Ready Player One: book and movie review

Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel by Ernest Cline which became a feature film in 2018 directed by Steven Spielberg. I watched the movie first which is unusual for me because I like to read the books first before seeing the films. After watching it, I read the book and re-watched the movie. I came to an odd and rare conclusion: the book and movie were both entertaining on their own. However, together I see the movie as better than the book which is something I rarely say. Both have their merits with the story and both can appeal to the reader and the expert and the novice gamers.

The book opens with the narrator, later revealed to be Wade Watts, introducing the audience to the great and powerful, James Halliday, the creator of OASIS the massive multiplayer online virtual world. Halliday has died, leaving behind no family, so he created a game so that a single player can inherit his estate. The Hunt for the Easter Egg, the ultimate prize, begins. Wade lives in a dystopian world in 2044 where most people spent their day in the OASIS, some were hunting for the egg and others were simply living in a virtual reality because it was better than the real world. Wade soon discovers the first clue in The Hunt and soon it becomes a race against time as he is up against the evil Nolan Sorrento and the Innovative Online Industries (IOI) who want to control the OASIS themselves.

The movie opens in Columbus, Ohio 2045 and it’s been 5 years since Halliday has died and The Hunt began. Eighteen-year-old, Wade Watts (played by Tye Sheridan) lives in “The Stacks” with his aunt and her boyfriend of the day. It is a world where “people stopped trying to fix problems and just tried to outlive them.” He has virtual friends, Aech, Art3mis, Daito and Sho, and together they team up to figure out the clues which leads them to the next challenge. However, he must be careful. Can he really trust them? No one is really who they seem in the OASIS and his “friends” could be members of the dreaded Sixers, IOI employees whose sole purpose is to figure out the challenges and find the egg. Their leader, Nolan Sorrento (played by Ben Mendelsohn) tries his own tactics in the real world to win the game.

As I mentioned in the introduction this is an odd and rare instance where the book and movie cannot be compared. Each were enjoyable on their own and there is so much in the book that cannot translate to the big screen. So much had to cut or changed in order to keep the audience engaged. For example, in the book, Wade plays the game, Joust, in the first challenge and unless you are the ultimate gamer (which I am not), you cannot imagine what the game looks like as he plays it. In the movie, the first challenge is changed to a racing game which many people are familiar with. Even though the ending is a bit predictable but still enjoyable. I also enjoyed that the moral of the book remained the same in the movie: “As terrifying as reality is, it’s the only place you can find happiness because reality is real.”

In conclusion, both the book and movie were filled with 80s pop culture references from television, movies, music, books and, of course, video games. Many of the characters are the same with their bios being relatively unchanged from book to movie. I enjoyed each on their own. However, if I had to choose, I would watch the movie again over reading the book. The book was weighed down with a lot of narrative which, while important to the story, seemed to drag on and on. I think the background information could have been shorter while still being effective. The book is a great read for the gamer bookworms out there and the movie is a fun, entertaining adventure story for the novice gamers. I highly recommend both.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

is available in paperback and eBook

at all major booksellers

Ready Player One (2018)

is available on DVD, Blu-Ray and digital download

at all major retailers