Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Ready Player One, and the myriad Easter eggs therein, has finally hit theaters, and blessedly, is really, really fun.

Fans of the book should be delighted with how the OASIS is realized but, as with any adaptation, some facets of Ernest Cline’s world are significantly changed in the jump to the big screen. Watch the video above or read below to see what we're calling the five most noteworthy book vs. movie changes below.

The Structure of the Hunt

While finding all three of OASIS creator James Halliday’s hidden keys is necessary to unlock his easter egg, the novel actually features even more obstacles for Parzival and the legions of gunters. The book’s hunt required Gunters to find a key, follow the clue included with that key to a matching gate, use it to enter the gate and complete a challenge of some kind, and repeat. In the book, those challenges are as follows:

Copper Key: Defeat Acererak the Demi-Lich (Dungeons and Dragons) in a best of three round of the 1982 arcade classic Joust.
Copper Gate: Complete a WarGames flicksync (more on that below).
Jade Key: Win a three-dimensional rendering of the text-based adventure game Zork.
Jade Gate: Win a 3D rendering of the 1987 platformer Black Tiger.
Crystal Key: Return a mythical guitar to its altar in the world of Rush’s classic concept album, 2112.
Crystal Gate: Beat Halliday’s high score in Tempest, complete a Monty Python and the Holy Grail flicksync, and discover the very first video game easter egg in Adventure, the 1980 Atari game.

That’s a lot to get through in two hours and fifteen minutes, so the filmmakers smartly choose to eliminate the gates from the equation, and in fact significantly alter the first two challenges:

Copper Key: Survive a race through a city being defended by giant monsters and booby traps.
Jade Key: Ask for a dance with Kira, Halliday’s lost love, in the Gold Room of The Shining’s Overlook hotel.
Crystal Key: Discover the very first video game easter egg in Adventure, the 1980 Atari game.

The Copper Key race and ticking clock hunt through the Overlook are visual feasts and certainly more cinematic than watching a D&D character play an arcade game would’ve been.

Where are the Flicksyncs?

One of the most memorable aspects of the book left out of Spielberg’s Ready Player One are flicksyncs. These standalone simulations drop users into a movie and makes them play through it as the protagonist, requiring them to perform all of their dialogue and actions on cue. In the novel, the Copper and Crystal Gates force players to play through WarGames and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, respectively. These are enormously fun passages which seemed ripe for inclusion here, but were likely left out due to the visual effects wizardry that would’ve been required to believably skin Parzival as Matthew Broderick or the members of Monty Python for these scenes.

The closest we get to a flicksync in the movie is the Jade Key challenge, which sends the High Five through a stunning recreation of The Shining’s Overlook Hotel, but even that scene features look-alike (well, look-a-kinda-like) actors as the Grady twins and the lady in Room 237.

Art3mis and Parzival

Critics of Ernest Cline’s novel often point to the thin drawing of Samantha Cook, Art3mis in the OASIS, and her being little more than a nerd fantasy for Wade to drool over. As a huge fan of the book myself, I can’t say I disagree. Wade literally admits to having cyber-stalked her in one of their early meetings and after they “break up” (they hadn’t been dating, something Wade seems happy to ignore), he resumes that behavior.

Cline, along with his co-writer on the script Zak Penn, must’ve taken that criticism to heart, as the relationship between the movie’s leads is far more even-handed. Don’t get me wrong, this movie doesn’t ace the Bechdel test, but if you were one of the many that found yourself cringing at how Art3mis was treated in the novel, you’ll find the movie’s handling of her character much more palatable.

The Rebellion

That whole underground rebellion working to topple the all-powerful Innovative Online Industries in the movie? Yeah, that’s nowhere in the book. True, there are Gunter clans devoted to hunting IOI’s Sixers inside the OASIS, but there’s no mention of any real-world groups fighting the telecommunications conglomerate. The basis for the rebellion’s inclusion in the movie probably spins out of novel Wade’s moves against IOI, where he infiltrates their headquarters in order to sabotage the shield they conjure to block the entrance to Anorak’s Castle and the Crystal Gate inside the OASIS.

While Wade carefully plans this mission in the book, it’s carried out a lot more haphazardly in the movie. Samantha is captured during an IOI raid while buying time for Wade to escape. Wade manages to make contact with Samantha while she’s interred at IOI and walk her through how escape her cell and shut down the shield. While the rebellion subplot ends up being less engaging than the Hunt story, it does give Wade and Samantha the chance to meet in real life much earlier than in the book, where they don’t meet face-to-face until the very end.


One of the High Five Avoids Their Book Death

Parzival, Art3mis, Aech, Daito, and Shoto (just “Sho” in the movie) form the High Five, the first OASIS users to place on the Hunt’s Scoreboard. At the end of both the book and the movie, Parzival decides to split his newly acquired controlling stake in Gregarious Gaming Systems (and by extension, the OASIS) with the other members of the High Five. But in the book, not all of his friends make it to the finish line. The novel sees Daito (real name Toshiro Yoshiaki) being murdered on the orders of Nolan Sorrento, desperate to slow the High Five’s progress. And while he sure does try to kill the High Five in the movie, the filmmakers decide to let Daito enjoy a happy ending with his friends. And billions of dollars. So many billions.

What were your favorite, or least favorite, changes the Ready Player One movie made to the source material? Let us know and for more on Ready Player One, be sure to check out our valiant effort to find as many easter eggs as we could as well as our review of the movie.