I watched this movie in the cinema when it was first released and had not read the book prior to this. I am also in the target market as I am a fan of science fiction and video games. I am also a fan of most Spielberg movies. My initial impression of the movie was slightly disappointment. It is not a terrible movie, but it is certainly no Jaws or ET. Or even Jurassic Park.

Having now read the book, the movie is actually a travesty as an adaptation of the novel. It is essentially a coming-of-age story, mostly set in a virtual RPG world where the real world has suffered some kind of post-apocalyptic melt-down. Role playing games (like World of Warcraft, which is specifically mentioned in the novel) have very specific conventions; like levelling up for example. The movie does a very poor job of presenting that. In the movie its more like a star-trek TNG style holodeck environment. But then when characters die in the movie the main character is driving around in his DeLorean hoovering the shower of coins. That is not only ridiculous but also offensive to anyone who has actually played an RPG game. That is just not how RPG games work. That is how 2-D platform games like Super-Mario work. The novel is essentially a homage to gaming lore, so its quite important that the movie represents the RPG gaming environment recognizably.

So, not only does Spielberg massacre RPG but he also kills off the coming of age aspect of the story. The main character is a high school student for gods sake! There are about 1000 high school movies and the movie's target audience is primarily high school age young adults. The twist is that main character is supposed to be attending high school in the virtual world. That is where he spends most of his time. That is where he makes the great discovery that changes his life ... in a boring class of Latin. His best friend is also a high school student. He does not have a virtual robot design workshop! He has a chat room where he basically 'hangs out' with fanboys. He is famous for playing in Doom style first person shooter games, in which he is one of the most highly rated players. His character is basically like Thanos in Avengers Infinity War.

The one thing I did like about the movie was the museum of the Sheldon Cooper style designer of the matrix style virtual world. This is not in the novel, but it made sense. It also allows the Woz-like character to interact with the main characters in a slightly more credible way. But then Woz gives the main character a quarter as a result of losing a bet. That quarter has great significance in the novel, and winning it just as a result of a trivial side-bet just dramatically undermines the story as presented in the novel.

The main character all start off as high school outcasts and they progress to characters of great power. The main character builds a fortress of solitude style base on his own private asteroid. Just imagine the asteroid field in Star Wars, and the main character has his base in one of those asteroids. And then he has his own giant spaceship to travel around in. That is just crying out for a cinematic adaptation. Yet Spielberg just skips over that.

We also have a complete misrepresentation of I0I, which is a giant corporation which sells the paraphernalia for accessing the virtual word. Sorrento is not some dumb-ass who is best suited to making the coffee and leaves his password on the side of his terminal. He is also not the head of I0I, just the corporate heads department -- tasked with solving the quest. We know from the novel that the main character is very biased against the company, and is not exactly a reliable narrator in this respect. Sorrento is in the novel a powerful and knowledgeable character in his own right. He does not need the help of some school age loser, who in the novel is actually the friend of the main character's best friend. You also cannot just wander around I0I HQ and hide behind the furniture to see what Sorrento is up to. That is just face-palm ridiculous. In the novel I0I has an indentured servitude program for debtors and they have a scarily efficient way of controlling those who are signed up to it. The plan to infiltrate I0I is a major plot point in the novel, and its completely replaced in the movie by I Spy style childish silliness. I0I also does not have a Blade Runner 2049 style head of security who blows up trailer parks and hunts down gamers. That is just totally not in the novel. They do (allegedly) blow up the main characters trailer-park home, but really this is wish-fulfilment by the main character. He lives with his aunt, who unlike Spiderman's kindly helpful aunt, is more like a zombie like junkie who makes our hero's life a misery. The incident is officially written off as a meth-lab explosion, or some such misadventure. I0I does try to eliminate them in the novel, but much more discretely. That is also one of the weak points of the novel, and it would probably be better if it was left more vague than it is.

Another thing that really grates, is the denigration of game and sci-fi cinema history. The central quest in the novel is a history of important games and landmark sci-fi. A central element of the quest is mastering important early arcade games (like Joust and Pac-Man). This can easily be translated to cinema. We have some excellent examples to work from, like Wreck-it-Ralph and Tron. But yet all we get is some I0I dweebs failing to solve Adventure on the Atari 2600. Sorrento has no such trouble in the book, and in fact he makes short work of a game like Joust. In the novel we also have a kind of behind the scenes segment through the movie Blade Runner; which is a seminal film in sci-fi. It is also incredibly cinematic. What does the movie do? It skips Blade Runner and plonks in The Shining instead. Not only is The Shining a horror movie rather than science fiction, the original novel by Stephen King is pretty poor compared to the source material for Blade Runner -- which is a sci-fi masterpiece. I mean, the central twist in The Shining is the word MURDER spelled backwards! REDRUM! That may be enough to please those looking for a quick read at the airport, but its just not on the same level as Philip K Dick.

The ending is equally poor and contrary to the novel. In the novel the characters travel to the land of Woz where they are provided with state of the art VR hardware to use and then they kick Sorrento's ass. There is no Terminator style car chase nonsense. I mean why does I0I in the movie not just drop a bomb on the van. Or just call the police to have them arrested? Its not only just silly, but its the wrong genre. Its not supposed to be a car-chase movie! And from the point of view of a car chase movie, its also pretty poor. Just look at Terminator 2 to see how its done properly. T2 also has the benefit of being proper sci-fi.

So in summary, Spielberg should know better. I mean, he had the author right there helping to write the script. Its not like he understand the story and intentionally wants to make it terrible. Its more like he just does not get it. Kind of like he never got Star Wars. Anyway, this story is probably better suited to a longer serial format ... like a Netflix series. Perhaps similar to the Avatar series (also a coming-of-age story). The ILM animation is great, just the direction and writing is poor. The ILM animation has already been paid for and could easily be reused. The novel has a lot of very cinematic scenes that are just crying out to be animated.