Darth Praxus wrote:And, like a copy of a copy of a copy, the life drains further and further away with each successive installment.
It seems idiotic. Why would anyone want to spend ten dollars to see reference after cheap reference to a great work of art when they could simply just go back to the great work of art itself?
If you go back and read some of the period reviews of Star Wars, this is very similar to what some critics said. That it was just mixing and matching all the sci-fi tropes we'd seen up to that point, that it was basically The Hidden Fortress dressed up differently, that it was just rehashing Flash Gordon etc.
But for those of us that love Star Wars, we know that the sum of the parts is not the whole. The fact that a work of art is assembled using a set of known vernaculars does not mean that the work itself will reflect the basest or most familiar tendencies of those vernaculars.
But that's kind of a portrait of the subjective nature of artistic and creative work right? Maybe each of our reactions to a piece of media have more to do with how our brains synthesize information than whether or not that piece of media is actually "good." It might all be more based on inherent personality and upbringing than objective analysis.
Basically, what I mean to say is, I LOVED READY PLAYER ONE, whereas you didn't at all. As such, the rest of this post will likely upset you, although certainly that's not my intent. So...read on if you dare (dun dun dunnnn!)
Like I really loved this book. Like me-back-to-being-8-year-old-fanboy loved. If I took the probably 300 or more books I've read in the past 5 years, and normalized my rating of them such that Ready Player One was rated 10/10 (which it definitely isn't in an absolute scale), the closest book by my rating would be somewhere around 7.5.
I get what you're saying, though. You're just tired of every fucking thing being a reboot, rehash, callback, based-on, entity that's created by simply plugging in numbers into "the Formula" and churning it through the mega-Hollywood-corporation assembly line so fanboys can wank with their 20 bucks paid at the box office (and concession stand). I get it. I feel exactly the same amount of roll-my-eyes nausea at the state of things.
But RP1 is not that. I don't believe it's that at all. In fact, I believe RP1 to be the Star Wars (ep IV) of modern fiction in almost every way. It takes a series of things we're all familiar with: Virtual reality, treasure hunts, Joseph Campbell hero shit, yes 1980's nostalgia, grim post-apocalyptic dystopia brought on by climate change and nuclear bombs: and weds them all together into something wholly new, magical, and fascinating.
Thing is, I have no reason to have much nostalgia for the 80's. I'm too young for the era to have had much meaning for me, and I actually don't even like most 80's music or B-movies (with the exception of AC/DC, and...like, some of the early hip-hop). However, when it was presented in the book, I totally bought it, and here's why: The nature of a contest treasure hunt plot is that the main characters would be obsessed by some wide but limited body of content by which they can gain clues. It happened to be the 80's in this story, but it could have been anything and it wouldn't have mattered. The 80's trivia was merely plot fodder, almost like a textural maguffin, if you will.
So if you were to view it that way, and say, mentally redact all the 80's stuff, I really think you would find it to be a unique and charming feel-good hero fantasy.
Also, to address your criticism that the writing sucks: i think there's a difference between good writing and good story telling. For example, to me, the writing in LOTR is inconsistent in it's quality and I would give Tolkien an overall passing grade on writing, but it's nothing I would deem exemplary (with the exception of quite a few truly beautiful passages spread throughout the book...the death of Theodin for example). But overall it's my favorite work of fiction bar none, no competitors in the running. This is because Tolkien is the utter master of story telling. His use of multi-layered themes, and deep meaningful lore etc. etc. are just sublime, and his huge extended conclusion to the story is unquestionably profound.
So what I'm saying is, the specific wording and prose used in a book are more like dressing on the cake that is the story. So if you didn't like the way RP1 was written, I'm arguing that there's still a significant and noteworthy story in there even if his writing was either infantile, or amateur (which I don't think it was, but I think I've said enough already lol).
