Cline’s book spends its earliest chapters diving into the state of the real world (not great) and how Wade functions inside of it (also not great). Much of the book’s first hundred pages actually take place in and around Wade’s school, which not only functions as a way to introduce the way the world works now (many schools are set in OASIS, for one thing) but what kind of person Wade is when he’s not tooling around for fun in the virtual reality environment that serves as his only real refuge. It’s a meaty introduction, and it builds out both the real world and the world of the OASIS in vivid ways.
Spielberg’s film, however, jettisons most that exposition in favor of dropping his audiences smack into the more fun side of the OASIS, with Wade and his best pal Aech (Lena Waithe) gearing up for a very important race (more on that later) that ties into the quest for Halliday’s Easter Egg. While we do later see Wade muddling through in the real world and a number of small scenes are faithfully recreated for the big screen (like Wade living in his aunt’s laundry room, and his descent from his RV home into the lower level of the so-called “Stacks” via a well-placed rope), those school-set scenes are mostly snipped, in favor of Wade’s search for the keys and the Egg.
Why do you think the movie left out these ideas about education, life in the real world, his life in the stacks, the loss of families, economic securities, and many other things we take for granted.
If you were to make a film of this movie how would you start.