[00:01] In the mid-90s, screenwriter Ed Neumeyer wrote a script called Bug Hunt at Outpost 9. By coincidence, the script bore some resemblances to Robert Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers,
[00:13] and so rather than producing the film as an original story, the studio decided to acquire the license to Heinlein's book and rewrite the script to be a direct adaptation because money. The guy they tapped to direct, Paul Verhoeven, however, disliked the book and claimed to
[00:28] read only two chapters. Because it was so boring, I just couldn't read the thing. It's a very right-wing book. Thus, a book that unapologetically promoted fascism has a movie adaptation that satirizes and
[00:41] purposefully contradicts the themes of its own source material. So why bring that up in a video about Ready Player One? Because the book had a lot of terrible themes and needed a Starship Trooper style overhaul.
[01:04] Now, fans of the book may be thinking, well, hold on a second, the movie did change stuff. A whole lot of stuff actually. And yes, the Steven Spielberg film is an adaptation that is only faithful to the source material
[01:16] in the broadest strokes. Much of the same stuff happens in the book as it does in the movie, sure. In both stories, our protagonist Wade Watts escapes his miserable trailer park life by going into a virtual reality video game called The Oasis. The deceased creator of the game has left behind a series of clues to
[01:34] an Easter egg, and whoever finds it will inherit his vast fortune and control over the game world. Wade teams up with a few other game players, including a girl named Artemis, who he allegedly falls in love with despite having never met her, and they battle against a corporation
[01:49] that wants to take over the Oasis, led by the nefarious Nolan McEvilface. And while much of the plot has been truncated, and a lot of the references shuffled around are updated, the general spirit of the story remains intact.
[02:02] But many of the themes are altered. It's just not in the same way as Starship Troopers. Spielberg's adaptation doesn't directly refute its source material, or even really think about any of the problems of the source material.
[02:15] And the result was very successful. This movie made $582 million at the box office. Critics were generally stopped on it, and most audiences gave it a pass. But while the world seems to have moved on from the property that launched a thousand listicles and think pieces,
[02:32] I'm not ready to. Because the implications of a lot of stuff in both versions of the story are just infuriating and depressing. There's just so much stuff in here that defies any attempt at analysis.
[02:51] Like, what? What is that supposed to mean? Are you just using anything?
[03:06] Part 1. Plot Changes It took seven years for this novel to get its adaptation, which, in the modern world of young adult fiction adaptations, is sort of a lifetime. It took five years to get a Maze Runner movie, four years to get a Hunger Games movie,
[03:20] and just three before Twilight and Divergent hit the big screen. And that's because Ready Player One is a difficult novel to adapt. It's not nearly as cinematic as its peers just listed,
[03:32] with long sections that would be totally uninteresting visually. I passed on that the first time I was sent to me. Watching a guy beat every level in Pac-Man is something for niche Twitch stream audiences, not the mass market.
[03:45] Their solution is to reinvent all of the central set pieces, including cutting the number of plot goals in half. In addition to the three keys, the characters in the book also needed to cross three gates, all of which had their own associated tasks,
[03:59] so the book literally had more MacGuffins than Infinity War. The movie simplifies matters by having just three keys leading directly to the egg, and by making the task required to get the keys more visual. This race and the extended remaking of The Shining
[04:13] are probably the two moments that most people will remember about this movie. There is also a huge overhaul of the substance of the tasks. Instead of Wade just needing to know more trivia or being better with a joystick than his opponents,
[04:27] the film makes the tasks more character-based. It's all about learning more about the game's creator, James Halliday, slowly unraveling the secrets of his life. This is definitely a change for the better.
[04:43] It also means that there's far fewer scenes like the ones in the book where Wade is confronted with a problem and then proceeds to tell the reader exactly how he has already prepared for this random challenge and why it'll be a total cinch.
[04:56] Seriously, it's hilarious how often this happens. It's always, oh, I have to win at the 1982 video game joust? Well, it sure is lucky I spent all summer playing that very game. I'm not making that up. That happens dozens of times.
[05:09] Later, in one of the climactic tests, he says, reenacting the film wasn't just easy, it was a total blast. I mean, who needs narrative tension anyway? It'd be if you were, like, reading Harry Potter and Harry said,
[05:21] and then Professor Lupin turned into a werewolf, but luckily I had learned a spell in Transfiguration that can make werewolves go to sleep, and I had practiced it every single day a hundred times for the past six years just in case this exact scenario happened.
[05:33] Like, put your setups before your payoffs. The movie has no trouble with this kind of plot device setup, as everything is set up before it pays off. You know, like the story.
[05:45] We see them get the thing before they use the thing, and we see them get the other thing before they use the thing. On the other hand, it does have entirely different setup-payoff problems when it comes to the relationships between the characters, which we'll get to in a minute.
[05:57] They also beef up Ben Mendelsohn's role, which is great, because Ben Mendelsohn is great, and I like that they basically invented some new characters to be his flunkies, played by Hannah John-Kamen and, um, some guy.
[06:10] So yeah, the goals of the screenplay were to simplify the amount of running around the characters had to do, and to make the plot more character when it comes to Halliday I just wish that they had made it more character focus when it comes to well all of the other characters
[06:27] Who is this even for? Part 2. Scene Changes A consequence of all this plot restructuring is that the film dilutes the most effective theme the book had going for it, the importance of finding a family. The film has a few lines
[06:43] establishing Wade as a lone wolf, but really he's working with H from the beginning, and they talk to each other as if they are part of one team. She'll get my outfit, but she's disconnected. Will you come down? It isn't-
[06:55] Gonna shoot all these sentinels? Yeah! We have them! Me and you! Daito and Sho act like allies from the beginning and are severely underwritten, so when they suddenly hard cut from the two maids to all five characters midway through the movie,
[07:09] you're like, wait, we're those two again? Now, this is going to be my most repeated phrase for this episode, and it does not mean the book was better or that it should be treated as gospel, but in the book, all five characters act at cross-purposes for the majority of the story
[07:24] so that when they do finally come together at the climax, it feels earned. Artemis is the first to the second king in both versions, but she does it completely on her own in the book and operates independently for most of the story.
[07:36] And when Wade initially proposes an alliance in the book, Daito says, my brother and I hunt alone. We don't want or need your help. Teamwork is even built into the structure of the contest, since the final gate requires three people to work together,
[07:50] which means this theme of needing to find a family is just a lot stronger in the book. Wade saying he's changed and found friends at the end of the movie feels tacked on because it's not as great of a change from the beginning of the film.
[08:03] The book had set up payoff problems when it came to Wade passing the tasks, but the movie has set up payoff problems when it comes to the emotional core of the story. So, pick your poison.
[08:19] It's doubly as bad in his relationship with Artemis. Now, having a relationship that is entirely based on online interactions is an extremely interesting subject matter, but it's one that requires a careful hand,
[08:32] one that neither the book nor the movie really have. But for all of its faults, the book at least gave a sufficient enough time to this element of the story to make it believable. In the movie, every time Wade perfects his love, it's cringe-inducing.
[08:45] I do know you, Artie. And it didn't need to be rushed. The film starts its climax with nearly an hour left to go. It could have had more character development, but hey, at least it gave us the best romance writing since Attack of the Clones.
[08:59] So much flow right here. I mean... in people. Everything. I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating. And it gets
[09:17] everywhere. But there's another theme that is altered as a result of all this plot structuring, especially the intensified focus on Halliday, and that's the idea that pop culture is a religion. And it's here that we get as close as we're going to get to a Starship Trooper-style rebuttal,
[09:32] but I'll argue that what they do here isn't a recitation of the book, just a shift that ends up bringing with it many of the same issues. It's very explicit in the book that for an atheist living in a dystopian world,
[09:44] pop cultural artifacts are religious artifacts. Wade tells us directly that he believes God is a lie, but while that particular subject of worship is BS,
[09:56] the act of worshiping itself is good. There's a character named Mrs. Gilmore who Wade describes as a total sweetheart and his only friend other than H. Mrs. Gilmore is devoutly religious. She prays constantly, but Wade never brings up his atheism or argues with her about it.
[10:13] Instead, he says that religion was, for her, a pleasant fantasy that gave her hope and kept her going, which was exactly what the hunt was for me. The hunt for Halliday's Easter egg gives people purpose. The Oasis gives people purpose, just like religion does, so it doesn't matter that in the viewpoint of this book, all of them are built on fantasies, illusions.
[10:33] So we have a book that is about an atheist who is essentially on a religious-style quest to find an object created by another atheist, Halliday. And when you're on a religious-style quest to find an object, the Holy Grail references make themselves.
[10:47] Wade names his in-game character Parzival after the Arthurian knight who found the grail, and in the book he dresses as a knight. The first clue how to give includes the line, wherein the errant will be tested for worthy tricks.
[11:00] The word errant is commonly used to describe errant knights, knights in chivalric romances and Arthurian legend, who are often on an adventure to find the grail. And one of the final tests Wade faces is reciting Monty Python and the Holy Grail by memory.
[11:15] So Arthurian references are nearly as prevalent as 80s references in the book, and they are all in service of this idea that pop culture is the new religion, and that studying that religion, being versed in it, will bring you purpose in life.
[11:28] Classic video games are talked about in religious terms, they are hallowed artifacts, pillars of the pantheon, and the unbelievers like Sorrento are evil because they don't respect how sacred these creations are.
[11:40] Now, Sorrento, as basically a pop culture atheist, stays the same in the film, but Spielberg pretty much tosses out the whole Arthurian legend motif. The only part that remains is Parzival's name, which they couldn't really get rid of,
[11:52] but they do change his appearance from Arthurian knight to generic anime boy with the worst strut in the world. Mrs. Gilmore, a character who exists to represent worship in a positive light in the book,
[12:05] is given one scene in the film where she is instead treated as a nuisance by Wade. I read this as the film actively jettisoning the entire theme of an atheist searching for
[12:23] meaning in his life, and the cynic in me suspects it's to make the story more palatable to a wider audience. We're here for mindless pop culture fun, not a religious debate. The only explicitly religious reference in the film is the fact that he uses something called a holy hand grenade which looks like a grenade made out of the Vatican What is the commentary here That religion is a weapon
[12:45] It's kind of muddled. Okay, so we're clear that the book treats pop culture as a religion, but here's where the impacts of those story focus changes come into effect. The movie putting all of this extra focus on Halliday switches the theme from the worship of pop culture creations
[13:00] to the worship of pop culture creators. It puts this in religious terms, too. And Halliday? He wasn't just the owner of the world's biggest company. He was like a god.
[13:13] People loved him. They worshipped him as much as his creation. Halliday is shown to us as rising from the dead. His avatar is pictured up above the clouds as if he is in heaven. When Wade passes the first challenge,
[13:25] he falls to his knees in front of Halliday as if he's just met God. When Wade completes his quest, he encounters Halliday in a throne room that looks like a cathedral. This film really leans into the creator-as-god idea before it pulls the curtain back to show Halliday's humble origins.
[13:42] So, what's going on here? What does this all mean? Well, I think it has to do with two things. That shagging sequence, and that big old off-line.
[13:55] You see, while Wade is both the audience's and the author Ernest Cline's surrogate character, Spielberg's surrogate character is Halliday. He's the character who most closely matches Spielberg's experience.
[14:09] Because the kind of culture that Ready Player One is celebrating isn't really just geek culture anymore, it's blockbuster culture. And I'm wondering if Spielberg has conflicted feelings over the state of the modern blockbuster
[14:22] and his role in creating it. The shining sequence is here as the answer to the clue, a creator who hates his own creation. But the idea of a creator hating his own creation also connects to the possibility Wade is given to turn the whole Oasis off.
[14:36] He doesn't, just like Spielberg doesn't. And while Wade in the book tells us that he has grown beyond his addiction to fantasies, the film's conclusion is half-hearted. They turn off the Oasis two days of the week, but they're married to the fantasy the rest of the time.
[14:51] Just as these characters can't fully cut themselves off from fantasy, neither can Spielberg, and neither can we. Where the book wanted to say that we should stop worshipping pop-cultural creations, the movie seems to want to say that we should stop worshipping pop-culture creators because they're not gods, they're real people too.
[15:09] And when I look at the story in this way, it feels as if I am approaching some kind of substance. The problem is that both texts undermine their own supposed messages. These moral-of-the-story moments feel obligatory and insincere considering everything that has come before.
[15:26] Wade wins because of how much he worships pop culture slash pop culture creators. And that's the problem. Wade's relationship to fiction is so obviously unhealthy and yet never sincerely contradicted.
[15:38] And that is what leads us to... Ready Player One is the fantasy of never being wrong. The central appeal of the book is this. Here's this guy named Wade. He's a nerd like you, the presumed reader.
[15:53] He spends all the time memorizing pop culture and has no real friends. Early in the book, another character says to him, If I didn't spend so much time offline getting laid, I'd probably know just as much worthless shit as you two do. And the fantasy of the book is that you get to prove that jerk wrong.
[16:08] You get to double down on your fandoms and get rewarded with all the riches in the world. It's total validation for having been right all along. In both versions of the story, he feels an immediate connection to Artemis despite never having met her.
[16:22] The one moment in the movie where it looks like he's screwed up is totally validated because he was right all along. Even though Artemis said he'd be disappointed by her appearance, turns out she actually looks like, well, a Hollywood movie star.
[16:34] She's just overly self-conscious about a birthmark. In the book, he basically stalks her, and in the movies, he tells her he loves her practically immediately. He never has to pay a price because he's too busy winning. He's also never met Halliday in real life either, and there's a parallel here between his relationship with Artemis and his relationship with him.
[16:52] Wade has blindly dedicated his life to following the instructions of a dead man, but hey, actually, turns out he's a nice guy, I guess, and doing everything he said to the letter wins you riches beyond measure. So, even if the story wants to say you shouldn't waste your life memorizing everything about pop culture or worshipping the maker of your favorite thing,
[17:11] and should instead spend more time outside and with your family, the text of both stories tells you, no, your fandom is the best part about you. But just remember, it's only a certain kind of fandom that's good.
[17:24] The book exemplifies the kind of toxic gatekeeping of what being a fan means that has caused so many problems in recent years. And while the movie gets rid of a lot of that, there's some perplexingly gendered exceptions.
[17:38] There's this moment when H makes fun of Wade's haircut, for instance, saying that it looks like it's from There's Something About Mary. Oh, but she's not enough to pay for that Something About Mary hairdo. Which, you know, is totally uncool, guys, because that's like for girls, I guess.
[17:53] Not like all this totally mature guy stuff, like He-Man. But in retrospect, that moment is really weird considering that H is a woman. So is she pretending to hate that movie as a way to fit in with the rest of D's culture?
[18:07] Or does she actually have a grudge against a 40-year-old rom-com? Or is the fact that she references a chick flick supposed to be foreshadowing the reveal that she is, in fact, a chick? I could give the movie the benefit of the doubt on that one if it didn't happen a second time,
[18:22] because it's supposed to be a joke that the bad guy reads Nancy Drew. You're a big old baby if you like it, because that's for children, not like Batman, which is for adults.
[18:34] Man, there's a lot of references to Batman in here. All right, Warner Brothers. So, the underlying message of both versions of the story is that there are right things to like and there are wrong things to like. And also, there's a right way to
[18:47] like them and a wrong way to like them. The right stuff to like is explicitly made for boys, and the right way to like them is to know all the facts about them without caring at all about the deeper themes of their stories Because neither version cares all that much about the implications of what
[19:03] they're using, just that they're there for the sweet, sweet burst of recognition that them being their causes. And I get the fact that, you know, we should be allowed to just innocently enjoy a big smash-em-up with all your favorite characters, and movies like the Lego Movie pull that off
[19:17] fantastically, but I just can't with this movie. I mean, it's basically artistic vandalism to put the Iron Giant in this movie the way they did. They originally wanted to use Ultraman like they did in the books, but they couldn't get the license for it, so since it's Warner Brothers,
[19:32] they just tossed in Iron Giant because they own that property. It reminds that Ultraman was a character who fights aliens, and Mechagodzilla is an alien in one version, so that at least made sense, while Iron Giant is his own creature who is supposed to be an anti-gun symbol.
[19:47] Ironically, when it comes to art, nothing is sacred. But whatever, we all love and recognize Iron Giant, so why not musically tease how awesome
[20:02] it's going to be to see him later on, and then indulge in all the disruption he can cause, and then paste another pop culture reference onto him when they need to take him out of the plot. Remember Terminator? We didn't have the rights to Terminator, but
[20:14] member? Member Bionic Man? Yeah, and member Albert? Remember? Member Memberberries? Do you remember them? Everything in this story is stripped of its meaning and diluted. There's
[20:29] a plot device they call the Zemeckis Cube, named after the director of Back to the Future, which can turn back time because, hey, member Back to the Future? Never mind that Rubik's cubes playing no part at all in that franchise, so using one here creates a moment that feels
[20:44] like it should be signifying something, but it isn't signifying anything. That's what all these references feel like. Jesus, I'm surprised they're not walking down aisle 42 in this scene so that they can make a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference. Oh wait.
[20:57] I'm not going to go back. The great tragedy of Ready Player One is that it could have been something truly special.
[21:12] And I know it is special to a lot of people, but to me, it's a premise I wanted to love. It just needed to take one more note from the story that originally inspired it.
[21:30] One day I had the idea, what if Willy Wonka had been a video game designer instead of a candy maker? And what if he held his golden ticket contest inside his greatest video game creation?
[21:42] But what made Willy Wonka special was what he valued. He picked Charlie to inherit his chocolate factory not because he knows the most about chocolate, or about business, or about money, but because he was the kindest, the most moral, because he was humble.
[21:55] That's why I decided a long time ago that I had to find a child. a very honest, loving child to remember to tell all my most precious candy-making secrets.
[22:07] The film has this one moment where Wade realizes that he shouldn't accept Halliday's wealth, but that he could share it with his friends. But the problem is that he's still just trying to win the game. Charlie wins Willy Wonka's contest
[22:20] the moment he stops trying to win it. And so his honesty and selflessness in giving back to Godstopper is a true reflection of his character. So shines a good deed in a weary world.
[22:38] Charlie. My boy. You won! You did it! You did it! I knew you would. I just knew you would.
[22:50] Great. At the end of Ready Player One, Halliday tells Wade to try and do some good with the wealth he's going to inherit. But Halliday's contest isn't built to weed out the people who would do ill with that wealth.
[23:02] Wade's version of reading art honestly should have been the ideology of the villains in the story. The person who reads Lord of the Rings and walks away only knowing the names of the elves without applying those deep themes of loyalty to their life.
[23:17] Or who reads Harry Potter a hundred times and doesn't recognize what fascism looks like. That's the kind of mindset this story could have been written to criticize. I mean, imagine a story where all of the other gunters only know the basic facts about a story,
[23:32] and they all think that that kind of memorization is what's going to win them the contest. But a protagonist wins because he's actually learned the lessons these stories teach, and applies them to the puzzles to win. Then the movie could have been about something.
[23:45] But instead, despite being overshot with every bit of iconography I know, I have only ever come away from this movie with a profound sense of emptiness.
[23:57] So, if you've watched this video, I've got to believe that you're a fan of science fiction, or maybe even a writer of science fiction. And if so, then you may be looking for a way to expand your scientific knowledge.
[24:09] I've been looking for an effective and curated way to make myself more academically well-rounded for a while now, and a lot of the time that means watching educational YouTube channels. But there is also a tool out there that provides a more hands-on and active way to learn, and that's Brilliant.org.
[24:26] Brilliant is a math and science website where you can take guided courses through specific concepts and really train yourself to actually understand the principles behind these ideas. If you're a humanities person like me, then get started with the Science Essentials course and see how far you can get.
[24:43] I want to thank Brilliant for sponsoring this episode, and if you want to learn more about them, then go to brilliant.org slash just right and sign up for free. That's right, it's free. But you can also get a premium subscription, and if you are one of the first 200 people to click that link, then you'll get 20% off the annual premium subscription.
[25:01] Let me know what you think in the comments below. I want to thank my patrons for supporting this channel, and if you want to help me make more videos like this one, you can pitch in as little as $1 a video over on the Patreon account. Thanks for watching everyone. Keep writing.