Ready Player One: Ben Mendelsohn’s Character Not Faithful To Book

Ben Mendelsohn’s character in Ready Player One will not be faithful to the source material. Based on the critically-acclaimed sci-fi novel of the same name by Ernest Cline, the film is a long time coming for fans of the novel. After spending years stuck in development, though, Ready Player One finally found traction again when Steven Spielberg signed on to direct it – a pairing that many fans found to be perfect, based on the novel’s references to the 1980s, and even some of Spielberg’s own films from that era.

However, an air of skepticism has grown around the film as of late, following some comments that Spielberg made last year about changes that were going to be made from the novel in the film, including its tone, themes, and pop culture references. While Ready Player One set photos suggest it will be keeping the same level of references and pop culture awareness as the novel, it looks like some of the characters in the film may not be at all like they were in the source material.

That includes Ben Mendelsohn’s villainous Nolan Sorrento. While speaking with The Wrap, the actor talked about how closely the adaptation will be sticking to the source material, saying that his version of Sorrento is not faithful in the slightest:

“I’m not trying to be faithful to the book Sorrento at all. So, anyone that’s coming at it wanting a faithful re-creation or transposing of the written Sorrento is not gonna get it. I would rarely do that because my feeling about written literature characters is you don’t get to better them. My basic preference is to just try and wipe that slate, and to try and do it in context of what is going on around the film. I treat them as very different entities in that way.”

Set in the distant future, Ready Player One follows a group of players operating with a virtual world known as OASIS, who begin competing against each other in pursuit of an Easter Egg left behind by the world’s creator, which offers the winner a massive fortune. Mendelsohn’s Sorrento is the primary antagonist of the story, a high-ranking official at OASIS in charge of a group of bounty hunters dead set on finding the Easter Egg and taking control of the virtual world. In addition to Mendelsohn, the film stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance, Lena Waithe, and more.

Mendelsohn having room to change and play around with the character in the film is just one of many changes that have become apparent over the past few months. T.J. Miller recently teased that his character, i-Rok, plays a much bigger role in the adaptation than he did in the original novel as well. None of this is necessarily surprising; it’s not uncommon after all for a film adaptation to take major liberties with its source material. In the end, none of these changes should really matter either, so long as Spielberg and co. manage to recapture the same feeling and joy that was found in Ernest Cline’s original novel.

Source: The Wrap