Richard Aspden

A paradox in slow motion

Ready Player One movie review

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Hot on the heels of my Ready Player One novel review, it’s time for my Ready Player One movie review!

tl;dr

Enjoyable film. Quite different to the original novel, but still similar enough to be the same story.

The story

The Ready Player One movie follows the same story as the novel: we follow Wade Watts and his hunt to find James Halliday’s Easter Egg in a massive online simulation called OASIS, fighting against other hunters and an organisation that would stop at nothing to get the egg first. That being said, a large amount of the hunt is changed:

  • Fewer challenges, most of the ones that remain are different.
  • Shortened timescale (the movie happens over a shorter period of time than the book)
  • Characters and events are different.
  • etc

Now, this isn’t really all too bad. A lot of it can probably be chalked up to the fact that movies and books are fundamentally different medium, and you can’t always relay all the information in a novel or book on the big screen without it being overwhelming. Plus, with Ready Player One, the sheer amount of licensing needing to be done to incorporate various other characters, locations, vehicles, etc into the film must’ve been a nightmare.

The references

So one of the big elements of the film is the references and appearances of various 80s media. While I’m not going into detail of the whos, whats and wheres of all of them, there are several places online where you can see a list of the references, eg the Ready Player One wiki, and the relevant page on TVTropes. Let me know if there’s any you missed! I’m sure that if I rewatched the film I’d spot thing’s I’d missed in tehe original watch.

Ready Player One movie review

The movie really is a joy to watch. While I enjoyed the book, I really enjoyed watching the film. The condensing of the story into a 2 hour film worked. The visuals of the film are just amazing, though the scene of Parzival’s avatar in the realisticly done Halliday’s room near the end was a little jarring. Plus, seeing so many characters and elements from other franchises was amazing, and was kinda Where’s Wally in trying to spot everyone. Overall, definitely worth seeing, and I’m thankful that a local library had a copy for me to check out.