The long-awaited film adaption of Ernest Cline’s bestseller is here and it’s terrible. I know all about the limitations of movies versus books, so spare methose comments. Ready was always going to be a huge challenge since Cline’s references were a copyright/trademark nightmare. Substituting certain Eighties properties from the book to those they could get for the movie was fine. “Streamlining” elements for a general audience I can live with too, e.g.(not a spoiler) one challenge involves the old Atari 2600 home system instead of the Tempest arcade game because I don’t think anyone born after 1980 has seen it.
The problem lies in the story’s translation to film. Screenwriters Cline and Penn transform the story from being a scavenger hunt in a virtual universe set in a miserable dystopia into a paint-by-numbers contest flick in which the underdog triumphs over a bullying, two-dimensional CEO. Within ten minutes it’s already stupid via the “whacky races” sequence being the first goal toward winning control of the OASIS. Originally, just finding the challenge to get the first key was shrouded in mystery for the past five years and Spielberg with Cline and Penn in tow change it to some daily event people have been trying to win for five years. Really? And somehow, the evil IOI corporation with its scores of researchers couldn’t figure out that the solution was to drive backwards? Ugh. The Lowest-Common-Denomiator Spielberg decided to direct Ready, the same one who did Oscar® bait Saving Private Cliché.
The other cheat in the film I hated was how Halladay’s entire memory was accessible as a museum like the globes from Inside Out because he managed to upload himself a la Altered Carbon. Again, IOI wouldn’t be swarming this virtual location? What made the book enjoyable was the mystery and how people like Wade had to do their own research into Halladay, like how biography writers do. Nope, Spielberg doesn’t trust his audience to have much smarts, ergo the Halladay Museum.
My final annoyance was the addition of two characters to the film, TJ Miller’s virtual assassin and a real-world assassin working for IOI. They just create more forced humor for dumb people. Oh, I forgot about “the resistance” angle Art3mis is part of. Lame!
Now if you haven’t read the book, is Ready worth seeing? I can’t say with utter certainty but I lean toward “no” since it’s mostly eye candy tacked on to a weakly executed story.
One day, I’m hoping Cline will pull his head out of Spielberg’s ass and try again in a decade with Ready being a miniseries much like Jame Ellroy has been trying with LA Confidentialor how Frank Herbert’s estate did with Dune. It’s not looking likely though. Cline’s second novel Armada got ravaged as a repeat of Ready Player One so he may be a one-trick pony (Harper Lee readily came to mind) who blew his wad on this disappointment.
I do want to give my two cents about all the whining nerds, geeks, fanboys, etc., who bitched over how Ready appropriated “their culture.” Now you know how Black Americans feel when White kids in the suburbs do the same thing. What is happening is Karl Marx’s theory about history, how the overriding thesis (the way things are) collides with an antithesis (rebellious behavior, music, etc.), forms a synthesis and becomes the new thesis. Get used to it is my advice. Besides, seeing non-stereotypes, especially women, playing D&D these days makes me happy.
Alamo Extras: Mexican kids show of them singing some space crap; the winning dogs from Alamo’s “Dress up your dog as a Wes Anderson character” contest; ads for Timex quartz watches (they’re from the future!), two for the horrible ET Atari game, the awesome Megamania game which starred the Tubes!, Nintendo’s failed Virtual Boy, Missile Command for the Atari 2600, a lame CD-ROM game in which you can be a director like Spielberg and a 900-number to call Freddy Krueger; Trailers for Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Iron Giant and Back to the Future; a bit from a Japanese comedy show of a guy playing Pac Man; clip from an ABC news story on VR circa 1991; seeing a Black guy’s reaction to the Ready Player One teaser trailer (it’s supposed to be funny I guess); Spielberg giving a tour of his Ambling offices to a Japanese news team; Ernest Cline talking about why he loves The Iron Giant, his time at Amblin Studios and a tour of his customized DeLorean he bought with the money he made from the novel.