Ready Player One
Originally written in April 2018
I never read the book. Living in Italy, I never heard about Ernest Cline and his books. When the trailer of the movie came out, I just thought: "Oh, boy! Here's another movie about Virtual Reality games! And it's full of '80s nostalgia as well! The soundtrack doesn't even sound original: the first notes are the most famous from Back to the Future!". Only a couple of weeks of watching this trailer, the DeLorean sold me and I decided to see it. I LOVE IT! It's not a perfect movie, it's full of flaws, but it's really funny and, at some points, really clever! Practically the next day, I decided to read the e-book. While I was buying it, I discovered that the movie was released on Ernest Cline's birthday, he co-wrote the screenplay and started to write the sequel of the book, "Ready Player Two", hoping to make the sequel of the movie as well (with Steven Spielberg again) and, maybe, a trilogy with "Ready Player Three". I started to read the book, knowing that the readers who like it were disappointed by the movie. At first, it was slow, but I was hooked up nonetheless and I finished it in 2 days: it's incredibly different from the movie, but I LIKE IT A LOT! For someone critical and picky as me, who wrote a post about the major differences of the Harry Potter books and movies, I calmly read and enjoyed the book thinking these:
A friend of mine on Facebook wrote that the books and movies of the same story take place in Parallel Universes;
J. K. Rowling approved everything in the Harry Potter Movies Universe;
Ernest Cline worked on the movie with the same passion (or more) and approved it so much that he wants the sequel;
A book has, usually, one author and it can be as long as much as he/she wants, while a movie has a lot, A LOT of people working for making it and it has a restricted time limit.
Nonetheless, I wanted to do a comparison between the 2 "Universes" and I got ideas for the sequels. SPOILER ALERT:
COPPER KEY
Book (2011) Parzival discovers the location of the key at the end of a Dungeon & Dragons map recreation on Planet Ludus, full of hundreds or thousands copies of the same school. The enemy to defeat can have multiple copies of himself at the same time!
Movie (2018) Parzival participates in a race discovered by others and finds the solution in a video from the Museum of Halliday’s Memories, cured by The Curator (Ogden Morrow).
ART3MIS
Book (2011) Met during the first trial. She’s a famous blogger.
Movie (2018) Met during the first trial. She’s a famous Twitch streamer (really!? Not a YouTuber?).
COPPER DOOR
Book (2011) It can be found in any of the 256 copies of Halliday’s House on Planet Middletown (by the way, I would totally immerse myself in sagas of SincroMovies!).
Movie (2018) It’s not in the movie.
EXTRA LIFE COIN
Book (2011) Parzival finds the 257th copy of a place that exists 256 times (an EXTRA copy), and he plays for hours the Perfect Game of PacMan.
Movie (2018) The Curator loses a bet and he just gives it to Parzival.
JADE KEY
Book (2011) Parzival has to find a Cap’n Crunch’s Whistle and 19 treasures in any of the 512 copies of the Zork’s game’s house on Planet Frobozz. Are you beginning to see a pattern here?
Movie (2018) Parzival and friends do The Shining Trial in the Museum and dance with Kira.
JADE DOOR
Book (2011) It can be found in any of the thousands of copies in the entire OASIS (everyone can create its own copy) of the Tyrell Building (from Blade Runner).
Movie (2018) It’s not in the movie.
CRYSTAL KEY
Book (2011) Parzival has to find the guitar of the band Rush in any of the 1024 copies of the Temple from the song 2112 on Planet Syrinx.
Movie (2018) Parzival finds the Easter Egg of the game Adventure in an Atari 2600 in a random castle of Planet Doom.
CRYSTAL DOOR
Book (2011) It can be found on Castle Anorak (Halliday’s Avatar) on Planet Chthonia, accessible only by groups of 3 Avatars who can try the 3 trials inside at the same time. The game Adventure is THE COPPER DOOR “ACCESS” AND THE THIRD TRIAL OF THE CRYSTAL DOOR.
Movie (2018) It contains a little test to earn the Egg.
OGDEN MORROW’S AVATAR AND HELP
Book (2011) He’s a Super Avatar known as the Great and Powerful Og. He gives a safe place to stay and play to Wade and friends.
Movie (2018) He’s The Curator. He gives an extra life and he lets people watch Halliday’s Memories.
AECH
Book (2011) Met during the first 5 years of the Hunt. She/He has a private and prestigious “basement”.
Movie (2018) Met during the first 5 years of the Hunt. She/He has a public and famous repair shop.
DAITO
Book (2011) He lives and dies in Japan.
Movie (2018) He lives in the USA and wins a fifth of the prize.
SHO
Book (2011) He’s 13/14 years old, lives in Japan and his Avatar’s name is SHOTO, because of the Japanese sword Daisho (DAI SHO).
Movie (2018) He’s 11 years old, lives in the USA and his Avatar’s name resembles his real last name.
WADE
Book (2011) He lives in Oklahoma City with his aunt, her boyfriend and other families. He then goes to an apartment alone in Columbus, Ohio.
Movie (2018) He lives in Columbus, Ohio, with only his aunt and her boyfriend.
TAKING THE SHIELD DOWN
Book (2011) Wade gets arrested for the fake debt of his fake identity, uses his hacker skills from inside and a delivery robot does the rest.
Movie (2018) IOI arrests Samantha (Art3mis) for her father’s debt and she sneakily becomes a Sixer.
I-R0K
Book (2011) He’s a failed gunter who reveals that Parzival and Aech go to school on Planet Ludus.
Movie (2018) He’s an IOI mercenary and activates the shield.
DISCO
Book (2011) Parzival and Art3mis get invited by Og for his birthday.
Movie (2018) Parzival and Art3mis go freely to the disco, thinking that they’ll find the Jade Key.
GIANT ROBOTS
Book (2011) The giant robots are Artifact prizes for completing the Jade Door and the Japanese robot for Daito is a special Japanese Artifact got from a mission of a week completed by Daito, Shoto and Parzival.
Movie (2018) Aech builds the Iron Giant and Daito can become Gundam thanks to Planet Doom’s Artifact.
TIME
Book (2011) Everything happens in 6 months.
Movie (2018) Everything happens in 2 or 3 days.
IDEAS
The book was published in 2010-2011. The movie was released in 2018. In the meantime, new things and games that got mentioned in the movie came out. Like the mention to Twitch. Twitch and YouTube became really popular for Let's Players. There should be a mention to YouTube Let's Players in Ready Player Two, like Markiplier, JackSepticEye and PewDiePie. With my dream of becoming an actor, I would like to appear as a pirate captain (Captain BobHARRp, a supporting character), with Perry, the Pyrite Pirate Parrot of Petaluma from Tales of Monkey Island. There could be point-and-click adventure games from the '90s, like Monkey Island and Broken Sword, even just some references or puzzles.
In both versions, there is a pixelated planet: at the beginning of the movie, it's Planet Minecraft; in the book, the extra life coin is on Planet Archaide (Arcade). Archaide is full of restaurants and pizzerias full of Arcade games. One of those pizzerias should be Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria from Five Nights at Freddy's (the first 2 games take place in the '80s-early'90s). A part of the story could be in there, with Arcade indicating high scores from Markiplier (the King of Five Nights at Freddy's) and MatPat (the Game and Film Theorist). Maybe that part can be co-wrote with Scott Cawthon, the developer of the game.
There's no mention to "Super Avatars" in the movie, and, while I was reading the book, I thought:<<Man, I bet that some Avatars could cheat and become Ghost Avatars: invincible, invulnerable, go wherever they want!>>. Then the Super Avatars of Og and Anorak came into play. But still, Og and Halliday could have rewarded some Avatars, like a certain pirate captain. It could have been an Artifact from a pirate treasure. Maybe a cursed Artifact!
I'm also a fan of Time Travel, so, with the DeLorean, there could be some of that? Maybe a sector with 3 different times and modifiable like the Time Traveler section of The Cave, or a part of Fire (games I played on YouTube).
I wish I got more ideas, but Ready Player One seems complete, so the sequel should be full of surprises, but I would like to see glitches, games from the '90s, treasure hunts, more Simon Pegg and, hopefully, participate in the movie!
Originally written on September 9th, 2021
I’ve just read Ready Player Two, the sequel of the book version. It came out 10 months ago already! Trying to not make many spoilers, this time, this section of the blog post will be divided in:
Ideas I gave realized in the sequel;
Predictions for the movie version.
MY IDEAS COINCIDENTALLY REALIZED IN THE SEQUEL
Probably Ernest Cline didn’t read my blog, but it’s still pretty cool to see some of my plot points brought to life in the sequel. Specifically:
Using the scoreboard of an Arcade cabinet in a Pizzeria from the ‘80s to hide an Easter Egg;
The use of Super Avatars and the creation of “Ghost Avatars” using an Artifact obtained in a treasure hunt;
The attempt to time travel with the DeLorean, the mention of planets where you can time travel and the solution of a puzzle through time travel;
Surprises, glitches, treasure hunts and “more Simon Pegg” were delivered.
PREDICTIONS FOR THE MOVIE VERSION
Narration to explain what happened in the first movie, and then fast exposition to move from the discovery of the ONI to the second Halliday’s scavenger hunt;
Kiki will be married to Daito, still alive in the movie, instead of Shoto, still too young in the movie;
Wade & Samantha will be separated and will be back together at the end, like in the book. The prediction here is that many viewers will complain about this thinking it’s one of the usual clichés of movie sequels (like Ghostbusters 2, 1989), without probably knowing it’s actually from the book;
To give enough screen time to some particular plot points, the actual scavenger hunt of the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul will be reduced. I can’t tell if some Shards will be skipped with a montage or some exposition (the Three Gates of the first book were skipped entirely), but half of the puzzles, if not all (like the first movie), will be completely changed and modified;
If some puzzles were to remain the same, the movie production would need the license for too many movies and too many songs, and there would be tons of cameos from CGI uncannily deaged actors;
More pop cultural references to movies and video games from the end of the 2010s and beginning of 2020s instead of just ‘80s and early ‘90s. More pop cultural references to the director Steven Spielberg and, maybe, to Stanley Kubrick;
Hopefully, cameos from actual Twitch streamers and, maybe, from YouTubers, like MatPat, Markiplier, PewDiePie, JackSepticEye (he was in Free Guy), me. They could be presented as some sort of “archive footage” in a montage, be random voice roles for characters or NPCs, or players with Avatars being their “younger selves”;
Hopefully, a reference to Five Nights at Freddy’s, the 2014-ongoing franchise set in the ‘80s-’90s;
I’m kinda drawing a blank for Ogden Morrow and the new character of L0hengrin. I feel like Ogden could/will be cut down to a Deus Ex Machina at the end of the movie, and L0hengrin and the L0w Five could/will be cut from the movie entirely.
Expect an update to this post when the second movie comes out, for another book-movie comparison, and if a third book comes out.