In 2016, I wrote a review of Ready Player One and why, as an avid video game player and a video game historian, I felt the story was a slap in the face. Since then, I have been caught up in my dissertation, but with the recent release of the film, I felt that it would be a good idea to revisit my review. Back then, a younger, more innocent AL’s major complaints with the book involved the narrative of gamers needing to remove themselves from the system, as well as “minor issues” involving language and the need by Ernest Cline to tell us all the details of Wade’s masturbatory habits.
At one point, I was excited to read it since it seemed straight up my alley. I also admit that I was much nicer in my initial review than I feel I should have been. Revisiting the book with my pal Jared demonstrated to me that sometimes I am nicer than I should be. However, with some time away from it and a revisit of the problematic writing style, the poorly written narrative, and the incessant references have solidified that Ready Player One is downright frustrating as both a novel and a supposed love letter to an era that I have spent the last seven years of my life studying.
While I no longer have the book to make specific references to it, I can say that a recent piece of satire nailed the insanely terrible writing style, as well as the annoying and at times pointless references Cline insists on throwing in at random, potentially as a Family Guy-style drive-by or more likely in an attempt to draw attention away from the fact that the novel is shallow and makes less sense than The Room.
I also regret the fact that I neglected to mention the horrible treatment of Art3mis throughout the book. Art3mis does an intense amount of legwork, logic, and emotional support in RPO, and in return, she is reduced to a couple tropes—Manic Pixie Dream Girl and The Prize™. In addition, Art3mis is continuously harassed by Wade due to his crush, often in ways that cross the line. She is also given a “flaw” by Cline in order to make her attractive to Wade (and readers) but not perfect, which again reduces her down to her desirability rather than who she is as a character.
Cline also clearly has never interacted with anyone who is Japanese in his life. Instead of actually doing any research on Japanese people and culture, he writes Daito and Shoto as ridiculous stereotypes. This becomes especially apparent when Cline has Shoto use the word “seppuku” in reference to general suicide, whereas seppuku itself is a distinct form of ritualistic suicide in Japanese culture and history. There are other moments where this bizarre treatment of the two Japanese characters comes up, and they seem like half-hearted attempts at including them without doing any actual legwork to understand how they would speak and act in certain situations without reducing them to racial caricatures.
Many people assume that given my interests, I would be all over this film and the book. In reality, I find it difficult to enjoy the story and characters of RPO, and I think it reduces people who play video games down to really awful stereotypes that I cannot support. The protagonist is entirely unlikable and unrelatable. The writing style is bizarre to the point of irritation. These and other negatives are wrapped up into a reference-heavy and ultimately unrealistic dystopian video game universe, and while on the surface it may seem like a fun romp, it turns out that it is a book that is stewed in toxic nerd culture in ways that ruin any potential it could have had.
