In 2045 the planet is on the brink of chaos and collapse, but people find salvation in the OASIS: an expansive virtual reality universe created by eccentric James Halliday. When Halliday dies, he promises his immense fortune to the first person to discover a digital Easter egg that's hidden somewhere in the OASIS. When young Wade Watts joins the contest, he finds himself becoming an unlikely hero in a reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical world of mystery, discovery and danger.
Why Is The Movie Called Ready Player One Anyway?
BY
MANSOOR MITHAIWALA
PUBLISHED JUL 24, 2018
Ready Player One author Ernest Cline explains the origin of the book and movie's name/title in one of the special features on the Blu-ray release.
Ernest Cline reveals the inspiration behind the name of his book, Ready Player One, in the special features of the movie adaptation's Blu-ray release. Directed by legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg, 2018's Ready Player One movie was noticeably different from the book in many ways, but all of the changes the creative team made - such as removing key scenes and adding in new ones, like the Shining sequence - were all done for cinematic effect, yet they never strayed too far from the source material.
Spielberg mentioned about a year before the movie released that they were going for a faithful adaptation of Cline's novel that was still an original story, for various reasons - and fans of the novel got to see that play out on the big screen. of course, one thing that all parties were adamant about carrying over from the source material was the name Ready Player One. While that seems like a rather straightforward idea, sometimes movie studios will choose a different name for a film adaptation than what the source material had used. In fact, WB did just that with Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow, which was based on the Japanese manga All You Need is Kill. But they didn't do the same thing for Ready Player One.
Given that Ready Player One is essentially a video game movie, though it doesn't adapt an actual video game property, general audiences may wonder where the title of the movie (and the book) comes from. Ernest Cline revealed the inspiration behind the movie's name in the featurette "Game Changer: Cracking the Code" on the movie's Blu-ray release. He said:
"The title Ready Player One was inspired by old, classic arcade games. When you used to put your quarter into an old arcade game it would often say, 'Ready, player one,' and that was kind of the last thing that you would see before you were immersed in this two-dimensional world of the video game. Sometimes it would say, 'Player one, ready,' or 'Ready, player one,' but I love that idea of that being like a message to announce that, 'All right, now you're entering another world.'"
One of the most important scenes in the movie is when audiences see Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) enter the OASIS - a virtual reality world/video game created by James Halliday (Mark Rylance) and Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg) - for the first time. It was a complex sequence not only due to how it was filmed but also because of the storytelling aspect: the filmmakers needed to properly introduce this new world that moviegoers had never seen before - one that includes practically anything and everything ever dreamt of. In that regard, Cline's idea of using the term "Ready, player one" as telling audiences they are about to embark on a unique journey for the first time is actually quite intriguing... and it makes sense.
Right now, Ernest Cline is busy working on the Ready Player One sequel novel, which some theorize that it will be titled Ready Player Two. While that seems like the obvious choice - and one that could fall in line with readers entering the world for a second time with a new story - the author may choose something else to keep fans on their toes.
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