The movie on it’s own merits: Fun, disposable entertainment. Parts I enjoyed. Good visual effects. Kinda boring writing. Pacing was slow at times. Not bad.
A week or so ago someone asked why I liked the book given all its flaws. I gave a terrible answer at the time and only got a decent answer a few days later. So it goes here instead. I’ve enjoyed a lot of books that even I will admit aren’t very well written. As people who have read my reviews on things have probably figured out, I enjoy cool ideas over good writing. This is mostly because my brain tends to fill in plot holes and even rewrite parts of stories I read. More than once I’ve read through a book I’ve liked and get confused because [blank] doesn’t happen or isn’t in there and I realize that it was just something my brain came up with the first time I read the thing. So wether or not I like book or story is based on what it triggers in my head, not what is on the page.
Anyway, back to the movie. It changed a lot of things from the book. Some I liked, a lot I didn’t. Making it more nerd pop culture in general and not just 80s stuff was a good thing. As was making the challenges more focused on Halliday’s life instead of random 80s stuff was a good choice as well. Things I didn’t like was making the evil corporate guys pure bwa ha ha evil. From what I remember from the book the bad guys were just basic ruthless business people. The movie made the main corporate guy someone who should have been played by Jeremy Irons. Man, that would have been fun.
Oh, and of course the female lead has to be pretty. Oh no, she’s got a slight discoloration birthmark. That’ll scare everyone away from the cute redhead in torn stockings and jacket hanging off one shoulder. Seriously. Plus having her know that our main character *must* be the one to win. Even if that was in the book, I don’t remember, why not change that? Her initial introduction was that you have to give everything to win because this shit is important. Even if she does believe that he deserves it, she wouldn’t just hand it to him. That one is a minor nitpick really.
I think, besides ultra-evil corporation scumbags, my biggest complain was more or less removing Halliday’s business partner from the end game. His relationship with Halliday and his reasons for helping out the heroes in the book was one of my favorite parts. He does come in at the end, and it is a cool twist that I’m not going to spoil, but… Eh, okay. I do enjoy what they do with him but I still don’t like them removing the parts of him that were in the book. Even if the book had him mostly as just deus ex machina for the main character’s empowerment fantasy.
So… Final thoughts? Decent movie. It would probably be more fun going through the big VR scenes shot by shot picking out all the references then actually watching the movie.
Spoilers:
Edit: Oh, and the part I really hated? When at the end the voiceover narration is talking about how reality is what’s real and people shouldn’t spend so much time in virutal fantasy world… Delivered with our rich protagonist in a 80s nostalgia filled luxury apartment snuggling and kissing with a cute redhead. Yeah, no shit you don’t want to escape your life now dude.
The City of Doors 