I don’t know why you’d make a movie out of Armada. They made it 34 years ago, it was called The Last Starfighter.
Saw this yesterday. It was okay; good visuals, but really shallow. I enjoyed reading the book, which was also pretty shallow (as well as pandering), but little of made reading it an enjoyable experience for me made it into the movie. Even worse, the movie bored me at times.
It felt like any other standard and formulaic movie. While the characters in the book were pretty flat, they were even more so in the film. Of course they had to condense a lot to get it into the running time, but most of the characters lost much of the little they had, as well as the dynamic between them. Aych was pretty good, though. There was also no real sense of there being any stakes either.
It was pretty, though, and a lot of the small references here and there worked better when shown instead of told.
I spent the entirety of Mute thinking Paul Rudd was Jason Lee.
Man this is hard to listen to. I hate to play the “not the target audience” card, but they talk about comics as “They were fine when I was fifteen, then I grew up” and spend half the time making fun of the author for liking video games.
Just came back. Respect to Spielberg, he still knows how to direct. Shame that what he chose to direct here is such cliched story seen million times before. It is hard to get me excited by videogame CGI when I can…play actual videogames, almost with that level graphics. I need characters I could care about, but I didn’t find those here. It was nice seeing Emma from Bates Motel again at least. I was wondering when was she gonna make it big, always so likeable.
Finally caught this. Really enjoyed everything in the Oasis, and detested everything in the real world. “I’m not disappointed” and everything surrounding that line made me wanna slap the writers right in the face.
Overall, I walked out mostly pleased, but knowing that the movie was such popcorn fluff I’d forget everything about it in a week. The kid next to me in the theater was pumping his fist repeatedly, though, so I think he adored it.
It’s been a while since I read the book, but I seem to recall most of the stuff taking place being about really old-school video games, like Joust and Zork… so, not really CGI intensive stuff at all. I mean, the whole Oasis was technically a video game, but the stuff that was seen in the world was more… nostalgic things from the 80’s, like Voltron, D&D, etc.
Did they change that?
The Oasis scenes were pure videogame CGI, first thre was a race like from Split Second, then dancing in some night club, then big battle on some semi-frozen looking planet…there were a few scenes of old games from 70s and 80s (Adventure) but most of the film looked like videogame cutscene.
These were both in the book. The race “quest” replaced Joust and The Shining replaced War Games. They definitely altered and streamlined the key process but they did follow the basic concept.
Hrm. I feel like this replacement would be bad.
Was it a race against other players? Cause that would DEFINITELY be bad, at least in my mind.
The whole joust backstory was kind of cool. I mean, not really critical to the story I guess, but cool. And does that mean they got rid of the whole D&D thing surrounding the first key then?
Sigh. Yes. And the Cap’n Crunch whistle and Zork, and… well, everything really.
The race was very dumb. It had an obvious solution someone would’ve stumbled upon accidentally in hours, a determined subreddit could’ve solved in minutes, and we’re supposed to believe it went unsolved for years. See also: the rest of this stupid movie.
they whacked all of the Tomb of Horrors stuff and there was no build up to the first key quest. Everyone already knew about the race and it had been attempted several times before the movie actually started.
The watering down of the questing process for the keys and the gates was the most disappointing thing about the movie. A lot was either lost or shifted in context.
Yeah this stupid bit required so much disbelief suspension that it immediately threw my enjoyment off.
I am disappointed they got rid of the D&D stuff. The best part of the book were the earlier parts, when it was a mystery to be solved. Closer to the end of the book it became giant creature beat 'em up battles and was silly and a bit boring.
So wait to see this one on TV, I guess.
I know they had to trim things up in the adaptation, but the book had everyone logging in from different parts of the world, whereas the movie had everyone living in basically the same town. I understand why they did it, but it seemed to make the real-world parts feel that much smaller. It was less “travel across the country to meet up” and more “oh hey we live in the same town cool!”
Also, the race at the beginning reminded me to play Split/Second again! Man I love that game!
This doesn’t sound like it’s the same story then.
I’m really disappointed that they didn’t mention the whole thing about the schools, Wade’s poverty and being unable to travel, how he found the first key…I know, I know, they can’t tell everything, but those aspects of the book were actually interesting.
Along with that, my son was really excited to see RAPID ZOOMING AND CUTTING leading up to…a boring shot of two guys playing Joust. I admit, that would have been really funny to see. Maybe if Edgar Wright had directed it.
The book would make a much better mini-series than a 2-hour movie.
It has the outline of the same story. Pretty much every detail is changed. It’s been a while since I read the book, so I couldn’t say for sure. The focus of the movie is pretty different from the focus of the book.