I really liked the first book due to all the nerdy references and the ending utilizing Monty Python’s Holy Grail. Even when his friend was revealed to be a black lesbian due because it was better to present herself as a white male I just rolled my eyes. The second book on the other hand was garbage. You get the whole women in gaming lecture, the real hero was a woman trope, lgbt stuff of course, and the aforementioned character whining about the lack of representation everywhere they go or whining about the fact that Prince (they visit an area of the Oasis with Prince playing concerts) became a Jehova’s Witness and condemned homosexuality. The book overall seems to use to Sword Art Online plot as well.
It’s like the author felt the need to apologize. Although the the woke crowd a white make nerd from the 80s is evil incarnate it seems
Ready Player One is just dumb. I stopped reading when I was supposed to believe that kids who are in high tech VR were hanging out playing Tron: Deadly Discs on fookin Intellivision instead of, you know, good games from the era.
Yea that was hard to believe but when I was a kid in the 80s 50s nostalgia was huge and we have seen 80s nostalgia in recent years. I did like the concept of the movie game where you had to repeat every line
People are nostalgic for the good shit from the 80s. Tron Deadly Discs was bad then and it's bad now.
People are nostalgic for Commando and Rambo, not the hundreds of flops.
I have noticed that I’ll watch some b movie from the 80s or 90s on Tubi or some other streaming service and had I seen it years ago I would’ve thought it was bad but now thanks to the era we live in a movie where a man is masculine and a woman is feminine and gets an automatic plus. lol
B movie doesn't necessarily mean bad. Games like Tron are clunky and unfun, not charmingly simple like Pacman or missile command. Even then, people are nostalgic for the arcade versions not the Atari versions.
Can’t argue there. True not necessarily bad but it is refreshing to just see a movie that isn’t made for a “modern audience”. My brother has mentioned before about how something like the Reacher show would be run of the mill in the 90s but now since a lot of people are starved for a good story it really shines
They got away with it the first time, why try your luck a second time?
Feels like while the first book got away with being niche, the film got away with not just nostalgia baiting and visual effects but also because everyone could imagine the main bad as EA when they were hated the most.
This feels like it'll flop as there isn't the same connection, most gamers have abandoned the big studios, most people are becoming VERY aware of SBI and companies like it and people really dislike the Mary Sue trope.
Yea I could see the first book as a love letter to the 70s/80s nerd culture since that is when the author grew up but that appeals to nerds like me even though I grew up in 80s/90s. Like you said that is a niche market. More and more I’m seeing it’s best to let things be niche. Like comic books. I hear they may adapt one of Sanderson’s book series. I can only imagine what they will do
The fanfic written by the author of The Martian (and declared canon by the original author) gave a good reason for the villain, his sister became a neet and died due to her lifestyle, he's tring to tank it to force everyone off and save others from experiencing what he did
I don't think you understand how desperate stupid money is to get a worthwhile investment. They'll dump millions into anything that has made any profit. Especially in today's Hollywood.
I was gonna say they did a bang up job on the SFX.
I'm not watching a movie/book designed from the ground up to be a nostalgia masturbation session
Definitely was that. Looking back I’d rather just go to those properties and read or watch the actual material. At the time I read the book a number of years ago I hadn’t yet grown tired of rehashing stuff
I used to work with the author's childhood friend (they all still meet up a few times a year to play D&D) and would constantly be regaled with stories about how he had just met with Spielberg about getting the book turned into a movie.
I hadn't read the book, so I was lent a copy of it and had to try to come up with nice things to say about it. I love 80s culture as much as the next guy, but let me tell you, it was hard to do.
Ready Player One is the most distilled version of my most hated storytelling strategy: lazy reference to other popular thing. It’s memberberries on steroids. It’s stealing the greatness of other works to cheaply prop up your own empty creation. I hate it.
It was extremely heavy with the references but it made me revisit a lot of stuff. If it came out today I wouldn’t read it because I’d rather just consume the original product at this point
I look forward to not seeing this one as well.
Now I want to see Shangri La frontier
Didn't the sequel to the book come out ages ago and it was in fact so terrible it killed the entire hype the series had?
Yuppp.
2020 but yea it feels like ages
I never read the book because it sounded like a misguided concept. If I like Star Wars I'll watch a Star Wars movie, but that doesn't mean I want to watch a movie about some guy because he also likes Star Wars.
The other thing I remember was a clip from the movie in which a character uses a "holy hand grenade" that didn't use the Worms sound effect, which to me would be the reason to use a holy hand grenade in your 'memberberry movie.
The first book was ok, though I was a little annoyed at the pointless page and a half anti-Christian screed the author wrote.
I skipped the movie and second book entirely.
Smart move and I forgot about the anti Christian stuff
I could have forgiven it if the character in the book was giving the rant (which he was I believe) but the tone of the rant suggested a personal vendetta by the author and not as a character building arc (since religion or God never factored into the story again).
May it tumble and burn.
Read Soda Pop Soldier instead. Much better novel.
Thanks! Someone suggested that a long time ago and I forgot the title.
That was also me lol.
But the second book was shit. The first book was already their best shot and they wasted it. The day some pirated/fanedited movie version of the book just rips entire scenes from other movies and mashes them together into an underground version of the movie is the day it'll do the book justice. Until then, all the collective IPs are too expensive to portray.