WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for both the Ready Player One novel and Steven Spielberg's film adaptation, in theaters now.


Steven Spielberg's cinematic treatment of Ready Player One is now in theaters everywhere, and fans of Ernest Cline's 2011 novel are quickly discovering the director's vision strays from the source material in several ways. Let's analyze the key differences between the two versions, and see exactly what changed during the story's jump to the big screen.

A-Gunting We Will Go

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Ready Player One's central conflict revolves around the mysterious location of James Halliday's Easter Egg, an object that once found will grant its discoverer a vast fortune and sole ownership of the OASIS, a virtual simulation that's also the world's most valuable resource. While this conceit remains in the film, the hunt itself is much more condensed than in the novel, as the filmmakers understandably sought to ramp up the pacing as much as possible.

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Instead of needing to locate three keys that have been hidden throughout the OASIS by Halliday, Egg Hunters (or "Gunters," for short) in Cline's book encounter far more obstacles. That's due to each key leading to a special corresponding gate that is similarly hidden by abstract clues. This process essentially doubles the number of trials that occur during the narrative, and with the film already approaching a run time of two hours and 20 minutes, it was probably necessary in order to avoid a bloated final product.

Trials and Transmutations

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Although the keys in the film might still be labeled the same as their novel counterparts, the accompanying tests will surely provide surprise readers of Cline's novel.

To obtain the first key, Gunters compete in a blistering race across city streets toward a finish line, with everything from T-rexes to wrecking balls to King Kong standing in their way. The sequence is one of the film's more breathtaking set pieces, with Spielberg and his team taking full advantage of the raw spectacle that a plot device such as the OASIS can provide. That's juxtaposed with the more subdued first trial that occurs in the novel.

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After trekking through a virtual recreation of the Dungeons & Dragons module "Tomb of Horrors," protagonist Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) must beat Acererak, the first key's guardian, in a game of Joust. While the original version further plays up the hardcore gamer side of Halliday, who designed the challenges, the racing sequence probably felt to the screenwriting team -- which included Cline himself -- as a way of getting audiences immersed into the action as quickly as possible.

The acquisition of the second key also progresses very differently, as the movie consists of Spielberg's shoutout to one of his favorite horror films: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. The lead characters face off against ghouls, axes and floating zombies during a timed exploration of the infamous Overlook in what is a different scenario from the Jade Key obstacle of the novel, which consisted of collecting 19 treasures within the classic computer game Zork.

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Art3mis

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A common criticism of Ready Player One readers lies within its treatment of the character Art3mis, whose arc in the novel stays relatively stagnant compared to what many believed the female lead deserved. The filmmakers clearly had that in mind as they constructed her contributions to the movie, giving the character a more involved role than her counterpart in the source material.

Because the novel is told from Wade Watts' perspective, naturally almost all of the action has to be generated by him and him alone. With a film's ability to switch perspectives to different settings and characters, that allowed the writers to shift core story contributions to other individuals, and they wisely make Art3mis a true force to be reckoned with during the cinematic adaptation.

RELATED: Ready Player One’s Best and Most Obscure Easter Eggs

In the latter half of the film, Art3mis is taken into custody by the villainous IOI corporation. After she finds a way out of her restraints (thanks to a little help from Wade and Aech), she takes advantage of her positioning behind enemy lines and makes the story's final assault possible by destroying a force field blocking our heroes from proceeding inside the OASIS. These events are loosely adapted from Wade's plan in the book, as he assumes a false identity before intentionally falling into enemy hands in order to have a shot at taking out the aforementioned force field.

The amplification of Art3mis is further spearheaded by the idea of introducing her real world identity (Samantha Cook) much earlier in the narrative than the novel, which didn't put a face to the name of Art3mis until the final chapter.

Fallen Brethren

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While the film's third act sees Wade and the gang come out relatively unscathed, one of the story's side characters did not fare so well in the novel, which occasionally assumes a darker tone than its cinematic adaptation.

REVIEW: Ready Player One is A Huge Spectacle with a Muddled Message

During a period of time excised from the movie, Wade goes underground following his attempted murder. While he was able to outmaneuver the IOI, another attempt on a Gunter's life proves successful, as Sorrento's minions track down Daito, and murder him by throwing him out the window of his apartment. Wade is later able to obtain footage of the crime when he is at IOI headquarters after hacking into their systems, and the evidence ultimately helps incarcerate Sorrento and his conspirators, who had painted the death as a suicide.

Spielberg's film not only gives Daito a happier ending, but a huge part to play throughout the final battle. The character pilots the Gundam seen in the trailers, contributing to the first time a mecha from the beloved franchise has ever graced a live-action sequence.


In theaters now, Ready Player One is produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, and co-written by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline. The film stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Win Morisaki, Lena Waithe, Hannah John-Kamen, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance, Ben Mendelsohn, TJ Miller, Ralph Ineson and Letitia Wright.