A good adaptation, but not a great one. More TV show material than film material

Rating: 7/10 (28 September 2018)

I wanted to take time to read the novel Ready Player One before I reviewed the film, always helps. Needless to say, while the film is more light hearted and action packed, the novel is more believable, and just has a more realistic tone. I enjoy the fact that Spielberg loved the book enough to direct a film about it, but this probably wasn't the right film for him to direct.
The film centred on Wade Watts, who along the millions of others around the world, has spent over 5 years partaking in a competition made by James Halliday, creator of the OASIS, the worlds greatest online virtual reality, where you can be anything, be anyone, and go anywhere. Whoever wins the contest wins untold billions of dollars and complete control of the Oasis, causing a handful of egg hunters, including Wade, to face off against IOI, an organisation intending to win the contest and rule the world.
I did watch the film first, and I loved it enough to watch it twice in cinemas. The first difference with the film and the book is how someone gets through each challenge. The book gives the competition three keys to collect, and three gates to get through for each key. The film only has three keys, and that's probably because of time restraints. The book oozes pop culture, but another thing to note is that Halliday centred the challenges to the keys and the gates around his own personal pop culture obsessions.
I really like the world building. Obviously I saw the film first so envisioning the stacks where Wade in real life lives where visualised perfectly. The book definitely delves into the backstory then Wade does at the beginning. Onto the characters, we have the main character Wade Watts portrayed by Ty Sheridan. I like him as Wade Watts. One thing I liked about Wade in the film is probably only because the challenges in the book were changed. Book Wade is definitely a Gary Stu, Even though book Wade had 5 years to research a LOT of pop culture, every challenge he faces he conveniently already knows how to beat: an example would be (spoiler for the book) after getting the first key, he reaches the first gate, and he has to reenact the entire film WarGames as Matthew Broderick's character, line for line.
Other than him I enjoyed Olivia Cooke as Art3mis, Ben Mendelsohn as Nolan Sorrento and Mark Rylance as James Halliday. As another YouTuber pointed out, it's a little underwhelming how Art3mis is changed in the film into becoming a damsel in distress. Even as a guy it's become a tired trope. She's nothing like that in the books. And as for Simon Pegg as Hallidays friend and business partner Ogdon Morrow, he didn't strike me as that great in the film and after reading the book he became less believable, especially the small plot twist at the end.
Another spoiler I wanna add is the true identity of the character Aech, who's actually a young woman called Hellen, played by Lena Waithe. I like Waithe in the role; she's very charismatic, but as for her avatar Aech, she's portrayed as an 8 foot cyborg orc in the film, while in the book her avatar appeared as a straight white guy, to hide the fact of him in real life being all the opposites. And in the books Sho was also Japanese, like Daito. I think at the end when Sorrento kills Daito's avatar using Mechagodzilla, I think that's meant to be a reference to Daito in the books actually being tracked down in real life and kills by IOI members. Obviously, this movie was PG so they couldn't do that, not in a Spielberg film.
Overall, both the book and the film have they're person strengths and their strengths overall each other. I really think the next Ready Player One adaptation should be a TV series, and there would be plenty of material to work off of. If there's a remake of this film, or at least a sequel to this, I'm calling for Edgar Wright to direct it. This would be just his kind of film.