Ready Player One- Be Reel Blog

Starting March 29th, 2018, Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, a book written in 2011 and read by mostly boring nerds and Mr, Rivers' Classes, hit theaters as a major film. Directed by Steven Spielberg (Ironic, due to his own works being prominent references in the book), the movie was set to do extremely well and hopefully stay true to the beloved novel. Typically, when going into films like this, based on novels that I thoroughly enjoyed,  I held low expectations. Far too many films based on books or video games (See any assassins creed movie or attempt at tomb raider) have been absolute flops, and therefore any adaptation is always criticized for inaccuracies to the source material. As a film, this did not flop. While the plot was clearly changed, with none of the gates being remotely related to the book, or the infiltration of IOI being Artemis versus Wade, the changes were mostly for visual spectacle and in no way changed the quality of the plot. The consequences were still the same, and really were just to compensate for the 2.5 hour condensed time of a film. There were minor changes that did cause some relationships, such as Artemis and Wade's relationship, to not seem as natural. The romantic side of their relationship went from 0 to 100 within 10 minutes in the film, but were late blooming in the book. These changes, while slightly annoying, were completely necessary to make the book into a film.

On a personal note, I found the film to be dazzling. The visual spectacle and the sheer complexity of the CGI made nearly every scene colorful and entertaining to watch. Having read the book, the character development and plot were in my background, as I knew where the plot was going, so I was able to appreciate more superficial things, whilst still appreciating a plot. overall, this movie gets a god-good, with quality being middle high, and enjoyment being at the top.