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From the Page to the Screen – Ready Player One

Ready Player One is a 2011 sci-fi gaming book written by Ernest Cline. It has its pitfalls typical of modern books, but is still one of the better popular novels of this decade. It is easy to fall in love with this book, it is incredibly fun to read and its world is populated by memorable characters and some great references.

THE FILM ADAPTATION

The cinematic adaptation was released seven years later in March 2018 and was directed by Steven Spielberg with Tye Sheridan and Olivia Cooke being the main stars. It received pretty good reviews as well as box-office. In my opinion, the movie is quite good and respectable to the source material and it surprised me how solid it is.

PLOT

Obviously this one goes to the book per usual. Yes, the movie definitely is a solid adaptation as the things they changed are sometimes even for the better (the library and the curator are wonderful new plot points added to the movie). However, the book was much more engaging, much less kid friendly in tone and much more focused on games whereas the second half of the movie is too preoccupied with the real world.

WINNER – BOOK

CHARACTERIZATION

This is an even easier choice for me as the movie’s characters are just very thin when compared to the ones in the novel. I did like the villain quite a bit and most of the characters here are admittedly fine, but they aren’t as well developed as in the book. Particularly Wade is much more interesting as he is bland in the film, Halliday is much more fascinating and of course Aech is so frustrating in the movie as her sexual orientation is never mentioned at all.

WINNER – BOOK

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EMOTION

I would certainly say that the movie is quite moving at times, very charming and consistently likable and even endearing. However, it is too child-friendly and thus I did not feel the danger as I did in the novel where one of the heroes actually died. Thus the book takes this one as well.

WINNER – BOOK

THEMES

Whereas the novel is a lot of fun and very interesting to read and highly developed in the above areas, it suffers in terms of thematic richness as it is overall concerned more with storytelling and characterization. And action of course. The movie, on the other hand, gave us a good message and it portrayed both gamers and non-gamers in both a negative and a positive light.

WINNER – FILM

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

The book is weakly written by Ernest Cline as the action is particularly uninvolving and he did not explain nor describe some plot points all that well. Spielberg, on the other hand, is a professional director who really imbued the cinematic adaption with a lot of style. The acting and directing are pretty good, the score is great and the special effects are outstanding. The action is also exhilarating to watch.

WINNER – FILM

BOOK 3: FILM 2

This was a closer race than I thought it would be. The movie is definitely a very solid adaptation of the source material with fantastic action sequences, special effects and solidly adapted plot. But it did suffer in terms of characterization and especially its childish, cheesy tone. It definitely was a pleasant surprise for me, but the novel still remains the better work.