“People need to spend more time in the real world, cuz, like Halladay said, reality is the only thing that’s real.”
– Wade Watts (Ready Player One)
I remember the first time I listened to the Ready Player One audiobook. It absolutely blew my mind. When I learned that they were making a movie, I was both excited and skeptical. It is always hit or miss as to whether the big screen does the book justice. In this case, I was pleasantly surprised.
While there are a lot of elements that they applied from the book to the movie, Ready Player One was not quite what I was expecting, but in a good way. I felt like I got to re-experience one of my favorite stories for the first time. It was the book, but different. Get it? Let me explain without spoilers.
The author wrote the book with the understanding that his story was so out there, so intense and outlandish, that nobody would ever try to turn it into a movie. That is part of the reason he did it. I read in articles and saw in interviews that his writing experience in movies was unpleasant so he wanted to write something that wouldn’t get sucked into and ruined by the Hollywood vortex.
Lo and behold, he succeeded…..ish. The story was so amazing that Hollywood wanted to take a stab at it. They did, but they included him and brought one of his favorite directors into the project to ensure that it was spectacular. Ready Player One was a major success.
It was based on the books, but ended up being a complete re-imaging of the story in a way that captured the elements and spirit of the book in a screen-friendly way. Same plot, but a different story. Same concept, but a different execution. It was fantastic and it shows that persistence and loving what you do is important.
Instead of giving up after a disappointing experience, Ernest Cline tried a new approach to his passion and the result was a product that any self-respecting science fiction and fantasy genre enthusiast would consider to be among one of the best books ever written.
Journeyman's Legacy 