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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2018 23:49:43 GMT -5
The sequel's out?
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Post by eatersthemanfool on Mar 8, 2018 23:55:19 GMT -5
Oh, nevermind. I didn't realize he was writing a DIRECT sequel. I thought everyone was talking about his second book, Armada, which is basically more of the same nostalgia wank but with the plot ripped from The Last Starfighter.
I felt like Armada had a more interesting story than RPO. Just not by much.
I will probably read the sequel too. Because I hate myself.
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Post by Woody Alien on Mar 9, 2018 7:01:01 GMT -5
AI definitely caught a lot of flak when it was released. People were saying that Spielberg "ruined" Kubrick's last film, but Kubrick kind of did that all on his own. And War of the Worlds made everyone go "huh, that's it?" with it's abrupt ending and everyone also hated that the son survived against all odds. I think War of the Worlds was quite dumb and I haven't watched it since then, mostly for these elements: the idea of the alien race coming from underground rather than space is stupid (though I suppose it explains how to adapt a book written in the 1800s when people couldn't watch the universe with giant telescopes and so on), the post-9/11 sentiment was trite and it is even more these days ("is it the terrorists?"), and most of all Tom Cruise as a blue-collar single father is completely unbelieveable, even less than his role as a tomb raider in the latest The Mummy. I somewhat liked Crystal Skull however and still think that it isn't as bad as most people say. As for Ernest Cline, I read somewhere that Armada is basically the same as RPO but even more forced, full of random references (without even being framed in the "easter egg hunt" story) and that most of the people who liked RPO didn't like it, so...
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Post by GamerL on Mar 9, 2018 7:11:20 GMT -5
War of the Worlds was pretty exciting the first time I saw it in theaters, when you had no idea what you were going to see and what was gonna happen, remember the trailers and ads for the movie made a note to not show the tripods.
Then I later rewatched it on blu ray after five years and thought ya know, that's actually even a little better than I remembered! ......then I watched it a third time and was just kind of bored.
So overall I don't think it's bad but it's definitely not anything special.
As far as Armada goes, I've yet to read it since it got such a negative reception and the plot is just a ripoff of Last Starfighter, which just isn't very interesting, it's a story you've seen before, how did Cline think he could get away with such an obvious ripoff?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2018 12:14:49 GMT -5
Because he's a hack and the publisher didn't give a shit about properly editing his work since it would make money regardless.
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Post by Elvin Atombender on Mar 10, 2018 9:59:38 GMT -5
I think it's blown out of proportions. Sure, it's crass exploitation of nostalgia, but so were all the Transformers/Jem/Ninja Turtles/whatever films and the tons of 80s styled stuff from Stranger Things to Crossing Souls. Who gives a shit? Did they, as South Park said, rape their childhood or something? I think that at this point RPO has become the new "Rick & Morty" in that everyone feels the need to say how they hate it, regardless of whether they watched/read it or not. As a person who read RPO shortly after it came out and already hated it back then I think there's a fundamental difference between things with a lot of pop culture references (Wreck-It Ralph, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Stranger Things etc.) and RPO, where the references (and how being a living nerd references encyclopedia makes you a winner) take the main stage. Which leads to RPO's biggest problem: the way it celebrates passive consumption of entertainment. Wade memorizes thousands of hours worth of books, videogames, movies etc. but exactly what does he learn from them? Absolutely nothing. All that matters to Wade (and to Cline) is cataloguing stuff in the most shallow and joyless way possible. In 700 pages I never felt that Cline, in his fervor, stopped for a moment to actually enjoy all the things he mentions. As for Rick & Morty, I think that a lot of critics actually like the show but cannot stand a part of the fandom who acritically idolizes Rick instead of realizing that he's not a role model at all. Ah, guys: stay away from Armada, it's even worse than RPO. Why I wanted to give Cline a second chance is beyond me.
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Post by alphex on Mar 10, 2018 10:20:42 GMT -5
Scott Pilgrim is basically the most misunderstood book of its niche, it's insane. It's basically about an irresponsible asshole who falls in love with a pretty girl who is super bad with responsibility, who both are in denial about their own actions and it really paints escapism in a bad light. Scott is shallow as hell in his relationships, and both him and Ramona basically use people they think they love to propell their own narrative. Scott is a manchild who grows up a bit over the course of the story, but people think "BREAD MAKES YOU FAT???" is the central moral of the story.
But of course it makes sense that the very people it critcises prefer to interpret it as a tribute, not a tale of warning.
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Post by jorpho on Mar 10, 2018 15:09:05 GMT -5
I think it's blown out of proportions. Sure, it's crass exploitation of nostalgia, but so were all the Transformers/Jem/Ninja Turtles/whatever films and the tons of 80s styled stuff from Stranger Things to Crossing Souls. It would probably be so much easier to dismiss if it was just another movie, or if it was just another kids' book sitting at the bottom of the remainders bin. But it's a big-budget movie based on a disproportionately successful book, and the idea that other books of similar quality may rise to prominence at the expensive of much better books is deeply troubling. Or maybe it's already too late and I just haven't been paying attention. Which leads to RPO's biggest problem: the way it celebrates passive consumption of entertainment. Wade memorizes thousands of hours worth of books, videogames, movies etc. but exactly what does he learn from them? Absolutely nothing. All that matters to Wade (and to Cline) is cataloguing stuff in the most shallow and joyless way possible. In 700 pages I never felt that Cline, in his fervor, stopped for a moment to actually enjoy all the things he mentions. Yes, this, exactly.
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Post by kaoru on Mar 10, 2018 15:15:16 GMT -5
Or maybe it's already too late and I just haven't been paying attention. Yeah, sorry, but in regards to shitty books being too popular and becoming even more successful through getting turned into shitty movies, it's about ten years too late
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Post by backgroundnoise on Mar 10, 2018 15:30:05 GMT -5
I don't see how the success of popular mass market books is detrimental to "better" books. This may not apply to all nations, but where I'm from, the government partially funds book publishers and authors via organizations like JAK RS, frequently posting so-called "public tenders".
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Post by Woody Alien on Mar 10, 2018 16:56:24 GMT -5
It would probably be so much easier to dismiss if it was just another movie, or if it was just another kids' book sitting at the bottom of the remainders bin. But it's a big-budget movie based on a disproportionately successful book, and the idea that other books of similar quality may rise to prominence at the expensive of much better books is deeply troubling. Or maybe it's already too late and I just haven't been paying attention. Which leads to RPO's biggest problem: the way it celebrates passive consumption of entertainment. Wade memorizes thousands of hours worth of books, videogames, movies etc. but exactly what does he learn from them? Absolutely nothing. All that matters to Wade (and to Cline) is cataloguing stuff in the most shallow and joyless way possible. In 700 pages I never felt that Cline, in his fervor, stopped for a moment to actually enjoy all the things he mentions. Yes, this, exactly. I apologize, I should have phrased it better and been less harsh... I was referring mainly to the hate that those referential posters received, but re-reading my post now it looks like I was just saying that the book/movie was unfairly maligned. Which is not, honestly, our mad scientist friend Elvin Atombender has a point when he says that it's mostly a catalogue of stuff just to show off the author's "geeky" credentials. I can say I was "tricked" by an influential blogger/writer from my country who's an authority on "geek" stuff, and who praised the book, so I was curious and finally read (almost all of) it. I somewhat enjoyed it, not as much as he did, but with the impression that main character Wade/Parzival was kind of flat and a Mary Sue... but now I'm even less enthusiastic about the book. (For what it's worth, the blogger later said in a footnote that he despised "Armada" and didn't even properly review it) I'll probably go watch the movie with my friends, since they asked me, but I'll treat it just like a big-budget version of South Park's "Imaginationland Trilogy", that is, an excuse to put on screen a huge bunch of fictional characters. Anyway, I just found this pixelated music video that condenses the book's story in 5 minutes, I think it's quite good (for real this time!): jorpho: but of course it's already too late... we live in a world where glorified Twilight fanfiction becomes a massive literary success and then turns into an equally successful film trilogy (the "Fifty Shades" books, for those not in the know)
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Post by alphex on Mar 10, 2018 21:17:41 GMT -5
It would probably be so much easier to dismiss if it was just another movie, or if it was just another kids' book sitting at the bottom of the remainders bin. But it's a big-budget movie based on a disproportionately successful book, and the idea that other books of similar quality may rise to prominence at the expensive of much better books is deeply troubling. Or maybe it's already too late and I just haven't been paying attention. Isn't this how it always ends, anyway? Studios (or companies, regardless of the field of the product to be sold) try to go for the most blatant and cheap route, and in the end, too much shitty product leads to the consumers moving on from the hype and the bubble bursting. Also, Gunship always have awesome video clips, but I haven't watched this one in full yet because I figured it'd spoil the whole story. It starts out rather sweet I gotta say, though.
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Post by lurker on Mar 12, 2018 8:59:12 GMT -5
Looks like the early reviews are rather positive.
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Post by Discoalucard on Mar 12, 2018 9:42:52 GMT -5
Which leads to RPO's biggest problem: the way it celebrates passive consumption of entertainment. Wade memorizes thousands of hours worth of books, videogames, movies etc. but exactly what does he learn from them? Absolutely nothing. All that matters to Wade (and to Cline) is cataloguing stuff in the most shallow and joyless way possible. In 700 pages I never felt that Cline, in his fervor, stopped for a moment to actually enjoy all the things he mentions. I don't entirely agree with this, mostly because the concept acknowledges that, in the real world, becoming an encyclopedia of 80s trivia is fun but fundamentally useless, but the premise of the story is "...but what if it wasn't?" Of course, because of that, the negatives go unaddressed, because it would completely undermine it. But I think this is something that is meant to be assumed before going into it, because I don't think the text states this. The other pop culture-y stuff? Yeah, the references are used to provide some color, but they'd still function without them, at least narratively. (Stranger Things is a bit of an outlier because it doesn't explicitly reference many products so much as various plot devices, the general atmosphere, etc., I'm not sure it would be half as interesting without that vibe...but there's nothing really wrong with that either.) That's why you can have a Wreck-It Ralph sequel where the characters do more than just namecheck old video games, because they stand out enough on their own. RPO doesn't - it'd just be another boring treasure hunt story. All of this reminds me that the same guy who wrote RPO also helped write a screenplay called Fanboys, which leans heavily on "nerd" culture - it's about a group of kids making a roadtrip to break into the Skywalker Ranch to see Star Wars Episode I before it came out. It...wasn't great.
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Post by GamerL on Mar 12, 2018 17:35:15 GMT -5
Supposedly we have Harvey Weinstein, who demanded a lot of re-edits and reshoots, to thank for the failure of Fanboys, it's not a guarantee the original version of the movie would have been better, but you can't really judge a movie that's been through a production like that fairly.
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