S01E15 — Ready Player One

SPOILER ALERT: This episode and transcript below contains major spoilers for Ready Player One

Featuring hosts Timothy Haynes, Donna Haynes, Rebekah Edwards, and T. Josiah Haynes.

Ready Player One might be one of the most book is better books we’ve ever read. Wade’s angry rants? Iconic. The insane D&D module for the copper key? Chef’s kiss.

This one’s a family favorite, but you’ll have to listen to find out which of us is not a fan of the ending…

Final Verdicts

If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, we recommend waiting to read our verdicts. (But you’re probably grown, so do what you want!)

The family verdict is in: the book reigns supreme for its depth and 80s nostalgia, but Donna’s heart lies with the movie’s cinematic charm.

Tim: The book was better

Donna: The movie was better

Rebekah: The book was better

Josiah: The book was better

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Full Episode Transcript

Prefer reading? Check out the full episode transcript below. It’s AI-generated from our audio, and if we’re being honest… no one sat to read the entire thing for accuracy. (After all, we were there the whole time.) 😉 We’re sorry in advance for any typos or transcription errors.

[00:00:00] Rebekah: This is the most annoying sound you’ve ever heard. 

[00:00:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, 

[00:00:05] Josiah: where were the Jimmy Neutron references in this movie?

[00:00:24] Rebekah: Hey, welcome to the book is better podcast. We are a clean podcast featuring a family of four reviewing book to film adaptations. And today we are reviewing what is Spoiler alert, one of my favorite books and its adapted film, Ready Player One, uh, spoiler alert. There will be major plot spoiling spoilers throughout this entire episode of Ready Player One, uh, and maybe Ready Player Two for the book and the movie.

Yes. So if you haven’t read the book or the movie or watch the movie and would like to do those things before listening, you know, Go ahead and pause, because we’ll definitely spoil it. So, before we get started. The book and movie spoilers 

[00:01:08] Josiah: are definitely different from one another. 

You know, you will find 

out they’re very different.

[00:01:15] Rebekah: Um, okay. So let’s introduce ourselves and we like to answer a little fun fact about who we are before we get deep into all of this. And so today’s fun fact, what is your favorite game? Whether it’s like a video game or a board game. So I’ll go first. I’m Rebecca. I’m the daughter slash son of. sister of the family, and I am a big board game nerd.

Video games, too. I’m kind of just a nerd on all sides, so anything like Mario, I’m always into that video game type of thing, but I think right now my favorite game is probably the board game Wingspan. Um, I find myself like constantly wanting to go back and play it and play it and play it, and that is usually how I know that something is, like, really, like, captured my attention.

[00:02:02] Josiah: Wow. Well, I am Josiah, and I love games too, tabletop and video alike. My favorite video game is Hollow Knight. I learned to love the difficulty. None of you know what that means, but hopefully at least one listener will understand. But I, I keep coming back to Puns of Anarchy. Kind of color. Oh, I do like that tabletop game.

You make your own puns and jokes out of existing pop culture, which I think is especially 

[00:02:34] Tim: relevant to Ready Player one. Well, my name’s Tim and I am the dad slash husband, or. I did that backwards. Donna doesn’t like that. But, um, I am not a big game player. Um, I play games to be part of the group. Uh, so, I don’t have a whole lot of things that, that I would play regularly.

I like telestrations because I like to see the funny people. Funny words that you end up with from the strange drawings that people draw. Um, and I like playing nines, which is an easy game to play and still have a conversation. But if I’m playing something by myself, I do play Angry Birds, a lot of different iterations of it.

And you know, for a week or so, I might play it a lot and then I won’t play it for, you know, months. I was going through my phone just recently to see if I wanted to, you know, to take things off of my phone and I considered taking off several of the games that I haven’t played for months and some of the Angry Birds were there as well.

So, that’s me. 

[00:03:35] Donna: Well, I’m Donna. I’m the wife and mom of this group and I don’t know why I went last, probably because I knew everybody’s gonna judge me, but I’m obsessive about So when I find games that I like, I will play them and live to be playing them on my phone. So on my phone, the games that are loaded are, uh, simple.

Mahjong, Bubble Pop, and Why I’m My Mother. Um, and, 

[00:04:08] Rebekah: you are, but, go on, SpongeBob, Bubble Pop, 

[00:04:11] Donna: Spotter Solitaire, and Royal, um, Royal Crush? Is that what it’s called? Royal? 

[00:04:18] Rebekah: No, Royal, oh my gosh, it’s on my phone too, what is it? I 

[00:04:21] Donna: play it every day. 

[00:04:22] Rebekah: Grandma’s Gardens. Shut 

[00:04:24] Donna: up, that’s what Christian calls it, Royal Match.

Royal match, and 

[00:04:29] Tim: That’s a lot worse than royal crush. Let me say game so that you can win things, so that you can decorate the king’s house. 

[00:04:37] Donna: So let 

[00:04:37] Rebekah: me just say that Just totally fun and not at all a waste of time. As someone else who has played this game for so many hours, it’s embarrassing. 

[00:04:46] Tim: Ready Player One follows Wade Watts, a young man living in the 2040s.

He seeks a video game easter egg that’s hidden in the massive VR universe of the OASIS. It will award him total control of that simulation that has become the obsession of the entire world. Um, the egg was hidden by one of the OASIS creators, James Halliday, and requires the winner to complete a series of challenges to prove their worthiness.

As Wade looks for the clues, he and his friends band together to defeat the evil multinational corporation IOI, trying to win the contest for the egg before they gain cont before IOI gains control of the OASIS and make it a miserable world in which to live. So that’s a really short synopsis that covers both of them and there are lots of major changes between the two that we’ll talk about here.

[00:05:44] Rebekah: Well, let’s get into some major differences. Like you said, we like to divide these up into three buckets. We’ve got some characterization Um, plot and timeline differences, and then setting. So that’s the order we’re going to do them in day. And so let’s start, honestly, there’s like several little characterization changes about other people, but the very, very obvious one that I wanted to talk about was Wade.

Um, they definitely changed Wade a lot, um, and not all of which is a bad thing. Uh, so in the book, Wade is like. He’s so angry. I remember listening to the audio book again this time and just being reminded of how angry he was at the world. So he goes on, gosh, a chapter long rant about the state of the world and how there’s climate change.

And it’s like the previous generation’s fault and there’s wars and God is dead. And he’s like very like vocally atheist. And he talks about how evil capitalism is. And like, it, it really just, It’s not that I haven’t heard those arguments before, but I think that it’s almost like Ernest Cline was trying to paint Wade as, like, this very, very angry young man and kind of start out that way, which I thought was very different.

In the movie, he’s, like, sohonestly, he’s mild mannered and polite. 

[00:07:04] Tim: He almost doesn’t seem to recognize any of those kinds of things, except That IOI is a multinational corporation, and it would be terrible if they got control of the OASIS. All of those other concerns that the book brings up, he never even seems to pay any attention to those things.

[00:07:24] Josiah: I did not like Wade at the start of the book. Oh. Even just the ways that he was saying these things, whether or not they resonate with me. It was so cynical and depressing and there was no hope in it. Yeah. It was completely 

[00:07:41] Tim: There was also a, an air of arrogance in, in that because he made several statements will obviously everybody knows this.

Everybody realizes this. This is, this is truth. And a lot of those things are not truth, their opinion. So yeah, he was not the most likable person at the beginning. 

[00:08:02] Rebekah: It’s also very, everything he was saying was like, it’s the furthest, like, victim mindset of the things that he was thinking about. Um, and I say that partly because at the end of this episode, I would actually love to tell you guys about Ready Player Two, because I did, I did end up listening to the audiobook for that.

And that is actually a theme that crops up that is a major theme of Ready Player Two, is that unlike Artemis, he really does see himself as the victim of other people’s, you know, wrongdoings, and he doesn’t have an internal locus of control. Artemis does. And so when she becomes a billionaire, like she wants to do something to improve the world.

And anyway, I thought that that was really interesting. That was definitely not the only change though, 

[00:08:47] Tim: to Wade. Oh, no. In the book, Wade’s mother had died when he was 11 from taking a bad dose of drugs. His father died. Uh, when Wade was a small child shooting up at a gas station or he was shot, excuse me. I was thinking, I was thinking both of them died from drugs.

No, his, his mom died of a drug 

[00:09:09] Rebekah: overdose. While 

[00:09:10] Tim: looting and then the, the dad was shot by a police officer. Right. 

[00:09:15] Rebekah: In the movie, I don’t know that they mention how the parents died. He 

[00:09:21] Tim: just 

[00:09:23] Rebekah: simplifying, you know, some of those things down. 

[00:09:27] Josiah: Wade’s avatar in the Oasis looked very much like himself in the book, with the exception of removing acne and improving his appearance slightly.

The avatar in the film, however, looks like a totally different person. I think this makes sense from a visual medium. I’m kind of surprised they changed it as much as they did, but I think it was still very clear. And I think it speaks to something in us all that we often like to change a lot of what we look like for our online avatars.

[00:10:00] Donna: He also is described as heavyweight, heavy set, or as heavy in the book. 

[00:10:06] Josiah: Heavyweight champion. 

[00:10:07] Donna: Yeah, that’s it. But the film appearance in the, in the movie. He’s an average size. He’s not a skinny kid, but, but he’s not an overweight kid. And I, I think that was fine when he moved into an apartment. One of the things he did, you remember, he had like a daily exercise regimen, and it said he actually got in shape and, and Which, but that’s not until That was after he discovered 

[00:10:32] Rebekah: the second key.

[00:10:34] Donna: Oh, sure. It was later on and I was glad they did that in the book. In the movie, I mean, the, the way they changed things up wouldn’t have been, there wouldn’t have been a really good place to represent something like that anyway. So it’s, it’s okay. They didn’t put it in. But in the, the other part about him, uh, his, he’s wearing just default clothing in the book.

He just, and part of that is he makes, part of that is he makes a big deal about the fact they’re poor. They’re just. They’re incredibly poor. He has nothing. 

[00:11:05] Josiah: Unendingly. 

[00:11:06] Donna: Yes. And the only reason I didn’t just totally, fully hate him in the book was I kept remembering the state of his life. Yeah. Just thinking, you know.

It felt like it kind of justified how angry he was and like. It was still frustrating. I will, I agree with Josiah. It was very frustrating to read it. And when Tim first listened to it. We would talk at the house and he was like, uh, does this get better? It does. It does. I almost stopped reading the first time I heard 

[00:11:37] Rebekah: that part.

[00:11:38] Tim: I think the make the producers of the movie did make a nod to some of those things about Wade because the actor that played him is not a particularly, you know, perfect looking kind of guy. He is a little, uh, he’s not, High cheekbones with, you know, the, the chiseled look, he is a little soft, kind of a normal dude.

[00:12:01] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[00:12:02] Tim: Yeah. He does very normal, much more normal. So I thought that was probably, probably purposeful to kind of take all of those things from the book and just say, okay, he’s, he’s just, Kind of normal. So even though his avatar looks cool and trim and all of that, he’s just normal. 

[00:12:19] Josiah: I think that the movie makers wanted to make Wade into an everyman by making him a blank slate, whereas the author of the book, I do think wanted to make him an everyman in a way that he expressed views and thought about the world in a way that the author thought Most people think about the world, even if he found it relatable.

Yeah. And it, and it just wasn’t relatable in the book to me. And I think that can relate to Wade in the book. Then I would, I would encourage you to have more hope. Inhumanity. 

[00:12:57] Rebekah: Indeed. Um, other, like the other things I noticed about his poverty was that, like, that stuck out were he couldn’t even leave Ludus.

Like, that was a huge plot point, was that he couldn’t leave. Which is a planet. Yeah, he could always get to the school planet because that’s where he went to public school. And so, um, There was this, like, there was a lot of conflict around the fact that he really wanted to be a gunter, but he’d made the mistake of, like, asking people for rides, and he hated asking for money because he doesn’t clan, and, uh, you know, and all that stuff.

But what ended up, you know, occurring was that they discover Halliday’s actually, You know, wants to have a student or at least someone who wouldn’t have had to have a lot of money in, in the first place, be able to find the key. So it ends up coming, um, back around. So, and there were, do we just want to kind of do a lightning round of these few little other character changes?

That we noted. Sure, 

[00:13:56] Josiah: sure. I mean, IROC was one of the biggest character changes from book to movie. I know there were a lot of big changes. 

[00:14:02] Tim: Yeah. He, he comes off, um, in the movie. He seems to be a hired gun. He’s a henchman, uh, in the book. He’s actually one of those, he’s just one of those high school students who thinks he knows everything, thinks he’s a great Gunter and all that, but he’s not really.

Um, and, you know, h and. Uh, Wade actually, and Parzival, they actually know him. And they know where he’s from, and they talk to him and things like that. But in the movie, he’s much darker, much more separated from all of that. I always 

[00:14:35] Rebekah: remember the way that, uh, Will Wheaton pronounces, uh, the word poser, because, uh, Wade talks about how IROK is a poser, and he always says it really funny.

I don’t know why, but that always just stuck out to me. 

[00:14:49] Tim: Yes, as the original French. It’s, it’s wonderful when you get a really good, uh, audiobook reader. Sometimes we’ve, we’ve been listening to books that the reader is okay, but not great. I thought Wil Wheaton, uh, is really good. 

[00:15:06] Rebekah: Yeah. Do 

[00:15:07] Tim: you mean, do you mean where 

[00:15:08] Rebekah: the reader makes tons of grammatical errors because it’s AI and confused?

Well, that’s 

[00:15:13] Josiah: the Rebecca one, yeah. In the movie, there is an additional group of gunters of, of holiday experts who are working for IOI. It’s implied in the book. It’s not really addressed directly or seen. Wade predicts that there are people who are actually knowledgeable about Halliday in Sorrento’s ear, in the Sixers ears, but it’s never actually seen or directly confirmed.

But in the movie, you keep cutting back to these Halliday experts. There, there’s a, there are a couple who are kind of secondary characters. Who have a little bit of character arcs, in fact. Yeah, 

[00:15:53] Tim: I love. They look like those geeks who know all of the things about all of those, you know, trivial things that nobody else would know.

[00:16:01] Rebekah: One of the funniest parts, I think, of those people were that and I kind of loved this because, you know, Parzival had mentioned in the book about how he knew there were these people working for IOI, and he actually kind of gave them a little bit of credit at one point to say, like, I think he said something about, like, I kind of get why you would, like, take the money and help IOI, because honestly, it’s hard to be poor.

And so I kind of liked the fact that they added those people in. And then at the end of the book, sorry, at the end of the movie, that group of people is to see the egg and like that was what they wanted the whole time. 

[00:16:45] Donna: Also, another change that I definitely like the book better on this. Um, how they met Kira, took her on a date as an adult a month before the Oasis was launched.

That’s how the film phrase it. That all it all happened just before And as he was, as he was creating and everything, creating the array, but in the book, they, this happened in high school and it talked about, you know, it made a huge deal about Halliday’s awkwardness, his social awkwardness with anybody. I think probably my My greatest issue as far as the book and film differences, and we’ve already said a few times, there’s a lot of them.

They did a lot of difference. And I liked the movie. One of, one of the things that I missed in the movie, and I think they did it for time and to keep it younger. I loved seeing that, the, the development of who Halliday was in the book. I think you guys are going to be really interested to hear about 

[00:17:48] Rebekah: Ready 

[00:17:48] Donna: Player Two.

They covered it. I mean, it’s in the movie. It’s not that they just completely overlook it. But I love how all through the book, the things that Halliday went through, awkward, genius, honestly, technical or techy genius, whatever you want to call him. I just, I really loved how they, how they developed him.

That was probably my biggest miss. 

[00:18:10] Rebekah: They definitely changed, I mean they changed a lot. Uh, about the relationship between Halliday and Kira, but I think one of the misses there was partly that if you’ve read the book, Kira is like an exchange student from the UK. She, um, is staying with a family in the town where, um, Halliday and Aug live and like Aug falls in love with her and like, there’s this whole thing about the moment.

Actually, that might be in Ready Player Two. There’s like a moment where, like, Halladay sees Sog asking her out or something. Anyway, they, there was this, like, really sweet, like, teenage romance thing, and it just felt really weird to me to try to make it something that had, like, happened to them as adults and they just randomly, like, had gone on a date.

Like, that was weird to me. So, speaking of relationships. Um, one of the things that bothered me that was a very small thing as well, um, was Artemis. So obviously Artemis and Wade kind of have like a romance. In the book, they don’t really have like a romantic relationship, and like they like each other or they talk a lot, but they don’t have like a physically romantic relationship until they meet like at the end.

I don’t even know if you see that. I know it’s discussed in, in ready player two in the movie. They have this like little, you know, they’ve got this relationship going on and it bugs me so much that they added kind of a sensual scene in the distracted globe and like Artemis made sexual jokes. And like, there was this whole thing with Wade’s like outfit that he had on that’s like a fully immersed.

You know, you can feel everything. It really was, it was not in character and it wasn’t in character for her movie version either. Like, I felt like it was very out of place. So that was a change that I was not a big fan of. 

[00:20:04] Donna: I loved how their romance developed through the book and the way it, they established, she established the fact that she couldn’t date.

She just didn’t want to date right now. She wanted to be, but then she would, they did talk. And I loved how he. Just described talking to her and you could, it was very well fleshed out in the writing to, to see this relationship grow and I really loved that. And so I agree with you about that change in the, it didn’t have to go there.

It didn’t end up with anything. It didn’t end up going anywhere. All of the 

[00:20:39] Tim: relationships in the book were very different though. Um, there were times when they, when they didn’t want to team up, but in the movie they did team up. Um, there were, you know, they didn’t, they didn’t know these people and, you know, there was a lot of changes in those relationships.

One of the, one of the changes was, um, in the movie, H has a workshop and there’s a whole plot around that and he’s a mechanic and things like that. But, um, in the book, you don’t, you don’t get that. He has a, he has a chat room that is a literal, well, literal in the OASIS room that he’s created that’s supposed to be super safe and they can go in there and they can talk and all of that.

But the whole plot that’s related to him being a mechanic and, and his workshop and stuff like that, that’s for the movie only. Right. 

[00:21:33] Donna: And the, what they did with Daito and Shoto as well. 

[00:21:36] Rebekah: Yeah, there’s a lot that’s different about when people meet and who’s where and all of that stuff. Um, Wade and H already knew about Daito and Shoto in the opening movie.

scene. So it’s like introduced that they’re familiar with each other, maybe haven’t met in person, but in the book, they meet way later. It’s like all leading up to the final battle. Um, he learns about who they are after they gain the, uh, copper key and become part of what becomes known as the high five.

Um, and then in the movie, Wade sees Artemis at the race. At the beginning, he does meet Artemis. at the end of him, uh, retrieving the copper key. So it’s around the same time in the plot, but in a completely different way, because that was all totally different. 

[00:22:24] Josiah: So for those of you who have seen the movie but not read the book, the keys are completely different from book to film, and there are also gates, which effectively serve as three more challenges.

They, they say there’s three keys, three gates, but it is, it’s six challenges in the book. So let’s, let’s go through as quickly as we can, but with the detail it deserves. Also, 

[00:22:50] Rebekah: I will say Before we get into all of the key and gates and exactly what they are in the book They kind of jumped right in there was somebody who’d found the first poem or they call it a specific Limerick or something like that And then they kind of don’t talk about that anymore in the movie There was someone who found the first clue and discovered the race and then they just kind of That’s how they kind of pop all of this stuff first place Ah, the race.

[00:23:20] Josiah: And they don’t make a big deal about it or anything. It’s just, oh, somebody found the clue and so we race every day. There’s something to be said in the movie for the race just already happening all the time and Wade, Artemis, H having nothing to do with the, with finding the clue concerning the race and jumping into the action.

I think that as an audience member, it makes it, it does make it feel more realistic. Like, It’s not just these five people who keep winning things at the game, like, there are millions of people trying to find these things out. So, it, I think it speaks to some of the logic that the movie is bringing into it.

We, we are jumping into a lived in world. But at the same time, my suspension of disbelief, as much as It’s there for someone else, not in the movie. Having found the clue, there’s a race that happens all the time. Really? No one has cheated their way over King Kong. No one has like, put a jet pack on their car to try and get over King Kong or something.

It seems like a very weird, uh, Ray, it feels like a very weird way to get the copper key. Whereas in the book, all of the keys, as you’ll see, and gates. really have to do with 80s pop culture. 

[00:24:40] Rebekah: And you also have to like get to know Halliday and like his whole goal was to get you to be interested in the things that he found fascinating and that he loved in the movie.

It just kind of felt like These are just random things about all pop culture, like, for a long time. You know, it felt really specific in the book. So mom, can you walk us through what the movie used as the three keys to get the egg? 

[00:25:09] Donna: Certainly. So in the movie, like the book, they were copper, jade, and crystal, which they kept that.

That’s fine. The copper key was one Uh, winning the first challenge, which was a race through New York City to Central Park. Anorak gives a key to Par gives the key to Parcival, and then the clue to the second challenge appears from a nearby hydrant. That’s the upper key. 

[00:25:34] Rebekah: Oh, and explain the backwards thing, because that was the important thing for him being able to actually win the race.

[00:25:41] Donna: Right, in the movie that, well, I say in the movie, this isn’t in the book, people are running this race every day, like guides of people wait every day, get in line and they, they have, they just run race after race after race and nobody’s, nobody’s making it, they get to the end or what, is it like a gorilla or something that comes out of the wall?

King Kong, I think. King Kong, and decimates somebody, and so, um, At some point, something clicks in Wade’s head about a clue about something he’s read or studied because he, I mean, he is a Halliday genius, let’s be real, um, that he needs to do this backwards, he needs to turn it, and so without warning to anybody, he gets up to this certain place.

And flips his car around backwards and drives the rest of the race and that allows him to get past a, a bridge or, uh, something that’s like, He goes underneath, like he can see the code. Goes underneath the, 

[00:26:39] Tim: He drives backwards from the starting line. He simply goes the other direction. And as he goes the other direction, a ramp drops and he goes down below and he does the race underneath everybody else.

So he’s protected from all of the obstacles they’ve been going through. 

[00:26:56] Donna: Right. Um, the second key, which is the jade key, uh, can be found by asking for a dance with Kira in the gold room of the Shining’s Overlook Hotel. The jade key opens a jade gate that then provides a clue for the third key. And they, they did a, uh, little bit of the fun fact stuff I read.

They really wanted to make sure they used The Shining. Make this a big part of the movie. Was that in the book? Very important. 

[00:27:27] Tim: No, not at all. The Shining and all that. I didn’t think any of that was in the book. Why 

[00:27:31] Rebekah: did that, why was that important to them? Does it, did they say why? 

[00:27:35] Donna: Um, I just remember reading that that was a trying to get all that correct.

And, and use, I can’t remember if they went through a lot of rigamarole to get footage or if they tried to recreate some of it, um, or something like that, but. 

[00:27:53] Josiah: What, is it because the next year the Shining sequel was coming out, Dr. Sleep? 

[00:27:59] Donna: I mean, who knows, but I mean, I don’t know, they 

[00:28:01] Josiah: could have been connected 

[00:28:02] Donna: to the crystal keys discovered in Anorak’s castle on planet doom.

There’s an Atari 2600 that must be used to beat the classic video game adventure. Cars of all wins by not beating the game, but by finding the very first video game easter egg placed in the game by its designer. 

[00:28:21] Tim: Was, do you remember? His name. Hmm? The designer’s name. Warren? Which was the first time they got any credit.

It was at the Easter Egg. It starts with a W. It’s Warren Robinette. 

[00:28:34] Rebekah: Warren Robinette! I knew it was a Warren. No one eats 

[00:28:37] Josiah: alive! 

[00:28:38] Donna: Um, however, Finding the video Easter egg that had been Warren Robinette’s name stuck in there is not the final challenge. Farzeval is then presented a contract by Anorak and must reject the offer as originally given in order to actually gain control of the Oasis.

And let me just say, there’s a ma I don’t know that they intended it this way, but there’s a massive parallel there in my mind to Willy Wonka. The Charlie and the Charlie, well, Charlie, Willie Wonka and the chocolate factory where Charlie in the original movie says, okay, you know, okay, we messed up and then he walks back and gives them the candy and puts it down on his desk, which.

Um, I was just as touched. In this movie as well in Ready Player One, I was almost as emotionally affected in book and movie actually in the way they ended it, but especially the movie, how Halliday, you see him, he’s so vulnerable and Rylance, I mean, he was great. He rocked this role. His just has a great appearance of a humble, I mean, to me, he is like a nerdy adult.

[00:29:58] Josiah: I loved it. 

[00:29:59] Donna: Yeah. 

[00:29:59] Rebekah: Oh my gosh. I thought the whole plot of like, oh, don’t make the same mistake I did and sign away such and such. It was so weird to me. I don’t know. Oh, okay. I thought that plot point was weird. I see the book as canon, and so it just annoyed me because it just felt strange. 

[00:30:17] Josiah: I thought that plot point was very strange, and I’m still trying to work it out in my head.

What was wrong with with signing a contract well, he had a job you didn’t sign a contract It had all then he goes and signs a nerd contract 

[00:30:36] Rebekah: It was basically from the thing I read it was like in the movie they tried to put it in there to show that even if I. O. I. and Sorrento had been able to beat the final challenge.

They still wouldn’t have been able to get the Oasis because they would have signed the contract away or whatever. I don’t know. I didn’t totally get it. It fell flat for me. But, Josh is gonna kill me if I spend a ton of time talking about each of these gates and stuff, uh, keys and gates, so I’m just gonna run you through them real quick.

Again, this is for those of you who have not read the book. If you’re a nerd, you should read the book, because there’s a lot of fun nerdy things. So, first of all, like we said, there’s a key and a gate, um, in each of the sections. So, you’ve got essentially six things, and in several of these, you have to do multiple challenges in order to finish.

So, the copper gate was, uh, the copper key, rather, was located in a recreation of the D& D module Tomb of Horrors, which is like one of the most famous Famous original D& D modules. So Parzival had to get through the entire module, which he was able to do because he had studied Halliday and Anorak and like all the things he loved for years.

So he was able to literally go into his notes, into his, he called it like his Braille diary, I think. Yeah. Um, and he went in there and he had a layout of everything in Tomb of Horrors. So he was able to get through it without getting injured because he knew every little thing that was going to happen.

Then he got to the end where there’s a demilich called a Sararac. Well, he wouldn’t have been able to defeat a Sararac if they just kind of combated because he was at such a low level. So then he has to beat him and joust the classic video game. And he beats him best two out of three. And it’s this big deal.

So then once he gets through that, he gets the copper key, and then he has to unlock the copper gate. So, the first challenge at the gate is completing the classic Dungeons of Dagorath video game. Then he gets into the first ever, what’s called flick sync, where, uh, it was something that Halliday had actually developed but never released during his life, where you literally play a in a movie, and you have to, like, So he has to play Matthew Broderick’s character from the movie War Games.

The Jade Gate, which is the second one, 

[00:32:58] Tim: I’ve actually never 

[00:32:59] Rebekah: seen it. I thought about watching it after reading this again. Um, the jade gate has to be opened by the jade key. That key is found on the planet Froboz, which is based on the game Zork. And so, you have to, uh, collect various items from the game, sell something to a robot vendor, it’s a Captain Crunch whistle, which there was like a Captain Crunch reference in, oh yeah, all of these, by the way, are connected by like, poems, that Halliday, like, released as clues, basically.

Limericks. Then, after playing Zork, you have to play a perfect game of Black Dragon, which is a fictional text adventure game. I think Zork is also a text adventure game. But once they get that, you take the jade key to the jade gate, and that second gate is located inside a digital recreation of the Tyrell building from the Blade Runner film.

The player inserts the key into a copy of the Voight Kampff machine, then has to play the game Black Tiger as the protagonist. Now again, because he had learned and played and practiced all of these games, Wade was like prepared to do everything. Then the third section here, crystal gate, has to be opened by the crystal key.

So once you clear the second gate, the player is given a red five pointed star, which is from the cover of the Rush Rush’s Variety Concept Album 2112. The player takes that and must find and locate a temple on the doomed planet Syrinx mentioned in the album, which there’s a copy of in the Oasis. Then he has to play a specific riff on a hidden guitar there and then return the guitar to an altar, which forces the crystal key to appear and gives him the text clue for the third gate.

That one was such an interesting thing to me because like it was really cool because he’d done so much video game like lore and then all of the sudden it’s like there’s all this like musical lore as well which was pretty cool. Then you take that crystal key and the third gate is located at Castle Anorak.

It was not on the planet Doom in the book and above the lock where you insert the key there are three words, faith, hope, charity. So Wade and his friends. discover, like, figure it out, basically, that it references a schoolhouse rock song, Three is the Magic Number. And so, the Sucksors, or, which is the, you know, name for the Sixers that the Gunters like to use, they discover that there are three copies of the Crystal Key needed to open the gate.

Basically, Halliday didn’t want it to be something that you had to do alone. There’s this, like, representativeness of him with Kira, with Aug, and, um, They open that, then the player has to beat a score on the classic video game Tempest, they have to beat a score of 728329, which I think meant that they had to play a perfect or near perfect game or something like that.

Then it opens a video sync challenge of Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, another flick sync where they have to complete the movie as King Arthur, um, played by Graham Chapman. Then the final challenge is having to play through an interactive simulation of Adventure by Atari. And just, this is like one of the only things that they kept similar to the movie.

You win by losing in order to find the Easter egg because you have to go into like a dark room and go around and you have to literally die in order to complete this challenge. So, he’s, he’s engaged, obviously. Everything is completely different. 

[00:36:28] Josiah: The, the thing about the Easter egg in Adventure, in the book, it’s established in the beginning of the book, this is where the term Easter egg came from.

Oh, 

[00:36:37] Rebekah: right! 

[00:36:38] Josiah: And in the movie, it’s a twist when it happens at the end of the movie. Hey, audience, did you know that in real life, this is considered to be the first video game Easter egg? 

[00:36:49] Rebekah: I like the book reference, but I get why you would do that in the film. 

[00:36:53] Josiah: I think it works in the book because it’s, it has been 10 hours at least since you’ve heard that, you know, 

[00:37:00] Tim: all of those things, the challenges and all of that is a real nod to all of the video games and the movies from the 80s and things like that.

And in the movie, they have to do away with a lot of that because obviously. This much information that’s in the book and how to play it. And it goes through, you know, the levels. They show that whoever wrote the book had a great knowledge of those kinds of things. And he was a gamer, the author was. So he knew all of those things personally.

[00:37:34] Rebekah: Don’t you think that you could have said, okay, how do we simplify, get a bunch of the, get rid of a bunch of this stuff, right? You could have literally done the copper key could have been, Discovering the D& D module, and then beating a Sarah rack, you don’t have to have a gate. Then when you get to the second one, you could have done something like that was, you could have done the thing from the Rush album where they had to play a guitar riff, or you could have them play a video game.

So you can do like a D& D module, then a video game, then you could do a flick sync as the crystal key, and pick one of the movies, and then you have to beat adventure. Like you could have simplified it. 

[00:38:09] Josiah: The movie Tees slash Gates, not really Gates, the movie is a lot more wide open than the book. The book is 80s.

I am a huge nerd and I grew up in the 80s. 80s video games, 80s movies. 

[00:38:30] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[00:38:31] Josiah: I think that when the book was written in 2011, It wasn’t as cool to be a nerd as it was in 2018 when the movie came out. 

[00:38:39] Rebekah: Yeah. And I 

[00:38:40] Josiah: think lots of people liked nerdy things. And Warner Brothers and Steven Spielberg wanted to use all of these nerdy things and not be restricted to the 80s.

I have never seen war games. That’s not a super popular thing for people like me and Rebecca. You know, below the age of 40. But, Dungeons Dragons has had a huge re emergence. And so, I’m kind of surprised that Dungeons Dragons didn’t make a bigger appearance. But, all that to say, the book is more complicated, which is how books are.

So, it is kind of better at suspension of disbelief that How did I put all of these keys and gates in the way? Uh, the movie certainly simplified it for better or worse. And they also widened the, the audience appeal precisely. And that is for better or worse. 

[00:39:31] Rebekah: Fifth edition, which is like, I mean, notably it is the crazy popular edition of Dungeons and Dragons that most people play now.

Um, that wasn’t released until 2014 and it wasn’t until after that. And then. Stranger Things becoming such an icon, um, that like Dungeons and Dragons became more of a thing. So that’s probably why it was left out of the movie, but I don’t know. Anyway. 

[00:39:54] Josiah: Stranger Things was 2016. 

[00:39:56] Rebekah: Well, if you guys don’t have any other thoughts on like the gates and keys, let’s just go through some of the other like more granular plot changes we noticed.

[00:40:05] Donna: So Wade reveals his name to Artemis in the distracted globe in the film, rather than his name being discovered through what happens while he’s in school in the book, you know, he goes through this thing with Sorrento and they found out who he is and they, they have a, uh, whatever they do, but again, to remember related to what we talked about before.

They use this with he and Artemis and he acts like a stupid kid boy. Oh, here’s my name. I don’t care. I love you. It doesn’t matter that we’re, you know, risking our lives right now because we shouldn’t reveal who we are. But I have to tell you my name’s Wade and I don’t care and my blood type’s A And I kind of got, that was aggravating to me in the movie as well.

I kinda like that he was just 

[00:40:52] Josiah: so innocent in the movie, but I think in the book he was just clearly so much more cynical. 

[00:40:57] Tim: Uh, one of the, one of the changes in the setting of the movie was a simplification from the book. Um, everything. Takes place in Columbus, Ohio, instead of, uh, you know, different parts of the country and all, uh, where Wade lives in the stacks, which I have to say is a terrible way to live that in these campers and trailers and RVs that are stacked, literally stacked on top of each other.

But it was, I guess it was the movies way of showing some of the things that. Wade was talking about at the beginning of the book the terrible situation that people had to live in and the terrible poverty and all of that. 

[00:41:41] Donna: Um, in the book, Wade and Artemis do not live near each other. In the movie, however, they put them living like in the same city, basically at two different sides of the city.

Um, H was also in that city or in that, in that vicinity. Uh, the film does not discuss Shoto, Daito, and age. Uh, get, that they get together in real life, um, the book has an extended scene about Aug coming to them, pulling them all together, sending planes to get them, bringing them back to his house, his home, and all that at the end, which I thought was so cool.

Yeah. To bring him in there, and, and Simon Pegg, again, just like Mark Rylance was a great Paladay, Simon Pegg was a great Aug, and he just brings them there, and, and gives them this outlet, and they each have their own rooms, and he fortifies their, their clothing, and their, their suits, and stuff like that, but in all that, he never but Cheats, like he doesn’t give them any answers.

He doesn’t give them any more insight to the game or anything like that. And I thought that was so cool. Right. And then, you know, but then in the movie and he just appears there at the end and, you know. 

[00:43:05] Tim: I found it an interesting commentary on society. In the movie that there’s really no mention of school and things like that.

Everybody’s just in the Oasis. Every moment they can get in the Oasis. So there’s no school that, that happens there. None of those kinds of things. So it’s, it’s almost like the movie is a commentary on the totality of how people have gotten involved in the Oasis. The Oasis. 

[00:43:35] Rebekah: I do agree that it is odd in the movie that they like don’t go to school.

Nobody’s in school. Everybody’s just kind of an adult. Even kids are just adults. Like, that is a little strange to me. It is a little strange. In terms of what mom mentioned with like Aug finding them and getting them to be safe, part of the reason is because there’s this There’s a completely different subplot that they’re following once they get there.

So in the film, Artemis is like, in this place, it’s, it kind of looks like she’s just like, in this group of people that are fighting IOI, and she like, lives in this commune kind of thing. Um, And she gets, uh, captured, and she gets put into one of IOI’s indenturement contracts, or indenturement, I don’t know if they, I think they call it, oh no, they call it a loyalty center in the film, in the movie they are indenturement centers or something like that, and they’re under indenturement contracts, anyway.

[00:44:34] Tim: Yeah, 

[00:44:35] Rebekah: it’s so different because Wade is the one in the book that ends up at one of those facilities so they don’t have to break Artemis out, they don’t have the whole thing where they like trick Sorrento, but also Wade like breaks in after like cutting his friends off for like two hours. months, not talking to any of them, getting all this stuff, breaks into IOI so that he can get evidence of all the stuff that IOI did, which eventually is why Sorrento was like, you know, convicted of murder and, and all of that stuff.

But the reason in the book that Aug has to like rescue them is because Wade escapes from the indenturement center after, you know, working his plan, and then They’re being, they’re all being like chased and followed by IOI, whereas in the movie it’s like, they’re all being chased and followed, but it was more because of, um, them breaking, um, Artemis out and tricking, you know, Freaking Sorrento and stuff like that.

[00:45:35] Tim: Gonna bounce a little bit here but, in the book, Aug is an integral part as you guys were talking about in all of that plot. Um, that’s completely different in the film. Uh, in the film you see him in the end, and other than that you’ve only seen him in snippets when he’s interacting with Halliday. And like, in clips of 

[00:45:54] Rebekah: television stuff.

[00:45:56] Tim: Right, and he reveals in the movie, that he was the curator the whole time. But, um, in the movie Wade gains the extra life quarter from the curator, and so this is a whole new plot line. Um, he bets the curator that, you know, Cure was only mentioned once in the journals. Uh, and the curator says, No, that’s not possible.

And he says, I’ll bet it. And he gets the quarter because it’s true. Um, but Bookwade has to play a perfect game of Pac Man on an arcade that he finds in some game. Um. Strange out of the way place on the planet arcade quarter. Yeah. Yeah, it’s much much stranger 

[00:46:35] Josiah: So rebecca, how do you feel about the curator not knowing that kira was only mentioned once in the holiday journals in the movie?

[00:46:44] Rebekah: Well, that’s Stupid! Like, first of all, it just seems like an excuse for Aug to cheat and give him an extra life because he liked Wade, because Wade was constantly there talking to the curator, watching scenes from Halliday’s life. There are no Halliday journals in the book, and I like that. I think the Halliday journals thing was like, too much of like, here’s all of the answers to every little thing that you need to know.

All you have to do is be able to slightly read, you know, What they say. 

[00:47:10] Josiah: Can’t you go to Halliday’s home? In the book there’s like 256 copies of it. Yeah, you can 

[00:47:16] Rebekah: go to like a recreation, a planet with a bunch of recreations of where he grew up, but it’s not the same in terms of like, you can’t watch replays of things.

It’s all set on the exact same day at the same time of day. There’s like a calendar and everything. Like it’s, You don’t get, um, all of these like replays of conversations and, and things like that. I thought it was weird because despite the fact that AI had already started to become something we were thinking about and, and knowing about a little bit, like, There might be something there.

Obviously it was several years ago, but um, there’s no thought of like, oh this computer program would be able to search its own archives. Like, of what’s, like, that’s so weird to me and it seems like such a random thing that he would get the quarter for. Like, it just, it’s like, It felt like such a weird, like, addition.

[00:48:09] Josiah: Well, it’s not AI. It’s Ogg. 

[00:48:13] Rebekah: I mean, yeah. 

[00:48:13] Josiah: I think that there’s something interesting there. It might be problematic, but I think there’s something interesting there. The idea that Ogg is in Holiday Archives all the time or something like that. And for one reason or another, he’s never noticed that there’s only ever one mention of Kira in the holiday drama.

Yeah, that’s wild to me. 

[00:48:34] Rebekah: It made no sense. He was madly in love with her. He loved his wife until the day she died in a tragic car accident. 

[00:48:40] Josiah: One of the biggest twists for me when I was reading the book, because I had already seen the movie, I’d seen the movie twice at this point, one of the biggest twists.

twists in the book was that Shoto died. Yeah. And he never dies in the movie. He’s 

[00:48:54] Rebekah: murdered in the 

[00:48:55] Tim: book. The book is much darker than the movie. 

[00:48:58] Donna: Oh 

[00:48:59] Rebekah: yeah. 

[00:49:00] Donna: But it was Daito that died. 

[00:49:02] Rebekah: Mom is right! Daito is murdered and Shoto’s avatar dies during his fight with Sorrento as he’s trying to avenge his brother.

[00:49:12] Josiah: And that made me like Daito and Shoto a lot more as characters. And so in the movie, it’s, Hey, we have two brothers who are similar. One of them’s a little kid. And Wade is amazed, first of all, that a little kid can play video. Whoa! Better than adults, Wade. So that was, that was kind of one of the dumber lines in the movie for me.

But other than, other than that, They don’t matter in the movie. They do not matter. So in the book, they’re kind of secondary characters that are building up and up, and then Daito perishes, and it adds a whole new layer of stakes. It adds a whole new layer to the evil depths that Sorrento and IOI will go to in order to get the egg, and I think Daito’s death Being in the book was, was a, a very sad, but very effective moment, whereas Gaito and Shoto in the movie were, I don’t want to say worthless, but completely redundant.

[00:50:17] Donna: I want to briefly cover a few of the, the ratings and money facts about the movie. Uh, the book and the movie both received positive ratings. Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, Flixer Audience Score, both those were up in the 70s. Their Goodreads Ratings, 4. 23. Those were good, strong, I mean, they’re solid numbers.

Production cost 175 million. Total box office was 583 million. So they made their production and more, and turned profit. I mean, that’s great. I was 

[00:50:48] Tim: surprised by the fact that it made almost four times as much. worldwide as it did in the U. S. It was, you know, some of the movies that we’ve done are the opposite, you know, but this one was, you know, did much better worldwide.

[00:51:02] Rebekah: Okay, sorry, quick little trivia because I actually find this absolutely fascinating. If you had to guess, obviously it made more money worldwide than in U. S. and Canada. So we’re not even, say U. S. and Canada is not in this mix. What were the top four countries, uh, in terms of growth for this movie, if you had to guess?

[00:51:23] Josiah: And Britain. 

[00:51:25] Rebekah: Britain, Japan, China. Does anybody have a fourth guess? 

[00:51:28] Josiah: I mean, I’d hate to go for just like the normal Germany or France. 

[00:51:32] Rebekah: Okay, so we’ve gotten all of them. The correct answer, in order, is China, then Japan, then France, Then the United Kingdom, but China, so the second one that’s right after that, okay, is Japan.

In Japan, this movie grossed 23. 4 million. In China, it grossed 218 million, so it’s Chinese release was actually larger than the American Canada release. 

[00:52:01] Tim: We’ve talked about a lot of changes from the book to the film, but it is always interesting to find out what the author of the book thought of the changes.

Klein was very much in, in line with the changes that were made. The main screenwriter, Zach Penn, frequently reached out to him to bounce ideas off of him and to get his approval. And so in this case, the author of the book was very much in line with the changes that were made, even though they were pretty significant changes.

That 

[00:52:30] Rebekah: significant is a nice word for bad, I think. 

[00:52:34] Donna: Yeah, I do find that interesting though, because you have changed as much about this and to know that the author is okay. That that’s pretty cool to me. I mean, because we’ve both agreed, all of us have agreed that Both book and movie, we found interesting.

So, I will give my final verdict for this thing. I’ve definitely enjoyed talking about this with you all and seeing how your thoughts went with mine or things we thought differently about or whatever. Um, I, I’m gonna say that I preferred The book in this case, even though I did enjoy the movie, I thought the movie was entertaining and like Rebecca, I liked the part at the end where they said, Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Oasis was off.

You live in the real world. I did enjoy that. I thought that was kind of a cool rap to put on it and a cool idea as a reminder that we can get lost in in video games and we can lose identity and lose self. But. I did, uh, I do choose the book in this case, I enjoyed it, I think at some point I’m, I’m sure I’m gonna read it again, or listen to it again, and uh, it’s been, it’s been fun doing this.

[00:53:46] Tim: Okay, so, uh, my verdict, um, I think the two things were very different, the, the book was good, it was detailed, um, I think, though, that I preferred the movie. Um, I like the action movie. It didn’t have nearly the depth or nearly the detail, but it also wasn’t as dark. Uh, the book was dark, uh, and in, at times it got really, really dark.

I loved the extra, all the extra 80s trivia and video game stuff, but I feel like some of the chapters seemed like, I just want to write a chapter to tell you about me playing a video game. Tell you every single detail about how I went through this old video game. Um, so in this case, I would say 

[00:54:33] Josiah: I think that the movie was really great.

I much preferred the intro of the movie to the intro of the book. The intro of the book was actually insufferable. And the intro of the movie was actually maybe my favorite part of the movie. The sudden world building that the movie had. Set up. It was so enjoyable. It was so fun. It was so dystopian, but it was still fun.

Now It widening the audience of pop culture the movie to have a wider audience Whereas the book just focused on 80s stuff. I think The book is more concise with its themes. I think the book is a lot tighter about its, its themes and its through lines. One thing I was flabbergasted by, I was, I was halfway through the book and I’m like, There’s 20 things that they couldn’t have fit in a movie.

Of course they had to completely change everything. There is so much that happens in this book I’m struggling to think outside of Game of Thrones that is, I don’t look big Game of Thrones fan, the Game of Thrones books are as big as paperback books can be. You know, out, excepting those, I struggle to think of a book, of a plot, in a novel that has this much happen in it.

There’s so many things where characters go somewhere and have a whole adventure, and that’s one or two chapters. And there’s just 20 of those. There’s 20 huge adventures. There’s not enough time, there’s not enough scenes in a movie to achieve all that. Even though the movie is more cynical about certain things, I thought that the movie might have fumbled some of the endgame.

Daito and Shoto were irrelevant. 

[00:56:23] Rebekah: Yeah. 

[00:56:23] Josiah: The T. J. Miller character, IROC, was a little cringe and unnecessary. There were certain things that broke my suspension of disbelief that Where the book did not often break my suspension of disbelief. I think I’m going to have to give it to the book. The book was better or but it’s not cut and dry.

There were things I did not like about the book and there were things I really loved about the movie. But the book was definitely especially if you just skip the first maybe first two chapters. There’s a lot of things in the book that are really valuable. 

[00:56:58] Rebekah: I. Really did prefer the book in this case. I know I’ve been kind of poo pooing on the movie quite a lot.

I don’t hate the movie. We bought it like as soon as it came out to get on Apple TV. So, it wasn’t like, oh, I hate this movie. I think I would have liked the movie as it As its own standalone, and I loved the book, but I, it was just hard to kind of stomach the changes that I felt were so, I don’t know, not disingenuous, that’s not the right word, but there were a lot of changes that I thought that feels unnecessary.

Like I thought it would’ve been so much better to simplify down the tasks that they completed in the book and eliminate a lot of them, but like keep some of them, like, it felt weird to me that they changed the keys and gates. I think that it, I think it brought in the pop culture part to the point where it didn’t feel interesting.

Like, to me, it was interesting that Halliday was super into 80s culture. I didn’t know a ton about it, but it’s inspired me to want to watch war games and, like, go back and watch the original Blade Runner and things like that. So, I loved the book. I have read it. a lot, like several times, and I will read it again.

I love the movie, and I will watch it again. It’s one of the things that I love to put on in the back. I’m working because I’ve seen it so many times, um, and so I really, really enjoyed both. Definitely think the book was better. Yeah. Well, I believe that is it for us. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, please leave us a five star rating or review on your podcast app.

It’s a huge help to the podcast. If you’d like to communicate with us online, you can find us on most social media at bookisbetterpod. If you want to send feedback, questions, or if you have ideas for something you’d like us to cover, email us at bookisbetterpod at gmail. com. Until next time. Thanks, guys.

I did have a little idea for our minigame today. I think I’m the only one that has done this of the four of us. I, uh, read Ready Player Two, the sequel that was released in 2020 or 21, um, to Ready Player One, and I wanted to give you a brief overview of the plot and find out what you think. So here’s the plot of Ready Player Two.

They’re all billionaires, obviously, at the beginning, the high five, well, four, because one of them is dead, um, and basically, Wade and Artemis spend like nine days together, it’s the best time of his life, they’re so in love. Then she goes on a trip and Wade discovers a technology hidden at the, uh, The, what is it called?

Gregarious Games. He finds a hidden technology at GSS that is a neural connection thing that instead of you being in VR it literally makes your brain experience things as if you’re in real life. It basically is like, it’s not just immersive, it’s like you are not aware of your physical body in the real world anymore.

So Wade decides that without asking Artemis, who he knows will disagree with his decision because she wants to encourage people to get out of the oasis and fix the real world, because there’s so many problems in the real world, he decides to release the technology to the public, which he then does. And now, not only is everyone in VR all the time, their bodies are literally, like, unconscious, and most people, like, there are, reports of people that are like murdered because they’re, they wouldn’t know what’s happening because they can’t any longer feel their physical body.

So that’s like the intro to the book. The plot line comes from the fact that there is another challenge from Halliday, which he apparently also designed when he was alive, and that challenge is to discover the seven shards of the siren’s soul or something like that. And it is based on Kira, and you have to learn about Kira and her background and all of these things.

However, in the book, Anorak essentially, uh, becomes a sentient AI by accident. So the second book is about AI, like, which I think is why the first book didn’t have AI in it. So Anorak had become a sentient AI, then he decides that actually he deserves something. I don’t know, he wants Kira, and there’s basically this, they, the way that The, like, neural thing works is that it creates a full copy of your brain so that anyone can, if you, if they had access to the files, could go back and experience any moment in your life as you experienced it, like from your own body, the way that you sweat and your heart raced and the way you felt.

So, Anorak also, during his life, I guess Halliday, not Anorak, during his life, had gotten one of these from Kira by lying to her about, like, how he was trying to test something, and he made a copy, and in the whole thing, he basically, like, manipulates, not manipulates, he like blackmails the high four or five people to help him finish that particular contest or he basically threatens to kill everyone that’s connected to these neural network things by like not letting them out because if you’re connected to it for more than, I think it’s 12 hours, you, uh, you can die or you can like lose your mind completely.

I know, right? This is awful. 

[01:02:35] Josiah: Creepy. This is, this is giving second Dune book. 

[01:02:39] Rebekah: Oh, I’ve never read the second Dune book, but we’ll get there. I guess. So Wade sucks, like, and he’s still in love with Artemis, but she hates him. And she’s like doing good things in the world. She refuses to use the neural hickey doodle, like whatever.

And so the weird thing is they resolve this. It’s probably an 

[01:02:58] Tim: interface. 

[01:02:59] Rebekah: By, at the last second, like, Josiah, you would hate this more than anything. There is a random character, and I have read this from people on lots of different political sides, there is a random character who is transgender, that they insert in just so that, um, Wade can say how he finds them attractive or something, and he like has a crush on her, or, I don’t even know exactly how that, like, they try to present that.

That character is seen one time. They have one scene, she helps him, like, find something, and she’s really helpful, and she’s really poor, and so he connects with her because he used to be poor, whatever. And then this person is gone, the rest of the book, okay? Then, At the end of the book, they are, he’s fighting Anorak, and he is about to die.

Like, he’s gonna lose his avatar, he’s gonna die because he’s hooked up to that thing, and if you die in that, you die in real life. All that stuff, out of nowhere, with no lead up. That person that he had met one time shows up with the only weapon in the oasis that can actually kill Anorak. It’s literally, like, kryptonite, and it’s the only thing that can kill him, and this person just falls out of midair in front of Wade and hands it to him.

I will wrap that up by saying, It was interesting to hear, like, he does work in a lot of pop culture stuff as well. It’s cool to get to know, like, the character he creates as Kira. And they wrap it up with a Rebecca friendly beau. I mean, the story wraps up where Artemis and Wade get married. Have a baby. H gets married.

Uh, Shoto gets married. Um, like they all like find love and find fulfillment. They stop spending so much time in the Oasis. And then, I’m sorry, this is so ridiculous. Do you remember in the first book where Wade talks about, if I won, I would build a spaceship and leave. You remember that? Anybody remember that?

[01:05:02] Josiah: Yeah. Yes, I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They build 

[01:05:06] Rebekah: a spaceship, and at the end of the book, he and H and Shota have been working on the spaceship the whole time. So instead of sending people on the spaceship, they create the duplicate copies. For that neural thing and put those copies on the spaceship and they all travel out in their eternal bodies into space.

[01:05:30] Josiah: Hmm. So is the copy not their actual form? It wasn’t. It was 

[01:05:35] Rebekah: just like just their brain stuff living in VR. There was no physical body left. No. But they 

[01:05:43] Tim: made copies. What we think of that? 

[01:05:45] Rebekah: Yeah, what do you think of that? 

[01:05:47] Tim: I’m glad I didn’t read it. 

[01:05:49] Rebekah: Oh, you know, it’s late. That’s good enough.

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