SADDO: THE MOVIE (aka READY PLAYER ONE)

This is a pretty thorough tear-down of the book, from the point of view of "reference-heavy culture can be good": https://www.heypoorplayer.com/2017/07/28/second-opinion-ready-player-one-worst-thing-nerd-culture-ever-produced/

The thread of excerpts is enough to give me hives though:

Thankfully goodreads kept all my choice RPO notes handy so anything that annoyed the fuck out of me is right here. pic.twitter.com/E6G9uEigVJ

— N. Cat (@naricat) July 24, 2017

man that is brutal. kinda thought "this could not possibly be as bad as everyone's saying it is" and holy shit it's actually a lot worse

You guys should check out my upcoming novel which is literally just a list of pop cultural ephemera accented with occasional punctuation and indentations to make it look like a story rather than something I c+p-ed from Wikipedia. You should also check out all of the zeroes in the dollar figure on my advance check.

Just wanted to post that I’ve really been enjoying Mike Nelson & his Rifftrax producer’s podcast on this book. They have like 8 eps as a book club where they just excoriate this shit. It’s fun.

We’ve probly mentioned this before but it’s called “372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back”.

372pages.com

Also, they just started a second where they tear into “Armada,” the follow up

CLINE'S A SHITTY PROSE WRITER
AND HE RIPPED "LAST STARFIGHTER"
ARMADA

I almost hate you for that but

Anyway somehow this news story seems appropriate for the revive

https://kotaku.com/infamous-atari-player-gets-world-record-removed-after-3-1822511777

lmao neanderthal!!!!

372pages.com

pretty fun so far. thanks for the rec

yeah this is gold! mst3k riffing on this? sign me up...

still hopeful

Ned yr article sent me down a rabbit hole. fascinating videos made about the dude who claims to have gotten 15 million on donkey kong (lol)

i'm starting this mst3k-guys' podcast and will prolly enjoy it for the reasons it was created to be enjoyed but i find it neverendingly amusing how threatened sub-culture obsessed ppl seem to be by this pop-culture obsessed guy.

actually lol why would i listen to this, good god these dudes are boring

probably not the first time "neverendingly amusing" turned out to be 20 minutes for you

i dunno, you think that podcast is good? it reminds me of middle schoolers trying to target and ostracize someone and rally a group against them.

Gotta say it is really funny to sic the dudes who peaked in like 1995 after the nostalgia movie

i like episode 0 where they are reading all the press reviews at the front of the book. one of them uses the word "geek" 3 times in as many sentences. Mike says "Imagine being in the 60's when the word 'groovy' had just gotten old. Have a groovy time on a groovalicious adventure." something like that. he is correct, the commodification of nerd culture has reached a Flower Child-like zenith, "geek" and "nerd" are the "groovy" and "far out" of today, used to shill the same old mindless crap as something new and hip.

in one of the press reviews the word "Nerdgasm" is used by the New York Times. Mike bemoans the Old Gray Lady

So I listened to the first two episodes of this, but was put off a bit by it being yet another "two bros talking about a thing" podcast, and turned against it basically when they started showing off about how little literature they had read at the end of episode 0, I have never seen MST3K so maybe that's why I don't get it, but still, I don't get it.

i enjoyed the part where they took 30 seconds to come up with ideas for 80's club costume descriptors. the book had gone with "People were dressed like they were at an 80's club". it was they ended up with 6 or so unique looks like "Madonna-style fishnets and gloves" "Multiple leotards aerobics style w headbands" "punked up 50's pompadour", etc. the writer of this book seems incredibly lazy.

Yeah, after listening to the intro episode I have my doubts: like mfktz, their total lack of knowledge and interest in books in general, and pathetically unfuuny jokes about same, makes me think these might be the least qualified guys to comment on anything in this sphere.

I'll try at least once more, because I loathe Cline that much, but it better improve.

why are you trying again? just don't listen to it sheesh

Unlike most Rifftrax, listening to this would take longer than reading RP1.

If there's interesting discussion to be had about RP1, I think it would be less on its obvious flaws, than on why it attracted a readership by word-of-mouth. There can't be that many nostalgic Gen Xers or cyberpunk fans with low standards. There's no shortage of other post-collapse, anti-corporatist screeds. Does the teen/YA market care about Devo and *Wargames*?

It's been a while since I've followed cyberpunk, but I seem to recall other, better written, Willie Wonka in The Sprawl novels. Maybe Vurt could have sold millions had it been grounded in familiar IPs.

There can't be that many nostalgic Gen Xers or cyberpunk fans with low standards.

Pixels grossed $245m, just saying.

Also yeah, a lot of people don't really apply any critical thinking - I've had a lot of pretty 'normy' people say that this is an entertaining book that they really enjoyed.

why it attracted a readership by word-of-mouth

shd've been word-of-mouthbreather, surely?

If there's interesting discussion to be had about RP1, I think it would be less on its obvious flaws, than on why it attracted a readership by word-of-mouth

it didn't though. this is one of the main points of the podcast, that it got rave reviews in the New York Times and AV Club and tons of publications as "book of the year". it's a mass marketed book that got big because that's what mass market books do

If there's interesting discussion to be had about RP1, it seems it will be about the film.

that’s a big ‘if’

I agree with Morbious. I didn't hate this book nearly as much as the rest of you though I do think it is overpraised and has some obvious problems; but if anyone can make a good film out of this and make use of the nostalgia aspects, it is Spielberg.

as for making a good film out of a shit novel, see Jaws

or Die Hard

if anyone can make a good film out of this and make use of the nostalgia aspects, it is Spielberg

he hasn't exactly been on a golden run of late, though, is the thing

he's just made the best film ever according to a poster I saw on the side of a bus

I thought Lincoln and Bridge of Spies were great

I don't rate Crichton much either

Cmon tho everything about this is so unpromising - "killer shark" is a premise that inherently has more potential for an entertaining film than like "what if funko pops" or whatever the premise of this garbage is

I'm not going cos I don't own a blacklight and I will need assurances that the seats haven't been befouled with the loinjuices of Gen X nerds prior to sitting down.

Crichton created some of the greatest compulsively readable sci-fi/thriller nonsense ever imo, love him

he was definitely a grinder when it came to doing research prior to writing his novels

Lincoln was good but BoS was just passable and you couldn't pay me to watch the two that followed

Spielberg movies are like Van Morrison albums; there's one every fucking year and I forget it exists two minutes after I'm told about it.

I'm not even a hater but the guy makes a shitload of films so I usually feel ok skipping over the odd one that appears calculated to be as unappealing to me as possible

that's nice

he'll survive

xp

"what if funko pops" hahaha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNtySt6Fg30

lol

will the movie be better than 2 hours of this

Here's the official trailer for READY PLAYER ONE: pic.twitter.com/0rQnUE5LdK

— Neil Cicierega (@neilcic) July 22, 2017