Warning: There are spoilers ahead if you haven't seen "Ready Player One."

"Ready Player One" changes up a lot from the book, and for the most part, it makes for a better story.

But there's one omission in the film adaptation that can't be ignored. The movie bungled, what should have been, one of its biggest reveals.

We're talking about Lena Waithe's character.

Lena Waithe plays Aech/Helen. Warner Bros. Pictures

In the virtual-reality OASIS, she's known by her male avatar, Aech, a burly figure with a hulking presence. But in the real world, Aech is Helen Harris, an African American woman who is gay in the books.

But you probably didn't gather that from watching the movie.

In fact, the movie basically skirts around and ignores Helen's sexual orientation altogether. The movie rushes through Aech's big reveal to carry on with the contest on hand, casting aside one of the most meaningful moments in the book.

How the book handles Aech's reveal

Parzival is under the impression that Aech is a male for the book's entirety. Warner Bros.

We don't learn Aech is a woman or that she's gay until pretty late in the novel when she is asked to pick Wade/Parzival up in Columbus, Ohio.

Wade goes into Aech's RV and instead of receiving a giant welcome, he's surprised to find that his best friend isn't who he expected at all.

Here's how the moment is described in the book:

"A heavyset African American girl sat in the RV's driver seat, clutching the wheel tightly and staring straight ahead. She was about my age, with short, kinky hair and chocolate-colored skin that appeared iridescent in the soft glow of the dashboard indicators ... She appeared to be shivering, even though it was nice and warm in the cab.

I stood there for a moment, staring at her in silence, waiting for her to acknowledge my presence. Eventually, she turned and smiled at me, and it was a smile I recognized immediately ...When I didn't say anything, her eyes dropped to her boots and stayed on them. I sat down heavily in the passenger seat, still staring over at her, still unsure of what to say. She kept stealing glances at me; then her eyes would dart away nervously. She was still trembling."

At first, Wade is angry with Aech for deceiving him because he shared personal, intimate thoughts with her. But he realizes he can't stay upset with his best friend for long.

When they finally speak, Aech says her name is Helen Harris and explains why she uses a male avatar. It's an interesting reason.

According to Helen, her mother Marie believed the OASIS, a place where you could appear to be anyone, was the best thing to happen to women and people of color. Marie used a white male avatar because of "the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given."

Aech's story doesn't stop there. She says she's been on her own since she was 18. Her mother kicked her out when she found out she was gay and was dating a girl she met online. After living in shelters, she earned enough coin in the OASIS to buy the RV she has been traveling in.

How the movie handles Aech's reveal

The movie has the two meet in a rushed alley scene. Warner Bros. Pictures

Waithe's Helen doesn't drive an RV. She's traveling around Ohio in a mail truck. (It's not clear if it's been stolen or if it's her own.) When she picks up Wade in an alley, their first meeting is very different.

They have no time for a big reveal. Their lives are in danger.

Helen grabs Wade and after the two spit a few lines back and forth that only they would know, he realizes he's speaking to his best friend and he jumps in the van no questions asked.

That's it.

There's no confusion or yearning for acceptance, on either side. Nothing is said about Helen's sexuality. It's not even clear if the movie wants you to be aware of her sexuality.

There's no downtime afterwards for Helen to describe her intriguing backstory and why she goes incognito in the OASIS with a male avatar. It's a very watered down moment. If you didn't read the book, this doesn't seem like a big reveal at all and it's extremely frustrating when you know how it's dealt with in the source material.

Why the movie reveal is so disappointing: Aech's story is relatable and resonates with a lot of female gamers.

Aech personifies how a lot of female gamers may feel having to hide their identities playing online. Warner Bros. Pictures

Book readers heading into the movie will know that there's a deeper side to Aech/Helen, but the movie blanched at expanding her backstory and sexual identity. Instead, Aech revealing who she is behind the OASIS avatar is a rushed moment that's over in about two quick minutes before the audience moves on. Most will be none the wiser they were supposed to glean more from that scene.

And that's a shame because the first time I read "Ready Player One" and got to the big Aech reveal, it filled me with so much joy.

I used to try live streaming video game play, but found any time you try to make serious commentary when you're a woman, you open the door for trolls who will say horrid, disgusting, and vulgar things. When you can hide behind an anonymous gamertag, that's easy. So I stopped doing a camera feed. Sometimes I'll voice over a live stream, but that's pretty rare.

If you're a female gamer online, the world is a very different place. Look no further than the controversy surrounding #GamerGate game developer Zoe Quinn in 2014 when misogyny was front and center in the news and in the gaming community. You can understand and sympathize with why a woman would want to make her avatar into a different gender or conceal her voice. It's to blend in and feel safe in a space that may not be as welcoming to women who — shockingly — just want to play a video game.

This is something more male gamers need to be made aware of and "Ready Player One" could have provided a starting point for that conversation.

The way Aech and Parzival meet in the movie is unrealistic.

Aech simply tells Parzival who she really is and the two carry on as if a big reveal wasn't just dropped. Warner Bros. Pictures

There's a trepidation about meeting someone online in the real world after only knowing them virtually and the movie never captures that. Aech wasn't afraid for Wade to see who she really was. While that speaks to her personality and self-confidence, it's just not realistic.

About a decade ago, my brother Sam started playing games with some friends he met online. Similar to "Ready Player One," they only really knew each other by their gamertags and avatars. They played most days after he got home from school for hours on end. I watched over the years as they evolved from capture the flag games in "Halo" to fighting zombies in "Minecraft."

When he was 20, Sam decided to get on a plane to meet some of them. It seemed like a wild idea, but he had also been playing games routinely with them week in and week out for at least five years. If this was a con, it was a long one. Sam came back in one piece, had a great time, and they're all still great friends to this day.

It wasn't until years later Sam told me he was frightened to meet his friends in person. As Wade jokes in "Ready Player One," Sam's friends could have been a group of older men waiting to kidnap him. If he got off the plane and had any inkling that was the case, he said he was going to hightail it out of there.

My point is that movie Helen should have showed some of the same nervous reaction her character exhibited in the book. No one should judge you by your skin color, ethnicity, or sexual preference — but that doesn't mean they won't. Meeting strangers from the internet is scary, even if you feel like you know them. The book "Ready Player One" encapsulated that vulnerability and fear people face of potentially letting someone else down just because of who you are.

That conflict is non-existent in the film. Perhaps Helen had no time to fear for Wade's acceptance because she was running for her life, but glossing over the fact that she kept her true identity secret for years was a weak choice, and the movie suffers for it.

The movie gets something right about its female leads: They're more than just romantic love interests.

Aech and Parzival at the film's start. Warner Bros.

Despite the film failing to dive into Helen's background, "Ready Player One" gives more agency to its two female characters than in the book and that's something we can applaud.

Instead of being told solely from Wade's perspective, a good portion of the movie sees Olivia Cooke's Art3mis take the reigns as she takes on the villain. As for Aech, we may not learn where she came from, but the movie sets her up as a well-known mechanic in the OASIS. In the book, she's just some cool gamer with an exclusive basement hangout. Whatever that means.

You can read our review of "Ready Player One" here and follow along with our coverage of the movie here.