Exploration - Media Review

 Ready Player One

    Ready Player One is a book-to-movie adaptation based on the book, Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. The story features Wade, a gunter in a post-apocalyptic America. In this world, citizens pass their time by playing in a virtual reality simulator called The Oasis. The Oasis was created by a man named Halliday, who became the richest man in the world thanks to its success. After Halliday’s death, he left a video telling the world that he’d hidden an egg deep inside The Oasis. The first player to reach the egg would receive his entire fortune. Wade dedicated his whole life to finding Halliday’s Easter Egg and ends up succeeding with the help of his friends, Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis. The movie does not follow the book’s plot at all. I understand the need to switch the plot up to make the movie more marketable, but the plot of the movie was simply awful. The length of the movie was way too long. It barely included anything from the book yet was two hours and twenty minutes long. This film, unlike many others with the same or similar length, did not go by quickly. The flow of the film was incomprehensible. Barely any of the events seemed to go together. The soundtrack was strange as well. Some of the scenes had no music behind them while others did. The absence of music was notable, but the songs chosen were songs from the 80s. This fit the vibe of the movie very well. The CGI of the movie was subpar. The main characters in the movie had avatars in The Oasis. When the movie showed the avatars in the game, they were made of CGI. There were obvious problems with the artistry behind the CGI, it was not realistic enough to convince the audience. The character arcs of the characters were incomplete. One of the most prevalent examples of this is the relationship between Art3mis and Wade. The book makes their friendship-to-relationship situation believable while the movie shows Wade confessing his love to Art3mis two days after meeting her. Ready Player One was rated PG-13. I think this is an accurate rating. It received a 72% on Rotten Tomatoes, a fact I will never be able to understand. I would not recommend this movie.