I’d just like to say that Ernie is a really nice guy and I was happy to see a bidding war for his book after the years he spent writing it. Very few writers are lucky enough to hit that level of popularity, just or unjust, and it’s good to see someone actually be able to make a living as a writer these days. Carry on.
The best thing about the trailer was Rush’s Tom Sawyer, but even that was wrong, in that it’s the wrong damn album.
I would do that today, and I am 50.
Yeah, Ready Player One wasnt pulitzer prize level. But it was a fun check your brain and enjoy the ride kind of read. Sure its unrealistic but its a frikkin story, not reality. Since its science fiction, I don’t hold it to such strict standards as many here do. If I did that I would ruin much of what Ive enjoyed over the years. The Lensmen? The Foundation Trilogy? Star Wars? Star Trek? Hell, anything sci-fi or fantasy. It’s all unrealistic bull. It’s like a scene where a mutant teleports into a courtyard and farts an EMP shutting down the entire city and someone bitches because his skin is unrealistically blue. And Im thinking “Thats what you bitch about?” When I read something like this or go to a movie like this, I go for the entertainment value, not for the reality. I get enough reality in my own damned life, Im looking to escape that shit. So yeah, Ready Player One is pure schlock and you know what, Im fine with that.
I hope none of you arguing in defense of this also complain about the Bay Transformers movies, or Adam Sandler vehicles.
I do not. I even like the Transformers movies in a “turn off brain, watch robots” kind of way.
Ok I can handle Transformer movies as mindless explody fun but Adam Sandler… that’s not fair. Those movies were not made for entertainment purposes but were actually made as torture devices for use in Guantanamo Bay. They were only released for public consumption so they could be legitimized in the eyes of the Geneva Convention and not be deemed as cruel and unusual torture devices.
ps: using extremes and outliers as the basis of your retort is not cricket, old chap.
Jeez this thread
One of the things I loved about Ebert is he judged the movie on what it wanted to be, and how successful it was. So, he would give a good Superman movie 4 starts, but a crappy “serious” movie 2.
If you rip out the references, you end up with a serviceable, pleasant, forgettable bit of scifi balderdash fruppery.
RP1 was its references. That was the whole point.
You mean frippery, perhaps? I don’t think fruppery is a thing?
But it doesn’t handle it’s references well, it’s mostly just “hey, 'member?” It also doesn’t leave any of it for the reader to connect the dots, look at the Firefly reference above, he could have just said it was a Firefly class ship, but no, he has to go on and site the ships name from the show and then name the show, even though the show is named Firefly!
Compare and contrast to Stranger Things, which is full of nostalgia and references but I would argue handled quite deftly. I mean heck, just look at the way it uses Thriller in its trailer for season 2.
I’ll rememerance my own vocabularization, thank you veraly much!
And yes, that’s what the book is all about. It’s constant references, launched at the reader in a wide spread like ball bearings from a shotgun. And that broad attack is paradoxically deft. Think of how many elves you see in MMOs named some variant of Drizzt. That’s what gamers are like. And that’s what made the book so much fun.
I don’t really care for South Park but…
Is this film a sign Hollywood is moving on from retro seventies to retro eighties?
I think we may be past snob and getting into pretentious douche territory.
You mean because you like the book and some others didn’t?
Well, I think that the problem that I have with the criticism of the book in this thread is very personal, i.e. You are a bad person for liking this, nobody should like this.
I also find it funny when I see people making jokes about the book on Twitter amongst their own fangasms over the latest hollywood franchise reboot.
People appear to draw the line arbitrarily on this book and demonize it for all of nerd culture’s sins.
So… like a shotgun firing a single projectile at a time?
Huh? If anything I’d say it’s the critics that are getting personally attacked.