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Have any of Clines other books blown up the way RPO did? I'm pretty sure Armada got absolutely savaged when it came out.
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Oct 10, 2020 20:43
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MechanicalTomPetty posted:Have any of Clines other books blown up the way RPO did? I'm pretty sure Armada got absolutely savaged when it came out. Like his first one should have been.
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Oct 10, 2020 20:45
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I think the main reason rpo got such great reviews is because critics didn't realize Cline wasn't in on his own joke
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Oct 10, 2020 21:13
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Also, Ernest Cline can't even be bothered to make it like a year later or something because that would mean having to consider the consequences of the status quo changing.
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Oct 10, 2020 21:25
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The Klowner posted:I think the main reason rpo got such great reviews is because critics didn't realize Cline wasn't in on his own joke Nah. Reading the actual reviews makes it clear that most of the critics weren't in on the home either. It's really embarrassing reading them.
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Oct 10, 2020 21:32
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MechanicalTomPetty posted:Have any of Clines other books blown up the way RPO did? I'm pretty sure Armada got absolutely savaged when it came out. The rumor is that Armada was Cline's first novel attempt and that it got shelved in favor of Ready Player One instead. Having read Armada, it really does come across as even more amateurish and clownshoes than RPO so I can see that being true.
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Oct 10, 2020 22:15
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ChickenMedium posted:They've realized that their target audience is people who wish they were dead. can confirm
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Oct 10, 2020 22:20
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my personal favorite bit of Cline's writing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrvAnPKv4Ro
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Oct 10, 2020 22:33
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Groovelord Neato posted:My favorite thing about Ernest Cline is his second book was just The Last Starfighter but packed with tedious pop culture references which he definitely pulled out of a drawer after the success of Ready Player One. My favorite thing about that book was there was some interview where someone straight up asked him "Isn't this just The Last Starfighter" and he answered something along the lines of "Yes, but as far as we know, no one has ever done The Last Starfighter set in a world where The Last Starfighter also existed as a movie". God this loving guy
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Oct 10, 2020 23:36
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AceOfFlames posted:My favorite thing about that book was there was some interview where someone straight up asked him "Isn't this just The Last Starfighter" and he answered something along the lines of "Yes, but as far as we know, no one has ever done The Last Starfighter set in a world where The Last Starfighter also existed as a movie". I can't lie that's kinda a big dick answer. "No it's not this thing I ripped off, it's a ripoff in a world where that thing exists so everyone can know it's a ripoff" Like, Cline's raw shamelessness is a little impressive
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Oct 10, 2020 23:58
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Oh God, it's even worse: https://www.theverge.com/2014/3/11/5492708/ernest-cline-is-the-luckiest-geek-alive-interview quote:Armada is about Zack Lightman, a boy who’s asked by the government to use his video game skills to stop an alien invasion. It might sound like a rip-off of The Last Starfighter, but there’s one key difference: in Armada, Lightman has seen The Last Starfighter. He’s probably seen it a dozen times, like Cline himself. "In a zombie apocalypse movie, nobody's ever seen a zombie movie," Cline says. "Or in an alien invasion movie, nobody has ever seen an alien invasion movie like Independence Day. That's what Armada is — if an alien invasion happened today, we'd be aware of all of that and reference all of this pop culture like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and we would have expectations of how an alien invasion would go."
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Oct 11, 2020 00:06
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lol "will make the oasis 1000x more addictive" holy poo poo this thing was already killing the world
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Oct 11, 2020 00:37
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AceOfFlames posted:My favorite thing about that book was there was some interview where someone straight up asked him "Isn't this just The Last Starfighter" and he answered something along the lines of "Yes, but as far as we know, no one has ever done The Last Starfighter set in a world where The Last Starfighter also existed as a movie". The last starfighter is set in a world where it already existed as a videogame!!!!
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Oct 11, 2020 03:42
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The last starfighter is set in a world where it already existed as a videogame!!!! It was an eponymous recruiting tool. But yeah.
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Oct 11, 2020 04:12
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AceOfFlames posted:Oh God, it's even worse: Movies have referenced their genre since at least the 90s, if not earlier. WTH is he even talking about?
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Oct 11, 2020 04:41
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PeterCat posted:Movies have referenced their genre since at least the 90s, if not earlier. Return of the Living Dead specifically subverts zombie movie tropes.
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Oct 11, 2020 05:19
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feedmyleg posted:Nah. Reading the actual reviews makes it clear that most of the critics weren't in on the home either. It's really embarrassing reading them. A lot of critics are the same demographic as the author, and the entire point of the book is that it's just wallowing in unfiltered incoherent nostalgia start to finish. It's the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny for boomers. By the second book the critics probably realised no one would take them seriously anymore.
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Oct 11, 2020 05:21
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Ghost Leviathan posted:A lot of critics are the same demographic as the author, and the entire point of the book is that it's just wallowing in unfiltered incoherent nostalgia start to finish. It's the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny for boomers. By the second book the critics probably realised no one would take them seriously anymore. That's exactly what happened. Nostalgia bait stuff has always been a thing but RPO doing it via a VR/video game sort of thing made it "new" to a lot of critics. People definitely knew what was up when Armada dropped though. I think the worst thing Cline has ever or will ever do though will always be that weird spoken word poetry slam thing about how much he wants to gently caress nerdy girls that like Battlestar Galactica and is repulsed by blond women.
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Oct 11, 2020 05:51
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joylessdivision posted:I just rewatched Event Horizon recently and it is so loving good. The CGI is a bit dated and has that weird "90's CGI sheen" to things but it doesn't detract because the practical effects are fantastic. Also fun fact about the design is that the warp drive/black hole drive is modelled after those depictions of angels with shitloads of eyes  And yes, the two leads are great. In fact, the whole cast is really good. Jason Isaacs (who's the doctor) has a good story about how the massive prosthetic dead body version of him was so well done that he felt compelled that take it home, since otherwise it would just be thrown out. He was keen on the idea until his wife asked him 'where the gently caress are we going to keep that?' Laughing Zealot posted:It's really easy to cross over from it being horrifying into just plain disgusting. Or really funny, as all those very gory but very bad cheap horror films attest. Snowman_McK fucked around with this message at 06:11 on Oct 11, 2020 |
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Oct 11, 2020 06:09
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I will always say that Event Horizon has one of the best line readings ever and an actual smart captain. "We're leaving."
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Oct 11, 2020 06:48
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The third act of Event Horizon is really such a shame. It would be timeless and a classic, the first 2 acts are so much fun. Somehow the last one is bad enough to drag it down.
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Oct 11, 2020 06:57
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I think what mostly works about Event Horizon is what makes Alien work as well. Take a bunch of blue collar schmo's in a futuristic setting, put them into an impossible situation, and they make a bunch of decisions that are pretty reasonable/the smart thing to do. I think that does a much better job of selling the horror than the typical formula of having a bunch of morons do dumb poo poo constantly.
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Oct 11, 2020 07:31
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Neo Rasa posted:That's exactly what happened. Nostalgia bait stuff has always been a thing but RPO doing it via a VR/video game sort of thing made it "new" to a lot of critics. People definitely knew what was up when Armada dropped though. I think there's something to be said for his specific dumb version of nostalgia too. The whole "Yes, it looks exactly like Rivendale, the elf city from The Lord of the Rings" worked well for people who wanted mainline nostalgia and references spoonfed to them. But that's probably a one time high.
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Oct 11, 2020 07:40
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i'm rewatching Event Horizon now in the background and Fishburne's character is uncannily like Sigourney Weaver's character in Alien, absolutely practical and just want to get out of the stupid situation people claiming to be smarter than him says is "totally safe you guys lol". Such a fun film E: lol I forgot that coop doing the iron man stunt years before The Martian which p much saved his crew mate The Saddest Rhino fucked around with this message at 08:28 on Oct 11, 2020 |
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Oct 11, 2020 07:43
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Simplex posted:I think what mostly works about Event Horizon is what makes Alien work as well. Take a bunch of blue collar schmo's in a futuristic setting, put them into an impossible situation, and they make a bunch of decisions that are pretty reasonable/the smart thing to do. The space thing also makes it plausible that they even stay on the ship so long, whereas your usual haunted house movie has to come up with contriced reasons for the protagonist to not just nope out immediately.
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Oct 11, 2020 09:01
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Simplex posted:I think what mostly works about Event Horizon is what makes Alien work as well. Take a bunch of blue collar schmo's in a futuristic setting, put them into an impossible situation, and they make a bunch of decisions that are pretty reasonable/the smart thing to do. "We're leaving" is one of the great underrated lines in all cinema.
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Oct 11, 2020 10:24
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Macdeo Lurjtux posted:Its kind of crazy when you look back at how influential the RE games have been. RE wasn't the first 3rd person survival game but it's success certainly blew up the genre. Attempting to improve the controls of the original games led to Onimusha which led to Devil May Cry which blew up into a whole genre of survival/fighting hybrids like Ninja Gaiden/God of War/Bayonetta. They even gave Kojima a crack at the franchise and he ended up inspiring the likes of Left 4 Dead and Vermintide. I think Devil May Cry was literally Resident Evil 4 at one point, Kamiya started it and Capcom said "we like what you're doing here, but it's not Resident Evil" and let him work on it while they still worked towards the final Resident Evil 4. The Klowner posted:I think the main reason rpo got such great reviews is because critics didn't realize Cline wasn't in on his own joke I think it was largely due to the critics not being familiar with geek/nerd culture, so it opened up a brand new world of imagination, whereas if you have passing familiarity and can distinguish clever writing from pandering, you'll hate RPO. It still doesn't explain how the critics lauded a book with such godawful prose, structure, tone shifts, sexual and racial politics, etc. Elfgames posted:lol "will make the oasis 1000x more addictive" holy poo poo this thing was already killing the world OASIS wasn't responsible for killing the world, and it's shown as the one true escape people have from the horror and boredom of day-to-day existence, it's still hilarious because the end of the book and movie are "maybe people should go outside more often" but then the sequel's like "eh, gently caress it." muscles like this! posted:Return of the Living Dead specifically subverts zombie movie tropes. Not only that, Return of the Living Dead directly references Night of the Living Dead and claims those events happened, and that Night of the Living Dead is a documentary sold as fiction to cover up the affair. Shaun of the Dead also has the whole "don't say the z-word" bit because the characters don't want to believe the zombie movies they saw are coming true.
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Oct 11, 2020 16:29
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X-Ray Pecs posted:I think it was largely due to the critics not being familiar with geek/nerd culture, so it opened up a brand new world of imagination, whereas if you have passing familiarity and can distinguish clever writing from pandering, you'll hate RPO. It still doesn't explain how the critics lauded a book with such godawful prose, structure, tone shifts, sexual and racial politics, etc. A lot of critics are really poo poo at their jobs
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Oct 11, 2020 17:06
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Ghost Leviathan posted:A lot of critics are the same demographic as the author, and the entire point of the book is that it's just wallowing in unfiltered incoherent nostalgia start to finish. It's the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny for boomers. By the second book the critics probably realised no one would take them seriously anymore. Gen-Xers, not boomers. Just to be slightly nitpicky, but Cline and his audience are a specific group of gen-xers from a specific time and place. It's why the oasis seems so silly and stupid to anyone who's slightly younger than he is: it's a portrayal of the internet as described by someone who never really experienced or internalized the way internet culture actually works.
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Oct 11, 2020 17:24
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Blastedhellscape posted:Gen-Xers, not boomers. Just to be slightly nitpicky, but Cline and his audience are a specific group of gen-xers from a specific time and place. It's why the oasis seems so silly and stupid to anyone who's slightly younger than he is: it's a portrayal of the internet as described by someone who never really experienced or internalized the way internet culture actually works. A poster here (I think Jenny Angel?) said a major problem was there being a group of evil players named Sixers, so named because they all had played numbers beginning with 6, but none of the gunters (ugh) dressed up as Sixers and had numbers like 80085 or 42069 or anything mocking them.
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Oct 11, 2020 20:43
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Event Horizon's spindly, impractical, ribbed oval-ish corridor between the two parts of the ship, is one of those weirdly common motifs from sci-fi of the period - always puts me in mind of Lexx and, for some reason, Farscape - and I loved Laurence Fishburne's captain's chair that hung from the ceiling. I seem to remember more of the Lewis & Clark crew having up close moments with the 'liquid' in the Event Horizon's gravity drive, though, not just the engineer - like a scene where the whole crew abruptly find themselves staring into the black, and their reflections move on their own or something - so it's a confused 'which of us is the reflection' moment. Is there more than one version of the film, or have I muddled it with something from a different film altogether?
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Oct 11, 2020 23:20
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so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
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spincube posted:Is there more than one version of the film, or have I muddled it with something from a different film altogether? You're thinking of Sphere, I believe.
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Oct 11, 2020 23:22
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Gonz posted:You're thinking of Sphere, I believe. Is this the Mandela effect thread? Because I also felt like that was in EH
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Oct 11, 2020 23:26
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Unless it was a deleted scene, I don't believe there was ever a scene in EH where the whole crew was in the engine room at once looking into an activated core. I do remember, however, the artifact in Sphere initially not giving off reflections of anything around it, and every time someone went inside of it, their reflections appeared and started floating upwards.
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Oct 11, 2020 23:31
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That said, it's been a while since I watched EH from start to finish, so it's entirely possible that I myself looked into the core and have been affected.
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Oct 11, 2020 23:43
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It's Sphere.
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Oct 12, 2020 00:11
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spincube posted:Event Horizon's spindly, impractical, ribbed oval-ish corridor between the two parts of the ship, is one of those weirdly common motifs from sci-fi of the period - always puts me in mind of Lexx and, for some reason, Farscape - and I loved Laurence Fishburne's captain's chair that hung from the ceiling. The Discovery from 2001: A Space Odyssey was built like that. the length of scaffolding separating the command/habitation module and the drive section, largely because the drive was a nuclear engine.
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Oct 12, 2020 05:05
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spincube posted:Event Horizon's spindly, impractical, ribbed oval-ish corridor between the two parts of the ship, is one of those weirdly common motifs from sci-fi of the period - always puts me in mind of Lexx and, for some reason, Farscape - and I loved Laurence Fishburne's captain's chair that hung from the ceiling.
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Oct 12, 2020 05:31
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Gonz posted:You're thinking of Sphere, I believe. Groovelord Neato posted:It's Sphere. I stand corrected.
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Oct 12, 2020 07:14
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BaldDwarfOnPCP posted:Is this the Mandela effect thread? *Mandala effect
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Oct 12, 2020 10:50
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