The Side Quest Book Club discussion

So I heard from a few people last Saturday; does anyone else have any thoughts on this movie? I hated it. They basically stripped the book of all its redeeming qualities and made an action movie that kids would enjoy.

I went in with low expectations and was pleasantly surprised by it. The biggest problem when comparing book to movie is that in the book the characters can be fleshed out and developed more - in a movie they are always rushed or they end up cutting some all together. I didn’t mind most of the changes (a twenty minute internal monologue about the intricacies of joust and pac man don’t make for good cinema) however some of those were out of their control (couldn’t license WarGames/Ultraman/etc...)

Yeah I don't mind the changes to the contest so much. I agree, re-enacting WarGames doesn't work in film, plus almost no one under the age of 30 even remembers that movie. My first issue is that they cut out the first 3rd of the book. It means they lose a lot of the nerd dick-measuring that happens in the early chapters, which is a good cut. But the problem is that you also lose huge parts of the character and world development. I wasn't sold on how crappy society has gotten, the contest itself was moved to the back burner, and I wasn't invested in any of characters so it didn't earn any of the emotional beats it tried to hit. If anything, they made Parzival an even bigger douchebag than he was in the book. My other main problem is that they turned it into them having to rescue the girl. That was one of the worst changes they could've made.