Holy **** 20 times?! I thought listening to it twice on audible was a lot despite loving the book

Have you also watched Family matters 6 times and Lady Hawk 30? Kidding kidding

Holy **** that was a ton of fun. A megaton of changes, but a great time

The Shining scene was definitely awesome. So was Chucky.

I wish the club scene would've been Og's birthday party with him as the DJ.

Oh, I wanted this to be so good. I've read the book three times and man I was disappointed. The movie was so much different from the books, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, when you have such rich source material in the book, why would you ever consider creating a new narrative?

I did enjoy The Shining, but overall was pretty disappointed.

This was Spielberg aiming straight for the junior high demographic. And that's totally fine, but man, it got super cheesy at times and featured some pretty bland/bad dialogue. I absolutely loved the race sequence early on, and The Shining sequence was the highlight for sure, but overall I just didn't connect with this movie at all. So much of what motivated these characters felt lazy and underdeveloped. Not to mention, Ben Mendelsohn's character was the most stock/cliche corporate bad guy ever, and even though I really liked Lena Waithe's charcter in the Oasis, her acting was distractingly bad in the real world.

I don't know, there were a lot of details to like, and I enjoyed big chunks of the movie, but as someone who didn't read the book, the real world portrayed on screen left me scratching my head quite a bit and basically shrugging my shoulders at the state of affairs in the end.

Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm terms of Spielberg movies released in the last few months, give me The Post over this all day long.

Yeah that part was definitely not developed very much. One of the things you lose when you remove the story where Wade starts as a poor high school student who can't even afford to leave the planet his school is located on...you don't reallly see how the Oasis makes anyone's life better other than pure entertainment, so what's at stake to lose if IOI takes over?

Also, I knew it would be Adventure, but I was holding out hope Spielberg would make a Spielberg/Atari joke and go with ET: The Video Game. Worst game ever...

I kept waiting for the Dolorean to change it's wheels and fly in the finally battle.

It seemed kinda dumb to get that upgrade suit. All it does is allow you feel the punches and hits. It seems better to not wear one in a fight.

Agree with most that has been said. One thing I wish they would have done was durring the final battle when they showed the kids that were playing as the current design of the TMNTs, i was hoping youd see another group of older guys playing as the 90's design of the TMNTs.

Had a chance to sleep on it and am still really disappointed with what I saw last night. I think it is going to be difficult for those who read the book to like the film adaptation of Ready Player One. Obviously, the movie had time constraints, which made some of the cuts and changes from the book necessary. Moreover, I think we all knew it was going to be impossible to include all of the pop-culture and nostalgia references that were found in the book. TCTTS mentioned above that the movie was aiming for the jr high demographic, which I believe was the main problem. While this movie was not as 80's-centric as the book, I do question their use of some of the cultural references/games (and even The Shining) that weren't going to connect with their targeted audience.

Here are some of the things I missed/questioned (some possible book spoilers):

- First Key - the change wasn't bad, as the book version was a bit more drawn out. However, the book version did capture more of WW's limitations and made the first reward and pay off mean more. I also enjoyed the hunt for the location of the key, instead of just knowing that the winner of the race gets the first key. The former approach also reinvigorated the search for the Easter Egg, instead of everyone just competing in a race each day. By the way, you mean to tell me after they had access to Halliday's journals that nobody picked up on the whole "drive backwards" thing? Lego video games make their clues more difficult than that.
- Gate challenges - The gate challenges were great in the books, but I understand the need to cut some of those out.
- New character stories - It was lazy writing that they all lived near each other, especially with Daito and Shoto. Aech's reveal/twist didn't feel as big as it was in the book (maybe that's on me because I knew it was coming) and changing Daito and Shoto up was a mistake. Also, I think Ogg was grossly underutilized, and preferred the book version/character.
- Sorrento - I was excited to see Mendelsohn here, but he was a shell of the ruthless and desperate antagonist book version. Bossman69?? I foresee a new TexAgs handle soon.
- IR0K - I do think this character's importance was increased over the book (for the better), but I'm shocked TJ Miller was still a part of this movie. I figured that could've been an easy recast, as it was only his voice.
- The Love Story - this was hurried and not fleshed out well.
- Lack of real world implications - as mentioned earlier, there was too much time spent in the Oasis and not enough time in the real world for us to care about the actual people vs. the avatars. Some of the above changes/differences made the final "We're Not Gonna Take It" (cheese) battle seem forced rather than out of necessity.

Maybe a lot of this came down to the fact that there was a lot of source material that couldn't fit into one movie. Do you think it would've helped things if this was a two-parter instead of just one movie?

TL; DR - If you read the book, lower your expectations and go in with more of an open mind.

I am disappointed that we didn't get some typical 80's montage with a pump up/fight song in there.

And that they didn't count 1,2, 5 for the Holy Hand Grenade

Also, I think they vastly under used the soundtrack. This should have been Guardians level, and instead I only recall 2 songs. "Jump" during the opening and "We're not Going to Take it" during the final battle.

I agree with most of the comments above. It was very disappointing. They mentioned that the Oasis was important, but did an awful job of illustrating it. It came off as nothing more than a video game in the movie when, in actuality, it was pretty much the center of commerce in the United States. Most kids went to school in the Oasis and many people's day-to-day activities were conducted there.

It just makes me appreciate LOTR more than ever as the best book adaptation I've ever seen.

Yeah, I can't believe that wasn't used, especially since the version in all the marketing seems to have been composed solely for this project. It's weird, when the opening chords of "Jump" started over the opening credits, I got pretty excited. It felt like it was setting a tone for some great '80s pop music throughout. Instead, that was maybe the best musical queue of the whole movie and the rest of the music was a pretty big let down.

It is definitely a different experience from the book. It had a Spielberg feel to it. Overall everybody we went with (6 people - all having read the book) really enjoyed it.

Summary of what I can remember from Cline Q&A after the movie last night.

- Iron Giant. Cline is friends with the auther/filmmaker for Iron Giant and wrot it in to the book as a tip of the hat to him. Really wanted Ultraman for the last fight with Mechagodzilla but that was one they were unable to get due to licensing law suits with the Japanese company that had the license. Later decided to work in a bigger part for Iron Giant. Actually got licensing OK'd for Ultraman later but it was too late.

- Shining. Wanted to use a moving that was not in the book for the movie. Spielberg really didn't want to use one that he was heavily involved in. (actually didn't want to use anything he did directly and the effects teams worked hard to slip things by him - see gremlin in the movie) They made a list of movies and Spielberg went for the Shining right away. Clinie said Spielberg was a huge 'fanboy' of The Shining and loved watching him 'geek out' over putting that in his movie and focusing on all the details.

- Director. Cline said they let him make a list of dream directors and Spielberg wasn't even on it because he didn't think it was possible. He had Nolan and I can't remember the other name he mentioned. Interestingly he talked about how it had a "Goonies" type feel to it with the kids banding together. That was clearly a Spielberg item as the book had the opposite feel as they all stayed seperate as long as possible.

- Adventure. Several here mentioned ET and as above Spielberg specifically mentioned not wanting to use things he was involved in. More important however, Cline specifically mentioned finding that Easter Egg in Adventure when he was kid as being a big part of the inspiration for him writing the book. He is actually very good friends with Warren Robinette (the creator of Adventure) and Warren was actually sitting with him last night at the movie. I got the feeling that they were close and there was very little chance that part of the story was being changed.

- Easter Eggs. He talked about all the hidden things in the movie. I thought it was interesting all the parties that got involved putting those in. He mentioned things Spielberg put in but that the different effects teams would also just add things and try to slip them by Spielberg. He noticed new things with every viewing. Specifially spoke about Happy Time Pizza which was seen in the background of the movie and important in the book. It was a place Cline and his friends went to in Ohio growing up.

That's all I remember right now.