I wasn’t ready for Ready Player One

On the dangers of adapting books that appeal to autistic people

Peanut has been semi-obsessed with Ready Player One ever since he first listened to the audiobook at age 9. I wasn’t surprised it caught his fancy: as a story about a post-apocalyptic world in which everyone lives their better, real lives in a virtual reality environment, it’s a natural fit for a chronic videogamer like Peanut.

So even though he has yet to make it through a live action movie in a theater, and walks out of animated movies at least half the time, he was determined that he would see the movie — preferably at the very first screening. I got us tickets to the 7:15 showing on opening night, and after much debate (and excited lobbying from Peanut) we opted for the D-BOX seats that tilt and vibrate in sync with the movie. On the one hand it ramped up the intensity, but on the other I have personally found them quite distracting, so I was hopeful that they might keep Peanut from getting too absorbed and overwhelmed by the movie itself.

Peanut has been talking about the movie all week, but Rob tells me that he still got anxious when it came time to get in the car. (I was meeting the family at the movie theater, because I was coming straight from downtown.) When we met up at the theater Peanut was eager to take his seat but in a good mood.

We found our way to our reserved seats, where Peanut delighted in pointing out all the special characteristics of the D-BOX seating: the cup holders (he wanted to analyze the location of each holder relativity to its seat, and to determine whose was whose for the entire row), the seat’s intensity controls, and the great position relative to the screen. Then he put his headphones back on and ignored everything, including the coming attractions, while he played a game on his iPhone.

The moment the movie started he switched his iPhone off and turned his full attention to the screen. He squealed and exclaimed as his seat started to move with the on-screen action: I should have anticipated that Ready Player One was the perfect movie for this technology, and that it would feel almost like those little simulated roller coaster rides. Since Peanut adores roller coasters, it was a perfect fit. He was so thrilled that I had to remind him that we couldn’t act like we were on a roller coaster — i.e. no screaming with excitement.

Once I could see that Peanut was feeling happy rather than overwhelmed with the high intensity of the movie and the seats, I settled into the movie myself. I loved reading the book — that’s actually what inspired me to get the audiobook for Peanut — and so I’ve been looking forward to the movie, too. And while I am not a roller coaster person at all, I loved the extra dimension our seats added to the movie; it felt like a perfect complement to the movie’s depiction of virtual reality as a tactile- and movement-enhanced experience.

At least, that was my impression of the first twenty minutes. That is when Peanut got up to leave and I followed. (Rob took the bullet when Peanut walked out of A Wrinkle in Time a few weeks ago, so I figured it was my turn — but man, did Rob ever get the better end of that deal!)

I followed Peanut out, checking in to make sure he wasn’t too rattled by the sensory overload or the tension of the movie’s first wild, pulse-pounding action sequence. He was fine with all that, he said, though he’d found a few moments a bit much.

No, his reason for walking out was that he was livid with the ways the first twenty minutes of the film diverged from the audiobook.

“It is an excellent audiobook,” Peanut pointed out. “They shouldn’t have changed anything.”

“But movies always make changes to the books they are based on,” I observed.

“They do??!” He was appalled. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

I had to think about that one.

“Well,” I ventured. “I guess I’m just so used to it that I didn’t think of it as something I needed to tell you.”

“Well you did,” he huffed.

“You really have to judge a movie by its own merits, instead of comparing it to the book,” I told him. “And besides, didn’t you wonder how they would fit all the hours of the audiobook into a movie?”

But Peanut refused to let me turn this back on him. Instead he made it clear that my failure to warn him about the conventions of movie adaptations had landed me in the same doghouse as Steven Spielberg. It might have been Spielberg’s fault that the first quest of the movie departed radically from the novel (a reference point I could barely recall until Peanut regurgitated an efficient but highly specific recap of the novel version), but it was my fault that I only now thought to explain the nearly universal truth that movie adaptations of books you love are almost always disappointing.

While Peanut alternately frothed and grumbled on the subway ride home, I had an internal argument over how much blame to accept for this minor debacle. I mean, I could see how disappointed Peanut was, and I desperately regretted failing to prepare him for a possible divergence between book and film. And now that I thought about it, it made perfect sense that an autistic kid who likes to memorize and recite along with his favorite books might have highly specific expectations for its movie adaptation.

But come on: How on earth was I supposed to anticipate that a lack of fidelity to the source material would be such a trigger for my autistic boy? I mean, what possible way could I have known this?

Uh…I guess by following the fan reaction to every comic book movie EVER. It’s no secret that movie makers are treading on dangerous ground whenever they make film about a set of characters or a universe that already has a loyal fan base. If these fans be geeks, these geeks will flip out about some aspect of your movie.

So maybe I could have predicted our movie debacle, if I’d just thought through what I knew about autistic movie fans. It’s not like all comic book nerds are autistic, but there is enough overlap between geek culture and autistic personality that geeks are awesome resources for the parents of autistic kids. I learn more about my son by observing and speaking with possibly/vaguely autistic tech geeks than I have from almost any of the specialists we’ve worked with. Reflecting on them made me extra friendly to the septum-pierced geek who sold Peanut the candy he got to replace what he’d left behind at the theater.

In a rare act of self-control, Peanut only ate half that candy before pronouncing himself full and putting it away. By then we were almost home, and Peanut had simmered down and more or less forgiven me for our movie misfire. I poured Peanut a big glass of milk and we got in bed with our computers, where we played Minecraft together on a server that turns Minecraft into a medieval-themed multiplayer role playing game. I was terrible and got frustrated and wanted to give up, but Peanut wouldn’t let me leave his world so readily.

“Let me coach you,” he said, patiently. “You have to stick with it, and work at it, and surmount obstacles — that’s the satisfaction.”

I set aside my efforts to process the evening’s missed cues, and threw myself into Peanut’s virtual world; the world where he is most comfortable.

I may not have seen Ready Player One last night, but I lived it.