the story, and most of this was in the background, but it came out often enough in the narrative to make me cringe.
Both of these - movie and book, were great, and I haven't enjoyed reading a fun novel like that in a long time, but they were definitely not related as much as they should've been. Watch the movie first, if you can, or accept that the novel and movie have about as much in common as John McEnroe and Serena Williams(both play tennis and were champions, but that's about it). It may not sound like it since I give some critiques, but I recommend these works to all geeks(and anyone else who just likes adventure).
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