SADDO: THE MOVIE (aka READY PLAYER ONE)

Jeb Lund gives this thing the thorough vivisection it deserves.

I'm curious why the cognoscenti feels the need to give this more scrutiny than any other summer escapist blockbuster.

Yes, Gen X feels nostalgia for a period (arguably ending around 1987) when we were young, and popular culture seemed less homogenized in the corporate blender. We're not the first, nor will we be the last, generation to have those sorts of affective hot buttons. RPO's protagonist seems a stand-in for millenials, who in many ways have been encouraged to share their parents' nostalgia (cue pictures of children at Star Wars prequel premieres), but for whom it remains second hand. Pull the zoom back, and RPO is a paper-thin story of trans-generational culture appreciation, and evils wrought when real world interests intrude on emergent cultures of social media.

Is that a useful story to tell now? Yes. Was this the best way it could be told? No. Is it any worse than other summer fare? I doubt it.

https://ih0.redbubble.net/image.74660018.4835/raf,750x1000,075,t,fafafa:ca443f4786.u1.jpg

I'm curious why the cognoscenti feels the need to give this more scrutiny than any other summer escapist blockbuster.

The film is scheduled to be released on March 30, 2018.

Probably because even something as stupid as Transformers isn't just two kids in striped tube socks and 'Where's the Beef?' shirts slamming their action figures together while making 'pew pew' noises and occasionally looking up at the camera and asking, 'Remember this?'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWmkXBupMJ8

great quote from the Jeb Lund article:

This book is an orgy of the cardinal writer’s sin of telling, not showing, filtered through IMDB and delivered so relentlessly literally that it’s amazing Cline doesn’t just include a cartoon of himself dressed like Peter Griffin from Family Guy saying, “Holy crap, Lois, this is just like the time the author addressed his creations at the end of Breakfast of Champions.”

Good god that review is such a jerk off session. The most interesting part is the plot synopsis, and apparently there's only one really objectionable part of the book as there's that same list passage I keep seeing over and over again. Could writers be any more jealous of this guy's success?

Based on the synopsis the entire enterprise seems pretty objectionable tbh

Ah, the "y'all just jealous haters" defense. Always welcome in any discussion of art, never says anything depressing about the person offering it.

Could writers be any more jealous of this guy's success?

it's an unearned success. there is nothing there. it may as well be a webpage full of links.

it doesn't even do references artfully. like he finds the Firefly spaceship and has to mention that, oh yeah, it's from Firefly the movie. this is shit writing.

also apparently the plot involves characters re-enacting two entire films in this? as if endless lists of references wasn't hollow enough they pause to do the writing equivalent of Lip Sync battle.

how does he do this, does the book just stop and you are reading the Wargames script for 20 pages?

more or less

with occasional interjections from the narrator about how cool it all is

it's an unearned success. there is nothing there.

The same could be said for most writing for the mass market. Does J. K. Rowling "deserve" to be a billionaire? Hell do most billionaires?

Transformers isn't just two kids in striped tube socks and 'Where's the Beef?' shirts slamming their action figures together

Nor is RPO. It not a work for the ages, but there's is a little more going on than the oft-quoted Bret Easton Ellis-esque listmania. The 80s nostalgia is the lure, but there's some pungency in the environment of environmental/governmental collapse, the implied critique of escapism into virtual worlds, and the pervasive anti-corporatism.

The same could be said for most writing for the mass market. Does J. K. Rowling "deserve" to be a billionaire?

J.K. Rowling single-handedly created a multibook franchise based on original characters that was massively successful for all age groups and resulted in a series of 7(!!!) highly successful films all critically acclaimed, a feat not even matched by Lord of the Rings

also Harry Potter wasn't named Merlin and he didn't have to re-enact the entirety of The Hobbit because the writer couldn't think of anything else.

there's some pungency in the environment of environmental/governmental collapse

this feels like the same mindset marketing Batman V Superman that mistakes "dark" for meaning. get over it people have been doing apocalyptic fiction since the dawn of time.

this is totally the right thread to point out that there were 8 films

lol

an all of them fucking awesome. damn right she deserves to be a billionare

J.K. having no plagiarism in her game is stretching the point a little

there have been 9 films now fwiw.

rowling accomplished a synthesis of some kind that amounts to an original creation that has clearly resonated with a whole fuckton of people. there are some hacky elements and some parts that wear the influences a little too blatantly, sure, but come on.

not having read RPO i just have to say that the escapism and anti-corporatism stuff is also just recycled from genre tropes right? i started that podcast someone linked above and one of the first things they point out is that the landscape of stacked-up RVs or whatever is ripped off of a specific sci-fi story, i forget by whom. it kinda seems like saying "okay so the combat stuff in equlibrium is all just a matrix ripoff, sure, but there are some really original themes in its depiction of a dystopia run by emotion-suppressing censors who destroy cultural artifacts until they discover an underground resistance but even this discovery is all part of the evil plan!!"

I really hope someone screams "YOU ARE A BATTERY BRO" in the film

Most genre fiction, including the Potter series, is recycled from genre tropes. Lots of people were similarly querulous when the second HP book, "surely" just another YA fantasy, was being read by our peers in 1998-9. Was it "better" than say Philip Pullman's contemporaneous His Dark Materials series? IMO at the time, Pullman was tackling far more interesting issues.

Rowling benefited from network effects; Pullman did too, to a lesser extent; now another genre publishing phenomenon is. From a far enough removed (read: old) perspective, it just seems fairly absurd to care deeply one way or another.

what genre is this? science fiction? sci fi usually has something to say about the world it creates and how our world is different/same. what critique of capitalism does it have in it? how the whole thing of the text i have read has been about fetishizing corporate IPs.

rowling is fun to read, and everything i've seen quoted from cline is like nails on a chalkboard. i dunno if she was "tackling interesting issues" but it was very solid kids' fiction, especially in the first few books when the plot carpentry is tighter. the characters are likeable. the world is intriguing and full of charming detail. the plots are compelling page-turners. the themes were appropriate for books that were to be read by parents and kids together - loyalty, friendship getting you through tough times, doing what's right, not fitting in, the everyday evils of selfishness and vanity and prejudice, etc. etc.

merge this and the Emoji movie thread

delete the rest of ilx

omg flappy bird is a sanpaku sock

Emoji sounds far more interesting to me compared to this. they are kind of ambiguous and less over-analyzed cultural symbols, abstract/more and tied to the collective unconscious.

RPO is like, fuck, a Transformer and a Minecraft guy, together, and look, it's Iron Man. its a Target commercial.

I barely remember RPO from long walks with the dog 2 years ago, but there are those sorts of themes. They're common to all YA fiction. What distinguishes them is largely the environment they posit. Harry Potter being a largely benign environment where evil is real and has a personality, His Dark Materials one of oppressive religious institutions, Ready Player One a post-apocalytic world were escapism predominates, Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker/Drowned Cities denying even escapism. They all address loyalty, friendship getting you through tough times, doing what's right, not fitting in....

Perhaps someone else will confirm that the usual YA themes are also present in Hunger Games and Divergent. Lifes too short for me to have bothered with those franchises.

I don't believe RPO was explicitly marketed as a YA book. I believe it was aimed at people who consider themselves adults.

The protagonist is a teen/twenty something. That's enough.

just want to completely ILX this thread up by saying nobody deserves to be a billionaire no matter what. Billionaires are bad for the world.

From what I can tell based on the trailer and reading nothing beyond passages posted itt, RPO feels kinda like the sequel to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hz1UaEVyoo

with a dash of

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/nintenshows/images/2/2f/VGM-CN_Title_Card.jpeg

and as with cartoon all-stars to the rescue, there's a million wild and wonderful ways to say "no"

teen/twenty something. That's enough

(Having returned from the dogs' walk), well, that and avoiding moral grey areas, politics, explicit sexuality, excess profanity, aging and concerns of older readers. YA literature could be defined by what it doesn't include. Often I suspect the antagonist's motivations would be grist for more adult fiction (for example, there could be sympathetic diary/apologia for Voldemort where more his complex motivations were clarified, but it wouldn't be YA).

Look at RPO as a cartoon for adolescents, that happens to include some cultural signifiers from our own adolescence, and a lot of the disdain evaporates.

Nah it's shit

Adolescents who want this flavor of escapism are better off with Ender's Game or, you know, anything with girls in it, even if they are named Hermione

RPO was never YA if anyone's being honest - this drivel was published on the gamble that a certain 19+ demo wanted to read this kind of drivel, and somebody at the print shop got a big promotion, because humans love shit whenever someone shovels it with both hands and a performative facial expression that they feel connected to

p much everybody I know who's cumming over it is 30-40 years old and seem to be daily depressed that it's not still 1987

the only reason i had heard of rpo before the spielberg attachment was a supernerd acquaintance of mine loaned it to me on spec and claimed it would change my life. he is ~33. the only words of it i read were on the back cover.

RPO was never YA if anyone's being honest...

― El Tomboto, Tuesday, August 8, 2017

does manbaby count?

the only reason i had heard of rpo before the spielberg attachment was a supernerd acquaintance of mine loaned it to me on spec and claimed it would change my life...

― Clay, Tuesday, August 8, 2017

he's right about that. since reading it i now harshly judge anyone who has a kind word for the book or its author, and seek revenge on those who recommended it to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moNHfeBJ81I

it just fails on so many levels. nobody wants to read pages of lists, it's not an enjoyable experience, it's an error as close to being Objectively Bad as you can get to in writing. it has two Japanese characters in it and they both happen to be samurai there to teach the protagonist about honor.

it also fails to juxtapose things in an interesting way. juxtaposition is a technique just like any other and it can be used artfully or it can be clumsily weilded at the reader. hearing that this guy got a Delorean and installed the Knight Rider AI and put the talking mouth from Knight Rider on the front and put Ghostbusters stickers on the doors and got a custom license plate that makes another reference to Ghostbusters is not interesting. visually it sounds like a fucking dumb looking car. it doesn't remind me of Ghostbusters, a snobs-vs-snobs comedy film. it doesn't make me think of the Hasselhoff's suave tech spy. i do not know what this juxtaposition is supposed to do, what kind of reaction he wants from the audience, beyond superficial recognition, the gratification that the audience is a like-minded consumer is all i can get from this. like everything else this book offers, it is interesting on the intellectual level of a 6 yo dumping out a bucket of toys.

some reviewer said something about how ridiculous the number of times watched listed is and i agree, as if watching Raider of the Lost Ark 101 times will reveal anything that the 100th viewing failed to. it's a Consumerist dick measuring contest just like much of the internet. "How best can i demonstrate my superiority as a consumer?"

as for OG material, Captain N and the crew of IP brands also went on fairly interesting adventures but (often to its detriment) it strayed too much from the video games it was supposedly based on. they weren't mindlessly re-creating game sequences they were doing cheesey tropey storylines. Zelda was also about dumb stupid attempts at corny sitcom humor as much as it was about these games. i think there may be something interesting to say about 80s pop culture and the way it turned into sort of weird mutant version of its more traditional sitcom forebears (introducing sitcoms about aliens and robot girls, weird uber-macho-USA videogames emerging from the post-nuke generation of Japan) but yeah not here and not this guy. he is a shitty writer with shitty ideas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists

Seth MacFarlane is to blame for all of this

Arguably, we've seen depictions of virtual reality "games" based on historical pop-culture since ST:TNG. In RPO's case, the IPs are named.

No fan of MacFarlane, but his success is a symptom of a larger malaise.

talking more about the whole "here's a thing you might remember. there's no joke here and it doesn't affect the plot, but here's a thing."