Amph Ready Player One- book and film discussion thread

If it were an Ernest RPO thread, it wouldn't have any original content, just reference after reference to other threads.

 

*Insert Ender Sai saying something inflammatory in the politics thread*

 

Did I get that reference? You bet your ass I did.

 

... and now I have a thread idea for Rogue1-and-a-half

 

you totally clined that, dp.

 

I actually do though. Every time I watch it, I feel unrestrained joy. Seeing Chewie heartbroken, albeit for a moment, after Han's passing still gets me. I'm wholly sucked in, and on top of that I'm glad that whilst it will never have the magical thrall the OT has on me, it'll be the Star Wars for my daughter's generation.

But I've probably watched TFA 40, 50 times - that's right, as many as Bowen at the cinema - since it came out. More than Rogue One. I enjoy it more than R1, and find it incredibly rewatchable in a way the prequels never were.

Let me give you some final context - my wallpaper at work changes all the time, but my wallpaper at home has been this since 2015:



I have the BB8 from the Rey black series affixed to my monitor stand, and of the 4 Funko Pop! Vinyls I have on display I have Rey TFA, Rey TLJ, Deckard and James Hetfield. I think it's fair to say I enjoyed TFA mate.

 

But this is irrelevant, CT. Nobody is arguing that nostalgia has no place. Ironically, one of the best speeches about the effect of nostalgia comes from a show predicated on nostalgia:

"Well, technology is a glittering lure. But there's the rare occasion when the public can be engaged on a level beyond flash, if they have a sentimental bond with the product. My first job, I was in-house at a fur company, with this old pro copywriter. Greek, named Teddy. And Teddy told me the most important idea in advertising is "new". Creates an itch. You simply put your product in there as a kind of... calamine lotion. But he also talked about a deeper bond with the product: nostalgia. It's delicate... but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, "nostalgia" literally means, "the pain from an old wound". It's a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn't a spaceship. It's a time machine. It goes backwards, forwards. It takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the Wheel. It's called a Carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Around and around, and back home again... to a place where we know we are loved. "

Note, how nostalgia in 1959 is a "rare" moment of engagement? Today, it's the main mode of engagement and probably because the glittering lure of technology has snagged so many of us.

But if you draw a comparison between the way in which Cline indelicates rams nostalgia at you, it's like Battlefront and microtransactions. They existed, people tolerated them, until someone made it the purpose and backbone of an experience. It's not about the "I know that!" moment any longer, it's a competitive pissing contest to see if you know at least as much as, or heaven forbid, more than Cline does. The nostalgia is no longer about engaging with the audience on a sentimental level, which Stranger Things and The Force Awakens do (and let's be honest, like Indiana Jones and the original Star Wars trilogy did too); the nostalgia is about nostalgia. "Hey, remember Steve Urkel? Remember Family Ties? Remember Airwolf? Remember MASK? Remember the Six Million Dollar Man? Remember Bill Hicks? Remember Bad Brains...?"

 

Can you explain this for me in ten words or less or do I really need to slog through all those posts arguing about TFA on the last page?

 

Ready JC One using references to all of your previous (and other famous) threads and catalogs...

 

Oh, yes, back in the glory days. What about Ready Debo One?

 

That works; Ready JC One was more of a working title...

 

I found that @Ender Sai has a pseudonym on the internet:

https://www.heypoorplayer.com/2017/...r-one-worst-thing-nerd-culture-ever-produced/

WARNING: Language. Lots and lots of language.

 

Ender would never take such liberties with the word "genocide".

 

Also literally tonnes of people hate its cheap awfulness, dp4m. You should be one of them, but then again, you do like the now-dead Legends stuff, so...

 

Ready Player One hit all the right notes for me because it wasn't a by-the-numbers "hey, remember <blank>" - it was my nostalgia. Playing D&D and Zork, hitting the arcade, watching Star Wars, reading LOTR... that isn't really a 'broad appeal' approach to the late 70s/early 80s. I'm not even sure why TFA is even brought up in any comparison here.

 

BTS Sizzle Reel !!!

 

Fantastic trailer, I had a tear in my eye with 'Pure Imagination' playing

 

Erm, but anyone to whom nostalgia appeals has found "their nostalgia." That's an entirely reflexive definition.

It's like being convinced that a psychic is real because they said "someone recently lost their mother" while you were in the crowd after having recently buried your mother. The culprit is just yelling into the darkness with a broad, lazy generalization that's statistically bound to hit someone.