Disappointing, cookie-cutter treatment

Rating: 4/10 (31 August 2018)

The novel kind of tired me out; even though I am of an age where I get *every* pop-culture reference, and played *every* video game, I got bored with the never-ending gushiness of it all. But I read it, and generally enjoyed it.
But the movie uses pretty much all of the dazzle of the book, and leaves behind pretty much all of the "meat" of it. Yes, the oasis is cool; it's a crossover between "second life" and your average PS4 game -- but for all its supposed sophistication, the oasis looks like a game of "World of Warcraft". An old one.
But what happened to the characters? Parzival is your average Spielberg hero -- pretty, but empty. He's pretty empty. But he must, no matter what, stop whatever he's doing to... save the girl. (In the book, it is Z who is captured.) And the heroine can thereafter wander around the evil guys lair without let or hinderance because even though they know *exactly* who she is, and exactly what she looks like, she can go anywhere -- even the head naughty-man's sanctum, and nobody notices. There were people who were not me what were saying (out loud), "oh, c'mon!" at this.
And the others 'gunters'? They are supposed to be the best of the best -- heck, Artemus is supposed to be *the* best. But she knows practically nothing that matters. Another supposedly 'elite' character announces that he can't help with a puzzle (the endlessly dull "Shining" one), because he is scared of the movie. What, he couldn't read the script? But anyway, since this is a Spielberg movie, there must be a 'fish out of water' that the hero explains things to -- to pass on information to the audience. In this case, this involves Z telling Artie things she *must* already know, to be the gunter she supposedly is. In the book, the quest is a matter of figuring out puzzles. In this movie, it's basically Z already knowing all there is to know, slogging his way through it, and dragging the rest of the "high 5" along; apparently because he likes to talk to them.
The movie nevertheless has a real problem with the contests for the keys, which are the driving force of the quest. For the book, the puzzles were tough, and led you to a tough contest to 'win' the key. (Also, it left out entirely that each character had to win the key personally. In the movie, once the key was used, everybody could just rush in. It cheapened things.) In the movie, the contest was an afterthought; once a character arrived at the contest arena, the key was essentially handed to them.
So, no, didn't like it. It did what Hollywood often does to complex stories, it dumbs them down ("simplifies them for the audience"), it uses stereotypes shamelessly ("uses archetypes"), and whenever things slow down, throws in explosions ("action sequence.") The only really surprising thing is that the original author at least put himself in as a script-by. They took a cute niche story and turned it into "Indiana Jones and the Temple of 80's Videogames", and he, apparently, helped. I'm sure the money was... excellent. The movie was... not.