Hyperreality in Adaptation: Comparing the Novel and Film Versions of Ready Player One

Abstract

Jean Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality, the condition in which simulation replaces and eventually surpasses the reality it imitates, offers a useful lens for reading Ernest Cline's 2011 novel Ready Player One and its 2018 film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg. While previous studies have examined hyperreality in the film alone or applied adaptation theory to other works, none has traced how the transcoding from novel to film reshapes the story's stance toward simulation itself. This study asks how hyperreality is portrayed differently across the two media and what motives drove the adaptation's departures from the source text. Using a qualitative comparative design grounded in Linda Hutcheon's theory of adaptation and supported by Nick Lacey's film analysis technique, the novel was examined through close reading and the film through systematic scene analysis, then compared stage by stage, first at the level of intrinsic story elements, then at the level of the telling-to-showing transcoding process, and finally at the level of adaptive motive. The analysis finds that the film softens the novel's sustained critique of dependency on simulation, most visibly by removing Wade Watts's physical insecurity, compressing his years of obsessive research into three spectacular set pieces, and closing the story with an ideologically reassuring reunion staged in golden light. These shifts are traced to a combination of commercial pressure, the cultural capital of 1980s nostalgia, and the personal and political outlook of the filmmakers. The study argues that adaptation is never a neutral transfer between media, but an interpretive act that realigns a story's ideology with the expectations of its new audience and industry.