Starship Troopers - the book was extremely meh - the movie is excellent (and very relevant to modern day).
Clue - an excellent movie based off a fucking boardgame… ditto for Barbie now as well!
Mage the Acension is a TTRPG love letter to Ars Magicka and it blows it out of the water.
Paul Verhoeven really upped the ante on that one.
How would Hannah Arendt be relevant here? I read a short blurb about her philosophy especially in regards to authority but I haven’t seen starship troopers
A hexbear or lemmygrad user could better explain this one, but its a deep-cut satirical comment on how nations that market themselves as “free” (but aren’t), promote philosophies that group and demonize all their enemies into a single camp, and prop up writers like Arendt, who was one of the main ideological peddlers of western moral supremacy during the cold war.
Losurdo has a lot of good articles on this and Arendt specificaly, and also Gabriel Rockhill has some good articles about this too.
I recently started reading Eichmann In Jerusalem, because I was aware it introduced the phrase “banality of evil” and always think of that in moral/ethical discussions about the real world (versus hypotheticals), and was immediately struck by how uncritical she was of zionism when it crops up in her reporting/writing. It’s almost like just a quirk of some of the heads of state that is used to explain their politics, rather than anything with more sinister implications.
Perhaps this comes from some immature SJW-ish ideal that an author should always negatively represent harmful ideas—or maybe she does later and I’m just impatient—but it still strikes me as ironic that in the seminal work on The Banality of Evil, genocidal colonialism is treated as, well, banal.
Ahhh, thank you. I’ll give that link a read
No probs! I also recorded that one recently as an audiobook here. torrent link is also there.
Helldivers 2 is heavily inspired by the movie… And I would say it’s better than it.
PS: Mage - The Ascension ♥️
While I like the theme etc. of Helldivers 2, I do wish they went a bit further than that. This kind of satire is best when it forces small bits of unease on the audience, like the ending of Starship Troopers - “it feels fear!”, and everyone celebrates. There are bits and pieces surrounding the gameplay loop (e.g. something like “never talk to the enemy, destroy them for democracy”, forgot the exact line), but it’s rare enough to be easy to ignore.
Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower
In 1995, Dylan described his reaction to hearing Hendrix’s version: “It overwhelmed me, really. He had such talent, he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there. He probably improved upon it by the spaces he was using. I took license with the song from his version, actually, and continue to do it to this day.”
Ill be killed for this but…Lord of the rings. Like, im sorry book purists but even after reading the books twice. Tolkien, is and always will be, THE high fantasy author, the one who basically made things we take for granted today. But the music from Howard Shore. So many scenes like from how fellowship began, to DEEEAAAATTTTHHH to Sam just being the broest bro to ever exist. I dont mind all of the cuts and changes they did, i happily return to the movies all year every year, the books? not so much.
The movies are awesome, but as a bookworm I would rather say they’re doing justice to their source material. I’m rereading more than rewatching, but I guess I’m not normal (And no worries, we book purists don’t kill people who have actually read the book)
I am an avid reader of books, and not a movie buff, but I stand on this hill with you. The LOTR movies are better than the books.
Battlestar Galactica (2003) -Originally a mini-seris to pay homage to the original idea through the lens of current events exploded into to what is my favorite show to ever be on television. Informing so much of what TV sci-fi could be after it.
I’d say the reboot falls apart about 2/3 of the way through. The last cylon reveals felt very Lost/Lindelof where they’d painted themselves into a corner and hadn’t planned out the ending.
Arcane, the animated Netflix show that was based on League of Legends.
TBF that was a low bar to clear. They just had to make sure the show was better than a bunch of screaming children.
However it is truly fantastic
Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt
I had never heard Trent Reznor’s original or Johnny Cash’s cover so thank you for mentioning it. What an incredible music video!
Trent Reznor even said it’s no longer his (Trent’s) song
I’ve heard both versions probably a hundred times each and only hear Johnny Cash’s voice anymore.
I don’t know what Reznor and Cash’s relationship was, but that has to feel so surreal for Reznor. You never see older artists cover newer ones in general, let alone such a legendary country artist cover a young alternative rock artist. If I were Reznor, that would be the thing that lets me die happy.
Yeah he really brings feeling to this song
The Stargate movie was good, but SG-1 far surpassed it.
Indeed!
Even the author agrees Fight Club the movie is better than the book.
Is Interesting that in the Chinese version of Fight Club, its end with a message saying that after the final scene the narrator was arrested and institutionalized and the movement disbanded, making it more faithful to the original ending of the book.
Can’t be giving anyone ideas now can we?
The Magicians: The books were good, but the TV show really was in a class all its own. And it did away with using obscure words just because, that was annoying.
Game of Thrones: At this rate, ASOIAF is never getting done, so I’m by default giving it to the show for actually finishing the job.
Good Omens: The first season brought the book to life, but there wasn’t source material beyond that. The second season did a great job fleshing out the characters and moving the story forward into the final season.
I’d rather the five released ASOIAF stay as they are, perpetually unfinished than anything close to the hatchet job that was the GoT show ever be released in book. For me, sometimes just finishing isn’t enough. The books > than the show 10,000 times.
Okay, fair. I’m mostly just frustrated that GRRM is taking so damn long.
I totally agree. The dude is aging, and not the greatest candidate for advanced years, we’ll say. He’s worth 9 figures. Please just hire someone to ghost write it and supervise their direction closely. He would more than recoup the financial hit in sales, so it could be argued it wouldn’t even cost him anything.
He could even justify it to the fans as a collab with a well-known author, who would do the bulk of writing with Martin as a supervisor/big picture guy. Like if Jordan had spoken with Sanderson to finish WoT before he died.
the Game of Thrones show’s last 2 seasons (the ones not based on any published books) was so bad, it make people retroactively hate the entire series and the entire intellectual property lol
Honestly, that’s on Martin. He signed the deal, then failed to get off his arse and finish the damn series. HBO exercised their right to develop their own content when, after
fiveeight years, he’d still not made any progress on finishing the series.The fans needed something. Can you imagine the uproar if HBO told us all to wait another few years before closing out the story?
Martin can whinge all he likes about his creative process, and how he was shut out of the final seasons. I notice he hasn’t whinged once about the money he made from selling the TV rights.
Don’t get me wrong - he’s absolutely entitled to that money. It’s his creation after all. But he also signed the contract that got us to where we got to.
It makes me very glad that Wheel of Time finished before being adapted. That one has the potential to be better than the books, but they need to give it more episodes per season IMHO. WoT has some unnecessarily tedious bits that will likely be stripped out, which should improve things.
GoT show stripped the unnecessary tedium parts of books only to add unnecessary tedious parts by itself. Still, it went on plus since the former took forever in books and the latter was only few minutes in show.
Haven’t read the comics, but everyone says that The Boys tv show is way better
Seasons 1 and 2, I’d agree. Season 3 was just bad.
That’s a bit harsh. The first ¾ of season 3 are really good, even if they did drop the ball at the end.
I should watch it then. I think the comics are brilliant.
Fight Club. Even the author preferred some of the changes made for the movie.
The reveal for example.
Been a while since I read the book, and the reveal was similar, but a lot better in the movie
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Pretty sure that movie is what set me on the path to radicalization…
Yeah, that’s a good one. Better by a large margin.
The Princess Bride was a pretty good book but an amazing movie.
One thing that always stuck out to me about the book is the introduction of certain editions. The author writes about himself researching the history of the country the story takes place in and describes it as real, saying he took his son to a museum with Inigo’s sword and everything.
I was Googling furiously when I read it because I was so confused. I was astounded that the place (and people) was “real”. It took a bit of research to find that the author just does this bit and hasn’t let it go since he wrote the book
I’m still so charmed that he tricked me. It made reading the book that much sillier, for me
I have a similar story from a different medium:
Frank Zappa has an album called Francesco Zappa. On the back of the sleeve, Frank describes finding out about a distant relative who composed and played music during the 18th century. After telling some friends about it, I got to thinking that Frank had invented another character (á la Ruben and the Jets), because that’s the kind of thing he would do, and felt very foolish for repeating this information uncritically.
Years later I looked the album up on Wikipedia, and it turns out Francesco Zappa was a real musician in the 18th century (who was not actually directly related to Frank).
He got me twice with one album.
I had a teacher that worked for the publisher and talked about how they’d have a series of responses for people who wrote in for the part of the book where the author says he wrote his own fanfiction scene and to write in if you wanted it.
Like maybe the first time you write in they’d respond that they couldn’t provide it because they were fighting the Morgenstern estate over IP release to provide the material, etc.
So people never would get the pages, but could have gotten a number of different replies furthering the illusion.
The Muppet Christmas Carol
Only version to actually feature a Dickens character that acts as a narrator. It just works better even if the narrator is Gonzo
I wasn’t sure what the right answer to this question would be until I saw it.
Controversial, but Lord of the Rings. Tolkien wrote great stories, but his writing style always seemed kind of lackluster.
I can’t fault him for any of his depth and character building and poetry and storytelling and descriptive environments it was all very thorough and for the right person wonderful. I think the movies did a giant justice to making his work accessible. There are a lot of people out there that can’t manage to make their way through his poetry sections. And you can’t not read the poetry sections because there’s definitely content in there you need.
I encourage you not to view him as an author but as an imaginative creator confined by language.
Also a racist
I came to this thread expecting to see this, and even with that expectation it makes me sad to see; to me the books are unarguably superior, to a large degree because Tolkien is such an excellent writer. I’d encourage anyone who’s bounced off the books a time or two to go back to them and try reading them aloud, even quietly to yourself: even though it’s prose, the text has meter and flow almost as strong as poetry. It’s undeniably a slow read, but it’s just such a beautiful one that the films, fun as they are, don’t hold up.
Plus, Jackson’s Two Towers is garbage.
It being better when read aloud actually nails what I dislike about it and, far more so, The Hobbit. They read like they were written to be told as tales around a fire, not to be read. So they don’t work particularly well as books that you read quietly to yourself (imo, obviously).
This was mine, but I’m assuming you weren’t referring to the BBC radio play, which is the best version of LotR ever made. The films had major distortions on the themes of the story and completely unbelievable characterization that destroyed all suspension of disbelief.
Sure, the CG was nice eye candy… but Gandalf getting into a shouting match with Elrond? Really? We’re okay with that?
Plus, skipping the correct ending of Frodo and Sam coming back to the Shire in industrialized dystopia missed key parts of their character growth and Tolkien’s anti-industrial themes.
And the massive over-focus on a love story that was barely relevant in the story? And a half hour epilogue of useless wide shots showing how amazing the wedding was and how everyone is doing so great now that they won? What a waste of time. They skipped one of the best parts of the book for that shit.
I could go on if I had watched the films more than twice and could recall all the other huge problems.
The books don’t hold up, either. Ain’t nobody got time to read 3-page info dumps of dense descriptive writing about plot-irrelevant details, or dense blocks of ancient history that demolishes any semblance of pacing left over.
He founded a lot of tropes of fantasy, so I know why he included all those descriptive details, but it just doesn’t hold up. Elf, big tree house, got it. You’ve got me for two paragraphs to fill in the descriptive details, but then let’s move on with the plot, tyvm.
If you’re a fan of LotR, give the 13-hour BBC radio play a listen. And of you’ve watched/listened to/read all three and disagree with me, I’d love to hear why (out of interest). Full disclosure: you probably won’t convince me, but I’m still waiting to hear someone who knows the source material justifying why the movies are so adored.
