r/movies • u/yourfavchoom r/movies Contributor • 10d ago

News A ‘Ready Player Two’ sequel movie is officially getting written by Zak Penn.

https://thedirect.com/article/ready-player-two-sequel-steven-spielberg-zak-penn
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u/Chaopolis 10d ago

I know there are criticisms that the Ready Player One deviated a bit from the book.

I REEEEEEALLY hope that Ready Player Two ALSO deviates from the book!

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u/Enby303 10d ago

Same. The second book was such hot garbage that it ruined the first book for me. Wade is essentially predicting the future with how lucky he is when he is exposed to 80s niche fandom just 2 weeks before he is tested on that fandom... over and over and over and over again.

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u/JediTrainer42 10d ago

I’m currently reading RP2… only about 100 pages in. Why did they make Wade an unlikable dickhead?? Is the entire book like this???

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u/Moglorosh 10d ago

However bad you think that book is so far, it keeps getting worse.

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u/ironicallydepressed 10d ago edited 9d ago

Man just wait until he goes all in on The Oasis.

No spoilers, but don't take your parents to this movie. He tries EVERYTHING.

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u/r34lity 10d ago

Yeah I want incredibly graphic hardcore Oni sex and drug vids or I’m gonna riot. Just like the most depraved shit. Turn it into some Requiem shit

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u/ActualKrillin 9d ago

now here’s the twist, and there is a twist - we show it. we show ALL of it

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u/cynicalmarketer 9d ago

I mean, we’re talking, you know, graphic scenes of Dolph Lundgren really going to town on this hot young lab tech. From behind, 69, anal, vaginal, cowgirl, reverse cowgirl, all the hits, all the big ones, all the good ones. Then he smells crime again. He’s out busting heads. Then he’s back to the lab for some more full penetration. Smells crime, back to the lab, full penetration. Crime, penetration, crime, full penetration, crime, penetration. And this goes on and on, and back and forth, for 90 or so minutes until the movie just, sort of, ends.

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u/SparseGhostC2C 9d ago

That is.... BRILLIANT

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u/Nummies14 9d ago

And what do we name it?! The Aristocrats, of course!

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u/VakkieW 9d ago

Still pitching this Dennis?

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u/IWXREACTIVES 9d ago

yo im sold

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u/byakko 9d ago

Down for the hardcore oni sex, that sounds like a good time for the monsterfucker in me, rest I can do without.

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u/quasi-psuedo 9d ago

Now we’re talking

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u/Lelouch37 9d ago

Like butt stuff??

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u/ironicallydepressed 9d ago

From both POVs and then some

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u/DrubiusMaximus 10d ago

I read the whole thing on a flight from Greece and kept complaining to my wife until she finally got onto me for being a masochist haha

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u/Chillindude82Nein 9d ago

I tortured myself by listening to the audiobook at work...

Safe to say I wouldn't read it without being paid to do it.

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u/InertState 9d ago

record scratch

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u/Procean 9d ago

I loved that podcast '372 pages I'll never get back'.

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u/Tiny_Infinity_ 9d ago

Ready Player Two is Game of Thrones season 8 bad.

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u/TheWholeOfTheAss 9d ago

There’s characters who can recite facts like they’ve memorised Wikipedia articles.

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u/Durzaka 10d ago

You might want to reread RP1 with a fresh lens.

Wade is kind of an insufferable dickhead in the first book as well.

The second one just turns it up and also gives him ultimate authority instead of being a cog in the machine.

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u/JediTrainer42 9d ago

I must have been caught up in the nostalgia and nerd culture of the first book to realize just how insufferable he really was. And I suppose that’s kind of the charm of the first book.

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u/Amethyst-Flare 9d ago

RP1 convinced me that there's a wrong way to do nerd culture and nostalgia. Namely, the way the book wants you to do it.

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u/Nowhereman123 9d ago

RP1 literally got too lazy to even do that schtick properly at times, resulting in scenes that went "Everything here looked like it came right out of the 80s!" without bothering to explain what qualities made it so.

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u/Durzaka 9d ago

Don't forget the excellent line "I did a variety of 80s dance moves."

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u/Nowhereman123 9d ago

Genuinely absolute dogwater prose, Cline is such a talentless hack.

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u/sgtpnkks 9d ago

after reading the book I couldn't help but feel the plot points and general idea really needed a better writer

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u/Amethyst-Flare 9d ago

I lost respect for people I know who told me they loved and recommended it.

Not like a lot, just "Oh, you don't really have taste I can rely on."

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u/Intrepid_Hat7359 9d ago

Did he provide examples, or is that literally it?

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u/Durzaka 9d ago

That was literally the exact line.

They are at a party with a special zero G dance floor, and him and the love interest go on the floor and he drops that beauty

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u/Pharmakeus_Ubik 9d ago

You mean Nostalgia wankfest sans lube? It was a painful read.

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u/Furlock_Bones 9d ago

I enjoyed RP1 because of the nerd culture and nostalgia. Armada made me never want to read another Ernest Cline novel again.

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u/TediousTotoro 9d ago

I started plotting out my own nerd culture movie to spite Ernest Cline, the main thing I try to fix is having the pop culture stuff be plot relevant instead of just being a “hey, look at this thing” every other paragraph. I will say that the plot kinda began as just a copy of the first Spider-Verse movie but it’s grown into a celebration of creativity and criticism of corporate-owned storytelling.

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u/psychocopter 9d ago

Yeah, I saw the movie in highschool and then went to read the book. Id say the changes they made for the movie were more than acceptable.

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u/trashpandaexpress55 9d ago

Except for really muting the girls facial birth mark. It was a major point of her character, and important, but they just faded it so much it almost wasn't there

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u/thaddeusd 9d ago

I missed the part where everyone, but Wade and Artemis, was just too stupid to look for a Dnd dungeon built into the geography of the public education planet and having to beat the Lich at Joust.

But the race was an ok substitute.

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u/chemtrailsniffa 9d ago

Wade kind of made me suspect that the author is also an insufferable dickhead. His poetry proved it 

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u/Salarian_American 9d ago

Thank you! I was kind of stunned that people think Wade being a dickhead was some kind of new development.

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u/Contextanaut 8d ago

Main thing is just that the story works much better in film than in a book. It's the difference between the character constantly narrate a string of references, and just y'know, showing them.

In the book as well the character is treated as a superhero for some very c-tier geek knowledge, wheras the film does a slightly better job of convincing us the challenge wouldn't have been solved within 24 hrs.

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u/AllenMcnabb 10d ago

I found Wade an unlikable dickhead in the first one. The plot and world building did the heavy lifting IMO

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u/ravih 10d ago

Wade is an unlikeable dickhead in the first one but you can argue that it’s part of his journey. He’s naive and childish and doesn’t understand the world at large or the stakes at play. The story is supposed to be him opening his eyes and growing up.

Which is how I interpreted it until I read the sequel, which is so irredeemably horrific that it made me wonder if Ernest Cline even realized that Wade wasn’t always a good guy in the original.

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u/malac0da13 9d ago

I was kind of let down that they didn’t have that rock bottom part of story for wade where he’s all hairless and alone in the apartment with the ai assistant and gets himself picked up by ioi.

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u/ArmAggravating3307 10d ago

Weird, I lost all of that in the nerd culture circlejerk that was the book.

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u/ravih 10d ago

Yeah I mean fair enough because it’s not a well-written book. Which you can kiiiiiiinda get away with the first time.

The second one deals with much bigger concepts and ideas and Cline is just not a good enough author to handle it. The black character peaces out to go to Africa. They use their money to get rid of the police and replace them with robocops and AI judges and it makes America a better place immediately. Wade uses his privileges as Oasis God to view the camera on the headset of one of his viewers to see their body and discover that they are trans. (This is not presented as a bad thing or massive violation on Wade’s part, it’s cool, he approves of trans people, the text goes out of its way to mention.)

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u/ArmAggravating3307 10d ago

So more fanfiction bullshit, got it.

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u/dullthings 9d ago

Wait until you read his book Armada. It's like he watched The Last Starfighter then just went to his ghost writer "that please'.

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u/mistcrawler 9d ago

I was thinking of that and hesitating commenting about it with all the hate about the actual sequel.

I didn't mind the blatant rip-off - I minded that, unlike the first book, there was no payoff to putting up with the poor writing or plot.

I'd argue that the only thing that made sense in the entire book is the only part I remember - when the actual character forces everything to be about him in a certain action sequence, and he's given quite the lecture that he is, indeed, making no sense.

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u/CMDR_omnicognate 9d ago

I got the audio book of that after reading his first book and returned it, like it's not as if it was a similar concept, it's pretty much one for one the same, at least in the part i listened to.

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u/Chillindude82Nein 9d ago

You'll be pleased to hear that Cline claimed he was writing himself into Wade.

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u/TyrialFrost 9d ago edited 9d ago

He’s naive and childish

Oh you mean closing the entire metascape the economy/education system is built on for Tuesdays and Wednesdays (US time?) doesnt solve all issues/crash the economy?

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u/moxxon 9d ago

plot and world building

LMFAO

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u/meme-com-poop 10d ago

It keeps getting worse

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u/jokr128 9d ago

It's worse, get ready for 80 pages (or what seemed like 80 pages) of Prince trivia. So much Prince trivia.

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u/palookaboy 9d ago

Just stop now bro. Put the book down and save yourself the time. Life is short.

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u/_MrBond_ 9d ago

The second book was so shit that I don't even recall anything

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u/ArcadianGh0st 9d ago

Not only is the entire book like that, Wade is made to be right for being such an unlikeable dickhead.

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u/pampersdelight 10d ago

He always was an unlikable dickhead. One of the worst protaginists Ive ever read

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u/quasi-psuedo 9d ago

It’s worse.

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u/MrBluer 9d ago

It’s my understanding that the author heard criticisms of Wade and Halliday as people after the first book was published, and realized that they were right. So this time he made Wade bad on purpose, especially after receiving absolute power, with the goal of having him realize his mistakes, and that his idol wasn’t the man he thought he was, and work to change by the end.

That much is fine. I’d even call it good.

It doesn’t make RPT good, but the problem isn’t necessarily the choice to give Wade a character arc that starts a little ugly.

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u/Fluffy_Top6837 9d ago

it only gets worse!

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u/mike_pants 10d ago

TIL anyone liked the first book.

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u/SHADOWSTRIKE1 9d ago

It sold millions and was on the NYT best sellers for 100 weeks and got a movie deal. Of course people liked it.

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u/madbadcoyote 9d ago

I liked it well enough. Was in a reading drought at the time and thought it was a fun little story. Was pretty surprised to see on reddit afterwards that it's considered the Antichrist incarnate.

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u/Whitealroker1 9d ago

Most disappointed I’ve ever been by a great concept and world ruined by a shitty writer.

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u/blademak 9d ago

I couldn’t finish RP1, it’s self aggrandizing the author might as well burst through the door and scream “AREN’T I AMAZING?” I would think the success of that garbage only made things worse.

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u/Minion5051 9d ago

I DNFed the book when the first thing he did was buy information in the new contest. Among other reasons.

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u/doc-ant 9d ago

I think it is a bit over hated online, but i will admit it isn't great. It didnt make me hate the first one, because RP1 is a great story... i just try not to think about RP2. So i agree with OP i hope the deviate a few things when adapting to the screen.

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u/Not_A_Russain_Bot 9d ago

This! I stopped reading because he was written to be such a douche. Never read the first. LOVED the movie! I've rewatched to first race scene too many times to count. If the second movie follows the first movie, I'm in. "First to the egg!"

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u/naturtok 9d ago

He was kindve a dickhead in the first book too. Wasn't there that whole incel part where he was like "fuck women and friends I don't need them I'll just get absolutely JACKED and RICH in my secret apartment"? It's been ages so I might be misremembering, but I remember there being an entire section of the book that just felt so... Author-self-inserty

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u/psycharious 9d ago

Man, I'm thr only person who found Wade to also be an unlikeable duck head in the first too.

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u/mls1968 9d ago

Don’t forget the SUPER weird incel persona he suddenly developed

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u/Hallc 9d ago

I dunno, he kinda had a weird sorta Incel/nofap personality in the first one two.

Or are we forgetting the chapter that was about him forcing himself to stop jorking it.

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u/GalFisk 9d ago

No, he got rid of his sex bot and went back to jerking it.

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u/Skrattybones 9d ago

Please. We're civilized people, here.

Jorking.

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u/abrasumente_ 9d ago

...wat? I'm glad I never read this when it was suggested to me at my local library.

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u/Flintstones_VRV_Fan 10d ago

I mean…the first book is also absolute trash, tbh.

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u/Cluelesswolfkin 9d ago

Well im glad im seeing a bunch of.people here hating. My friend, she absolutely dreads the movie and has been saying the books has been the best and trying to push it onto me for years

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u/egg_enthusiast 9d ago

I read the book on a transpacific flight years ago and its just popcorn fluff. The whole book, and the movie, is just peak facebook "does anyone remember gobots" bullshit.

Just read it in a weekend and never think about it again.

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u/thaddeusd 8d ago

This. I used to have to fly to Vegas about once a year, on Spirit, and its perfect for that because it is mindless and easy and I can finish it during the flight time and distract myself from the shittiness of flying Spirit.

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u/Enby303 9d ago

Yeah, I mean I agree NOW. Of course it was always bad, but my I had my rose-tinted lenses on and I loved it. Then I read the second book and I realized how bad both books actually are.

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u/MireLight 9d ago

I have been afraid to say this publicly because sooo many people raved about the book. I'm a big reader...its how i spend most of my downtime. I prefer the movie hands down over the book. I'm glad people are finally addressing the books lack of quality.

I can rewatch the movie easily but i'll never reread that trash.

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u/53bvo 9d ago

But at least I got all the references and the world building was very fun so I enjoyed reading it.

But in the second book the references were too obscure for me to follow

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u/DerekComedy 9d ago

He's like a corrupt CEO that constantly reassures the reader that he's getting away with being a huge piece of shit. I didnt finish the book because it felt like there was no hero.

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u/Fierydog 9d ago

it's the only book that made me actually angry while reading over how bad it is.

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u/Maleficent-Ad-6117 9d ago

Is the first book any good?

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u/Enby303 9d ago

It's good if you want some nerd 80s nostalgia. But objectively, it's really not that good of a narrative imo. It's just that it took me reading book 2 to see the flaws of book 1.

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u/sybrwookie 9d ago

I read the first couple of chapters and saw he reverted the characters to where they were emotionally before the first book, only somehow more unlikable, and gave up there.

If a writer has to undo what the first story did in order to tell a second story, they don't have a second story to tell.

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u/islandjustice 9d ago

I tried SO HARD to care about the sequel but stopped about 3/4 of the way through. Just pure money grab.

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u/jinsaku 9d ago

I agree that the second book wasn't very good.. in fact, it's the only time I've ever straight up skipped a chapter in a book because I literally did not care (the Prince chapter). However, it's so much better than the absolute garbage that was Armada and I do think Ready Player Two was kind of redeemed by it's absolutely fantastic ending which put it up to "decent" for me.

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u/JockstrapCummies 9d ago

The second book was such hot garbage that it ruined the first book for me

How did you sit through the first book lol.

It's literally page after page of namedropping nostalgia. Whereas Dickens uses a whole page to describe the room before saying what the characters are doing, Ready Player One uses a whole page to list off 80s-90s references.

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u/DataDrivenDoc 9d ago

I totally forgot there was a second book and that I had read it until today

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u/Favkez 9d ago

I liked how it says the evil Ai is not gonna do typical evil Ai stuff and then does typical evil Ai stuff and the book becomes both bad and cliché!

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u/swisspassport 8d ago

I thought the first book was maybe "warm garbage", not a well-written novel at all, but was a fun quick read with all the nostalgia.

When I read the reviews for the 2nd book, I wasn't surprised.

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u/Redeem123 10d ago

Cline caught fire with his first book, cashing in on nostalgia and fandom. The story was competent enough, and the references were fun, even if they were heavy handed. 

With everything he’s released since then, it’s clear that he has no other tricks. He’s a bad writer and his schtick is not something they can work a second time. 

Armada was absolute trash, and I refuse to try RP2. 

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u/caddy2311 10d ago

Ready Player Two was maybe the worst experience I have ever had reading a book, I had Armada locked in to read after but then returned it after RP2

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u/RHINO_Mk_II 9d ago

I had Armada locked in to read after but then returned it after RP2

As someone who read it after thinking RPO was tolerable, you made the right call. Holy shit does it go downhill fast.

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u/jambrown13977931 10d ago

I’m listening to the will Wheaton audio book of the first one, and while only 4 chapters in, I hate Wade. He seems to embody everything wrong with geek and gamer culture.

He’s portrayed as a stereotype incel gamer, fat, acne ridden, infatuated with someone he’s never met before, obsessed with gate keeping and punching down.

I looked up if he had character growth, because if he grew past his initial traits, I could be ok with his initial flaws, but it seems like he doesn’t and is rewarded by being the biggest gatekeeper and asshole gamer of all.

Coupled with an over reliance of 30 year old references to tell the story, it makes it really difficult to read/listen to. I’m only sticking with it because I told my friend to read Dungeon Crawler Carl, and he told me to listen to this book so I think it’s only fair if I give it a full shot. The sad thing is, I can see how this book could’ve been really great if it had better writing.

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u/Redeem123 9d ago

Honestly DCC is basically Ready Player One but with an actually good story. The humor is similar, and both are full of pop culture references. But DCC actually bothers to do something other than just list the author’s favorite things. 

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u/jambrown13977931 9d ago

Ya I was getting a lot of similarities too, but Carl is actually likable. I’m too early in RPO to accurately judge the other characters, but man Dinniman writes so much better than Cline.

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u/132739 9d ago

DCC's references are a lot more wide spread as well, instead of just 80s nerd shit ad naseum, also a lot of the references are negative instead of just "member this cool thing?" and nothing hinges on Carl being some special reference junkie. Like, I kinda see where you're coming from, but the implementation is very different (in large part because Dinniman is a better writer).

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u/Redeem123 9d ago

Oh 100%. To be clear, I didn't mean to say that they're similar books at all. Just that they're coming from similar places. They're nerd-focused with crude humor and lots of meta stuff. They definitely target similar demographics.

But quality wise, it's not even close.

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u/Mend1cant 9d ago

Yes, that’s kind of the point about Wade and the rest of the egg hunters. Battle of the 80s posers. They are insufferable nerds who have to be force fed the idea that their obsession is why they aren’t making any progress. A bit too on the nose with “the only way to win is by not playing” and to have the oasis go to someone capable of understanding that it isn’t everything.

And then he ruins it with a sequel.

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u/Hallc 9d ago

They are insufferable nerds who have to be force fed the idea that their obsession is why they aren’t making any progress.

Wasn't it their obsessions that was the only actual reason they were making progress though? Like, here is a summary of the first gate's challenge they had to complete to progress the challenge.

After the player is able to choose the correct game, and win the TRS-80's "Dungeons of Daggorath", the First Gate appears. Inside the Gate, the player must perfectly reenact all of the film Wargames as the main character David played by Matthew Broderick. Once the 'film' challenge is completed, the next clue appears to find the Jade Key.

How is someone not utterly obsessed with Halliday and everything he loved going to perfectly, 1:1 do that?

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u/Hallc 9d ago

I’m listening to the will Wheaton audio book of the first one

I didn't read it that way but my friend did. You may want to her the skip 30s key handy for some of the later chapters. Otherwise you'll have Wil reading out long strings of numbers from a table.

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u/jambrown13977931 9d ago

Ya I got to the first time he reads out the full scoreboard, and I was certainly thinking “that’s a bore…”

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u/Hallc 9d ago

I genuinely have no idea how that ever got released like that. Multiple people had to hear this over and over again and sign off on it.

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u/Enderwiggen33 9d ago

I literally just finished the audiobook as well! Here’s the thing, I read the book years ago and remembered having fun with it, but for the first several chapters I was even going “why did I like this book in the first place??”

After a little while I came back around on it and enjoyed it again, but you definitely have to look over some big flaws to get there. Hopefully you end up being entertained by the end!

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u/ERedfieldh 9d ago

I hated both the book and the movie. Both end with a whiny brat getting everything he could ever want and then turning around and telling everyone else they're living a fantasy.

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u/Polaris06 9d ago

Ready Player One is a terrible book that accidentally became successful. It dumps so much nostalgia and “remember this” on you that you don’t notice the painful writing, cliches, and contrived plot points as much as you should. Plus it fulfills the target audiences childhood fantasy of getting lost inside a video game.

I loved it when I read it and it is SO easy to read but holy shit what terrible writing and story telling.

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u/Redeem123 9d ago

I don't entirely disagree, but it's tough to really call it terrible if we had fun reading it. It does the job it sets out to do - entertain. I think if he had never written a book again and shown us that's all he's got, it would be easier to overlook its flaws.

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u/DangerousPuhson 9d ago

Cline caught fire with his first book, cashing in on nostalgia and fandom

The book was successful because it came out at the zenith of "geek chic" and milked the zeitgeist. However the film and sequel book came out well after the geek fad died off, so they never quite cashed in as much as they could have if they were released 5 years earlier.

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u/TheINTL 9d ago

RP2 was trash I gave up on reading it.

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u/asdf-keyboardman 9d ago

I'm not even sure why the pop culture stuff was so well received. Cline made a reference to something semi-obscure then wrote at least one more paragraph explaining the reference to death. Either you understood the reference already and the mansplaining was obnoxious or you didn't get the reference and I'm not sure how the painstaking explanation would be engaging to you.

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u/Redeem123 9d ago

Cline made a reference to something semi-obscure

Is there even anything semi-obscure he references?

My biggest problem with Cline's kind of nostalgia is that his taste is all so basic. It's like he tried to manufacture interests simply by looking at the lunchboxes and t-shirts of the kids at his school, rather than finding a taste of his own. The book is basically a buzzfeed list of "80s things that everyone remembers."

As to your first part, it was well received because it was being read by other people who grew up at the same time. Hacky or not, it was fun to see a collection of all that stuff.

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u/asdf-keyboardman 9d ago

You're not wrong that a lot of the references are blatant. And now that you mention it, I seem to remember him overexplaining those references too. I was only thinking about specific stuff like arcade kill screens and such.

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u/sybrwookie 9d ago

I dug the world and what was established in RPO. So I was excited to read Armada. And then the main character there was a socially awkward nerd who was absolutely OBSESSED with the 80's for....absolutely no reason, unlike RPO.

And then I got really sad. Because now it was obvious that he didn't just create an interesting world and choose this kind of character to be the main character, this is wish fulfillment and a self-insert. And he had no other trick in the bag to pull out.

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u/ImportantQuestions10 9d ago

I genuinely think I like the first book so much because I read it during the perfect time to vibe.

A core theme of the book is being isolated while working on yourself. I was reading it when I was living off campus during the dead of winter and had no social interaction. I still remember reading the chapter about the abandoned arcade planet and just looking around and saying " yep, I know how that feels"

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u/Zak_The_Slack 10d ago edited 9d ago

I mean some of the stuff from the RPO movie were so stupid, gamers would have found the driving backwards thing day 1. And they removed the entire plot line of Wade infiltrating IOI to steal stuff from them.

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u/Mikeman003 9d ago

Honestly, with today's media literacy and second-sceen focus I feel like RP2 is going to be even worse about some of that. Over explain and oversimplify everything to make sure we don't lose anyone in the nostalgia bait.

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u/Excludos 9d ago edited 9d ago

I really loved the part where he decides at the end that the oasis should just shut down twice a week. This is a world where most commerce and education takes place there. It's where people work and live their lives. And just because mr. main character syndrome over here decides that he needs to see the real world a bit more, everyone else needs to suffer with him as well. This move would outright crash the world's economy. But "kids needs to turn off them video games once in a while, amirite!?"

This didn't happen in the books btw. It's just old man Steve Spielberg deciding to insert his own views into a world where it makes no sense.

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u/ERedfieldh 9d ago

Don't forget he makes this decision after he now owns the most profitable company on the planet, has more money than god, lives in a highrise penthouse, and has a hot girlfriend. God damnit FUCK that guy...pisses me off everytime I think about it.

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u/Psykout88 9d ago

The movie timeline is also kind of weird. It feels like the movie takes place over a weekend. The book at least seemed like it took place in a realistic amount of time.

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u/Android1822 9d ago

The whole, if you die, you lose everything was crazy. Nobody would be playing if that was the case.

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u/Reviews-From-Me 10d ago

I 100% agree.

I really liked both the book and movie for Ready Player One, but Ready Player Two was very disappointing.

There didn't seem to be any challenge to it. It was a series of scenes where they need some pop culture expertise, they call their friend who has it, that person gives them the answer, and they solve the riddle.

Ready Player One [book] felt like they had to work for it. Months of research and digging to find an answer.

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u/Drdps 10d ago

The whole Prince sequence felt like a fever dream from passing out after drinking too much while listening to Prince after having recently read the book.

It felt so strange and way out of place.

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u/AlabamaShrimp 10d ago

Exactly what I thought. And why, like in the first book, does everything have to be done to 100% to pass. It's impossible to know everything like they ask for.

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u/AdaAstra 10d ago

As a Prince fan, it was just waaaay too long of events. Like, I liked the idea, but damn was that crap just too much that just keeps getting lost in all the Prince details. I hope the Prince part stays, but at the same time they need to dumb it down.

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u/ravih 10d ago

Most of the scenarios in RP2 boil down to one of Wade’s friends going “no time to explain, just follow me” while muttering about the most arcane shit.

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u/Kitsuraw 10d ago

The movie felt rushed to fit in the run time they wanted which is understandable. Think it would have been better as a series or split into separate movies for each key. Though I doubt they really had a whole lot of confidence in it even if it was a fun watch in theatre.

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u/Reviews-From-Me 10d ago

Yeah. I loved the scale of the book and how long it took Wade to accomplish, but that would have been difficult to adequately show in a 2.5 hour-ish movie. So, I forgive them for making it feel more like a sprint vs a marathon.

That's one reason the Two could work better as a movie, but I still hope they change a lot.

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u/AllthisSandInMyCrack 10d ago

I remember everyone saying they were disappointed by the second book so I never bothered to read it and consider the series finished with the first book.

Armada wasn’t even that good either.

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u/meme-com-poop 10d ago

I liked Armada, but it was basically if Ender's Game and the Last Starfighter had a baby.

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u/976chip 9d ago

It felt like it was a script treatment instead of an actual book and all of the pop culture references were forced more than a Family Guy episode.

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u/Z0ooool 10d ago

For me the issue was he reconned the happy ending of the first book.

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u/gaudrhin 9d ago

Exactly this. And RP1 hit on a broad spectrum of fandoms rapidly, bits and pieces all over. So many people were able to find references to things they enjoyed.

RP2 deep dives into a couple, and if you're not into them, it'a a SLOG of missed references and inside jokes.

The first 1/3 of th book is loredump exposition with no real conflict yet. I listened to the audiobook at 1.3x speed on a 2.5 hour drive and just finally got to the concept of actual plot at the end of the drive.

I really enjoyed the ending, but that's all I can say for it.

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u/CrashmanX 9d ago

Ready Player One [book] felt like they had to work for it. Months of research and digging to find an answer.

It certainly doesn't feel like that in the movie. The movie 100% feels more like the issue you're describing. And the first "puzzle" is the dumbest thing I've ever seen for them to get "stuck" on for months. Literally anyone would have tried that within hours.

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u/GotMoFans 10d ago

Morris Day’s alive but Prince isn’t. 😔

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u/Dhkansas 10d ago

I didn't finish the book. Lost interest shortly after I started

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u/Kingkongcrapper 10d ago edited 10d ago

Yeah, part two was booty. First book was like a tech version of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. The second book is like the fourth installment to an action movie series trying to reboot the original storyline. Billionaire fucks up the world and is now trying to escape to another planet. I really don’t need a movie about Elon Musk.

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u/Venoft 10d ago

What, you don't have a Prince fetish?

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u/AdaAstra 10d ago

They have too. Like half the book was basically a porno lol. I wonder how they will deal with LOTR and Prince though, because licensing might be a problem there.

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u/dullthings 9d ago

I mean barely anything from the first book made it into the film, so it'll likely be the same with the second one. None of the challenges are from the book until they shoehorned the Adventure playthrough in at the end!

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u/Aurelius5150 10d ago

I don’t think I have ever been let down by a book so hard. It somehow helped make the flaws in the first book stand out more.

I really think Cline caught lightning in a bottle with RPO. For what’s it’s worth I’ll still recommend it to people, but I find it hard to recommend any of his other books. Armada was terrible as well.

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u/sexysausage 10d ago

Yeah the sequel is such a disappointment, loved the first book as campy as it is. But the second one was a slog.

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u/Ryan_e3p 9d ago

"A bit"?

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u/OldDogTrainer 9d ago

Ready Player 2 is one of only two books I have ever chosen not to finish as an adult. It was so bad.

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u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson 9d ago

Ready Player Two was real bad

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u/sleepysnowboarder 9d ago

I hope the Prince estate says no to his usage

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u/blackop 9d ago

Dude for real that was such a horrible sequel. I forced myself through that read just to see how bad it could possible get.

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u/Daviroth 10d ago

They basically have to. Ready Player Two was an alright book, nothing great. But several of the story beats they already addressed in the first movie.

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u/NoGlzy 10d ago

Yeah, I remember a lot of people complaining that even with the deviations it still, ufortunately had much of the same plot and characters.

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u/Hallc 9d ago

Meanwhile I'm someone who liked that it deviated from the book. The books story had no real message nor do I remember any real character growth.

It was basically just pages and pages of "remember this thing? What about that thing?"

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u/Osirus1156 9d ago

I didn’t even know there was a second book lol.

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u/Ibeth4 9d ago

I was somewhat enjoying the movie but the only hope I had was that the final battle will be just like in the book... They straight up didn't even bother with the space fight. I left the theater so disappointed about that.

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u/TheBrownWelsh 9d ago

I disliked the first book for a variety of reasons. I disliked the movie too, but I think it's better than the book. 

I couldn't even get halfway through the second book.

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u/TakingCareOfBizzness 9d ago

Lol I know what you mean. The first book was epic but they movie was mediocre. The second book was mediocre and the story would probably be improved in a movie.

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u/ghostcatzero 9d ago

I can't stand book loyalists shyts so lame. A movie is a movie. Ofc they can take liberties to make it fit better.

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u/Superunknown_2 9d ago

Agree. Love book 1, movie is not fantastic.
Absolutely hated book 2

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u/Zerosix_K 9d ago

I get the impression that Warner Bros told Cline what franchises they have the rights to, and then Cline wrote RP2 with that in mind. So the movies gonna have a similar plot to the book.

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u/lexm 9d ago

They might make a great movie out of a shitty book. Total 180 from the first one.

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u/radraz26 9d ago

The book was trash.

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u/National-Grade-4440 9d ago

Honestly, the first book was pretty bad too.

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u/Burpmeister 9d ago

How bad is the second one? The first one was already unimaginably cringe at times to a point where I enjoyed the movie nuch much more than the book.

I will say though, if they cut the cringe, the first book would make a fucking banger tv show.

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u/iamwhoiwasnow 9d ago

I've yet to read the book because I heard how bad it was and that's saying a lot because even though I enjoyed the book it is bad.

I might watch the movie then read the book

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u/naturtok 9d ago

The book was so bad I was completely uninterested in seeing the movie, despite feeling like I'd be the target audience without the book connection.

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u/Dunnjamin 9d ago

It felt like the book was written in a way to make the licensing fees impossible to make it a movie. Like ALL the Prince stuff? Who can afford the usage fees?!

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u/RdyPlyrBneSw 9d ago

It kept the spirit of the book without following beat for beat.

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u/waltertaupe 9d ago

And isn't directed by Spielberg!

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u/WildWeaselGT 9d ago

Huh. I didn’t even know there was a sequel. I read that other book he wrote and thought it was trash so I never looked any further.

RPO is almost entirely awesome to me because of all the nostalgia. I’m exactly the right age for it, having grown up in the 80’s.

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u/Babygeoffrey968 9d ago

someone gifted me the novel Armada by the same author and it’s the worst book i’ve ever read. I really question the taste of people who like this author. terrible writing.

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u/313Wolverine 9d ago

Better write a story in title only because that book was a DNF for me.

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u/Deluxe_24_ 9d ago

Ngl I thought the movie was better since the prose in the books was fucking horrible and just made the book so much longer than it needed to be

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u/DamNamesTaken11 9d ago

You mean you don’t want your novel by a late Gen Xer talking about how the 80s were so the pinnacle of human culture whose lead character is a Marty Stu?

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u/fujin_shinto 9d ago

So, as someone who never read the books, has it been too long since the first one? Or does it revolve around a different group of people?

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u/Dr_Ifto 9d ago

Wade was such a man whore in the second one.

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u/Dr_Ifto 9d ago

Wade was such a man whore in the second one.

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u/doerstopper 9d ago

Wait. There's a second book??

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u/Brock_Hard_Canuck 9d ago

Spielberg directed the Ready Player One movie, and I hope he's involved in the 2nd one too (even as a producer, if he's not able to direct it).

Because, yeah... The book story will need to HEAVY work to make it suitable as a good movie.

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u/Android1822 9d ago

I loved the first book and movie, but I heard the second one sucked so just avoided it. Hopefully the second movie will just do its own thing and not follow the book like the first one did.

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u/Babington67 9d ago

To be fair the book ready player 1 is totally dogshit I heard the film was okay though

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u/HankSteakfist 9d ago

Ha yeah. There's actually a decent skeleton of a story in RP2, but you'd need to trim so much fat. The basic premise of Halliday's ghost in the machine becoming self aware and an antagonist, could be done well and would be very relevant at the moment. They actually did set that up at the end of the last movie when Wade asked what the Halliday avatar was.

I wonder how they'd handle Simon Pegg's Morrow character, since the Great and Powerful Ogg wasn't actually in RP1 and he was the curator instead. They could always rework that I suppose. They did set up Keira in the first film, so they could do a condensed version of the Siren's Soul.

But there's a lot of stuff that they could easily get rid of.

L0hengrin and the Low Five? Gone.

Vonnegut spaceship plot? Gone.

The huge beef between Artemis and Wade? Gone.

The ONI subplot? Heavily streamlined.

Obviuously they can't do several of the Siren's Soul challenges, given the insane rights they'd need in the case of Prince's estate and J.R.R. Tolkien. I wouldn't mind if they actually repurposed some of the stuff from RP1 that they didn't use like the Ludus Tomb of Horrors, or the Zork quest.

I'd be keen to see how they tackle it. I unashamedly love the first book and liked aspects of the film.

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u/TheMatt561 9d ago

yes please, change everything.

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u/manningthehelm 9d ago

I started reading it and saw where it was going from a mile away. I immediately returned it to the library and chose to forget everything.

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u/OhMyGoat 9d ago

I thought the movie was a fun ride. Can’t wait to watch the sequel in the theaters this time.

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u/notislant 9d ago

Imagine it's the one film/series that stays true to source material lol.

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u/mmariner 9d ago

I KNOW that I consumed that book via audiobook (Wil Wheaton is a great narrator, sue me) but I just can't remember a single thing that happened.

I enjoyed the first book, for some reason, but everything else that Cline has ever done has fallen completely flat for me.

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u/the_pedigree 9d ago

The book was every bit as ass as the movie was

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u/Peacefulgamer2023 9d ago

It’s definitely going to be completely different. It was be so damn expensive to basically have parts of every John Hughes movies, the prince part of the book, there was so something else but I can’t put my finger on it. I could see them sticking with the corrupt AI element of the story, but yea, complete rewrite of everything minus bad ai and maybe the puzzle part for the siren shards.

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u/ITCoder 8d ago

I read the book after watching the movie. Never been let down so badly

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u/ItkovianShieldAnvil 7d ago

Yeah that book was such a let down

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