I AM READY PLAYER ONE!: Nostalgia for all, and now it's a film..

When my lovely boyfriend suggested I read Ready Player One, he told me he thought it was a book I would enjoy because it referenced a manic pixie dream girl playing ukulele covers of 80s tunes in it. I was dubious. I despise the manic pixie dream girl trope.

But I was mistaken, and then surprised, and then happy, because the book did sometimes veer off in that direction with its female love interest, BUT! Cline, you sneaky son of a gun, you brought it back around!

Ready Player One tells the story of Wade Watts, a young man who lives in a dystopian future where everything and anything you might want can be found online in THE OASIS. In a world where everything has gone downhill in a big way (global warming and economic decline as little tasters for your sci-fi tastebuds). The OASIS is part Facebook, part World of Warcraft for the masses to lose themselves in. Wade is poor, and his only escape from his horrible family and his desperate existence are his moments locked away in a virtual world. That is until the day the creator of the OASIS, James Halliday, dies, and leaves a hidden Easter egg within the game that only the most worthy player can find. Find it, and win a lifetime of comfort and playing as many games of joust as you like by inheriting Halliday’s half of the company.

Much like Cline’s other novels, Ready Player One drips with nostalgia. Arcade games provide clues and challenges for Wade and his cohorts, films and music of the 80’s are all featured heavily, ingeniously brought together by Halliday’s journal, the anorak’s almanac. I admit that some of the more niche game references went over my head, but the way that Cline writes makes it easy to understand their importance, but also leads you on the same journey as Wade. You research what the games were, what they looked like, and if you find a way, you end up playing them. Ready Player One has something for every type of fanatic, be that cinema, music, video game or board game. No one gets left out of the nerd party.

Shortly after I finished the book I found out that the one, the only godfather of family drama fun himself, Steven Spielberg was in the process of bringing Ready Player One to the big screen. Two years later and we finally have a trailer, and it looks magnificent. If there was ever a world that lent itself to CGI (sit down James Cameron, Avatar was basically a sci-fi sex dream about smurfs) then this is it. Big, bold colours, slightly manic shots of every 80’s icon crammed onto one screen (THE GOD DAMN IRON GIANT! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?) and all sound-tracked by a remix of Pure imagination from Willy Wonka and Rush! I have not been this excited about seeing a film in the cinema for a long while, but I am so ready for this. Spielberg promises a fairly true adaptation of the book, and I will most certainly be revisiting that before the film’s release, but for anyone who has yet to read it, I implore you to give it a look. You owe it to yourself. And the Iron Giant, because he went through some real shit in his own story.