I thought the movie really underdeveloped the world, and didn't take advantage of all of the cool possibilities. Other than [spoiler] The Shining [/spoiler] none of the references had any impact. Mark Rylance was the only actor to make an impression. I didn't even like the narrative of the book that much but I thought Stephen Spielberg would improve it not make it worse. The plot holes were huge especially in the third act ([spoiler] How did Art3mis just walk into his office, walk out without anyone seeing or hearing her, and just walk out of the IOI headquarters [/spoiler]). It felt like a lot was cut for time, or they spent so much time on CGI sequences they forgot to make anything real, but what they cut were the parts that made the book interesting. You could ignore Ernest Cline's narrative and plot struggles because he made the characters slightly interesting, the challenge seemed difficult and all encompassing, and a lot of the references were actually relevant to the story. Every time they got a key it was a huge deal in the book, here I totally forgot it even mattered because it was so glossed over even from the beginning ([spoiler] Really a race? [/spoiler]) and the real world consequences also didn't matter, so the whole thing felt like it was hitting the classic sentimental Spielberg movie moments with nothing to back it up.