Film: Ready Player One

I wrote about my thoughts of the book here, making a bold claim that by virtue of its medium a movie would fix all the issues I had with the novel. I actually happened to be right for once - most of the flaws had been fixed as visuals trumped expectations of depth. What I was implicitly wrong about however was that the movie would be a better experience overall - as while it did fix the issues with the source material it brought just as many of its own to the table. The result is a film that will not be the classic it deserved to be, but more of a cash in for the millennials.

Kudos to the makers for not relying on the fanservice too much, but that which was there wasn't as relevant to the plot as it had been in the book. It appeared that it had been included only for the reference hunters ("runters"?) amongst us, and not to further the story. As a result, the film lost most of excellent "referential depth" which made the book so enjoyable. The moralising was dumbed down (and as a result felt a little patronising) while no space was left for any of the characters to develop much - I didn't really care for much of them.

There were also pacing issues, with none of the challenges seeming that challenging, and the whole thing kind of ends a little too quickly.

Like the book, Ready Player one is probably not a movie I'm going to watch more than I need to - it'll probably get a rewatch on home release but that's about it. It's pretty disappointing to consider what a missed opportunity it turned out to be.