Disappointed

Rating: 4/10 (3 April 2018)

This is a difficult review for me to write.
First and foremost I am a huge Steven Spielberg fan. I firmly believe he is one of the finest film makers the world has ever seen. Right up there with Kubrick, Hitchcock, Lean, Kurosawa, Lynch and the other great pioneers of cinema.
E.T. was the first film I ever saw in a Cinema, and as a 6 year old it left a huge impression on me. I have followed Spielberg's career and films ever since, I have read many books about him, watched interviews, documentaries, and all the extras on all his films. I almost feel like I know him personally. He is to me, like Halliday is to Wade Watts, someone to be looked at in reverence and awe. His films shaped so much of my childhood, and I will always be grateful for his contributions to popular culture. So many of the cultural touchstones we enjoy and take for granted nowadays would probably not exist without him.
So, with a heavy heart, we come to Ready Player One.
I was extremely excited to learn that Spielberg was starting production on a film centred around a Virtual Reality universe that made huge references to 80's popular culture. When I first heard about it, I decided to pick up a copy of the book (which I had never heard of). Having read the book I enjoyed it, but did not think it was amazing, just quite good. The film, however, I felt had the potential to be something spectacular. I thought the collaboration of Spielberg and Cline would take the book, and with a little re-writing, a tweak here and there, bring it to the big screen in awesome fashion.
I was wrong.
Perhaps it was the fact that he was a little "starstruck" by working with Spielberg, but I cannot believe how much Ernest Cline has allowed his material to be torn to shreds and thrown in the trash can. Worse, actually, that he co-wrote the script, so he must have excised a fair chunk of it himself. I would genuinely say that a large proportion of the book is not present in the film, the setting, characters, and a handful of references and scenes are all you get. I would say 75% of the book is gone. I understand fully that books need to be changed and adapted to be made into a film, but something went massively wrong with Ready Player One.
I simply don't understand how the team behind this production (including Cline himself) could consciously allow this hatchet-job to happen. I am by no means an Ernest Cline fan-boy, but there were so many scenes in the book that would have translated brilliantly into the film (and not even ones that required licensing deals) and these great scenes were discarded. I won't spoil it by describing what the scenes were, but some of them would have given us more sympathy with Wade, instead they were glossed over and we don't really see his plight of having almost no money, no prospects, and living pretty much hand-to-mouth in a dystopian society. He just comes across as a surly teenager, which in the book, he is not. In the book he is a likeable guy who is struggling along in a life that has dealt him a poor hand.
Two of the challenges for the keys were changed completely, and this is to the detriment of the film. The original challenges should have been kept (or kept and changed slightly if licensing was an issue) and the ones created in the film (whilst, admittedly, being spectacular to watch) should have been side-line challenges that Wade takes part in and not the key challenges themselves. Many of the 80's music and videogame references are simply not there, perhaps due to aforementioned licensing issues? But for a film that sold itself on a retro 80's pop-culture vibe, the 80's nostalgia feeling I had during it was surprisingly low, I think that was mainly down to the music and there not being enough of it or having the wrong music playing in the wrong scenes. For example, Van Halen's "Jump" is totally wasted in a scene where Wade is just making his way around the Stacks. The music was put to far better use in the trailers (which, incidentally, were better than the film itself).
Much of who does what, and how things pan out in the story has also been changed around drastically, basically to give the actors something (or a bit more) to do. Art3mis is brought into the real-life part of the story far too early in an attempt to give the story some emotional grounding, unfortunately their relationship in the Oasis actually works better and is more believable. The villain Sorrento remains pretty much as he does in the book, but at the end of the film appears to have some kind of a change of heart that made me feel nauseous.
Even after my rant, there is some good stuff to be had here. The visuals are absolutely incredible, there are some references which catch you by surprise and are very welcome and there are some genuinely thrilling and funny scenes. In particular, the back-story of James Halliday and Ogden Morrow is played out well (even though you don't see very much of them).
So, all in all RP1 for me was a disappointment. After following the project from the beginning, watching the trailers almost every day since they released my excitement for this project had reached fever-pitch. Sitting in the cinema waiting for the film to start my hands were trembling slightly and my mouth was dry, I could actually feel my elevated heart rate, that is how much I wanted RP1 to blow me away...It failed.
I have to close by doing something I don't want to have to do. I have to lay the blame for my utter disappointment at the feet of my hero. I am so sorry to say this, but I fear he may have lost the magic that made him and his films so special. Spielberg was by far the most influential person on this project, "The Captain" as it were. I feel that this time "The Captain" steered the ship so far off course that no-one knew where it was going until it was too late. I don't understand how something with so much potential could have gone so wrong in the hands of a true genius.
The last 15 minutes of the film are a complete waste of time, some of it is actually laughable. I almost get the feeling that the end of the screenplay was not proof-read, and was just filmed mindlessly with no actual real thought behind the outcome.
Ultimately, if you can't guess what happens, Wade wins. Then he decides to perform a huge rug-pull on all the people who risked their avatars in the battle to help him win. He closes the Oasis on Tuesdays and Thursdays, apparently to make people spend more time together in the real world. So after all his speech about "I love the Oasis so much, are you willing to fight to help save it?" he shuts it down for 48 hours a week...Cheers buddy! As a gamer he should know better than anyone how angry gamers get when the servers go offline for ONE hour!
What a shallow and soul-devoid hero Wade is, did he spare any thought for the people who earn their living from the Oasis? who receive their education in the Oasis? the lonely people (which Wade once was) who have no family or friends and use the Oasis as a means of social interaction? apparently not...
You see, Wade is now ok after his big win, he has a nice girlfriend, a nice fancy loft apartment and a fat wedge of cash in the bank. Who cares what closing the Oasis a couple of days a week will do to the people who are left in the slums?
In the end, Wade shows early signs of becoming the very thing he was fighting against in the first place...
Shame really...