Ready:
Player One is a book written by Ernest Cline, released in 2011, the film
adaptation was released in 2018 co-written by Ernest Cline and Zak Penn, who
has co-written for Marvel and DC films both good and bad (and in the case of
Elektra, terrible)
In the
director’s chair is Steven Spielberg, who is no stranger to adaptations and is
of course one of the master visionaries of our time.
But how does
this fare as an adaptation? Let’s start with a brief rundown on my thoughts.
Ready:
Player One the book is a fun read, but there are problems. It’s reliance on 80's
pop culture and just the wealth of references to it scattered throughout the
book can be a bit much. In addition, the nature of the story requires a f*ckton
of exposition. Then we have Wade himself who has problematic moments, including
a couple of comments that could be considered transphobic.
Ready: Player
One the film is a visual treat as you’d expect with Spielberg and they did well to
modernise some of the ideas presented in the book. Wade is less of a
problematic character but unfortunately he’s not left with very much character, and neither is anyone else. It does have a similar problem with exposition, its
first 20 minutes or so is full of it and there’s a number of major bits of plot
convenience but it’s not unenjoyable.
