Spoilers ahead for Ready Player One.

While Spielberg's film is an improvement on Ernest Cline's novel in almost every way, with slightly stronger characters and a scope beyond '80s pop-culture references, it's also a missed opportunity. It does little to show us the world and people outside of those VR headsets, which makes it more difficult to care about the stakes of our heroes' virtual adventure. It's surprising to say, given how much I loathed the source material, but that's one area where the book did a better job.

The film starts out similarly, describing a future where the world is semi-collapsed and people live in city slums. Their only escape is the Oasis, a VR world where practically anything is possible. But while the film briefly shows people gaming in the Oasis and doing a few odd jobs (we see a brief shot of a woman pole dancing), we don't really see how society functions if everyone is wearing headsets. Cline's book at least gives us a glimpse at how the world could be shaped around VR. In the novel, our hero Wade Watts (AKA Parzival online) goes to a public school on planet Ludus inside Oasis. Partially, it's because he was bullied in a real-world school, but it's also easy to see the advantages of a VR-driven education, where teachers can make lessons completely interactive.

Spielberg's adaptation of Ready Player One, based on a script by Zak Penn and Cline, skips the Ludus entirely, and along with it much of the world building. All we know is that the world is in a shambles, but it's unclear what it actually looks like outside of a brief glimpse at the stacks of trailers Wade calls home. The main thrust of the film is the same as the novel: Wade and his friends are racing to find the hidden keys left by the Oasis' creator, James Halliday, following his death. Whoever finds all of the keys gets full control of the virtual world. And, as you'd expect, there's a rival group on the same mission: Innovative Online Industries (IOI), a well-funded tech corporation that's eager to own the Oasis and monetize the hell out of it.

While the book spans years, the film boils down much of its action to a few weeks. And consequently, Wade's journey doesn't seem nearly as compelling. That sped up narrative also gives us little chance to see how the world reacts to his accomplishments. He's the first person to find one of Halliday's keys, but the only glimpse of celebrity is him being briefly mobbed by a few fans in the Oasis. There's never a sense of how people in the real world respond. Never mind that it's a remarkable achievement -- something that thousands (perhaps millions) of people failed to do over the five years since Halliday's death.

I wasn't really expecting much from the film to begin with. But I grew increasingly annoyed at how much Spielberg, an artist who's no stranger to grounding fantastical narratives with human emotion, ignored the actual people who live most of their lives in VR. Instead, he's more focused on showing us how much fun the Oasis can be. The first key challenge is an insane, action-packed race filled with dozens of pop culture references. And it's great to see the return of some cult heroes, like the Iron Giant, in the huge final battle. But again, that's all spectacle with very little heart.