One book, one movie
Jul. 4th, 2011 11:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaConsider Phlebas: works well as a follow-up to Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand. Where Delany is like EXTREME CULTURAL RELATIVISM IDEAS IDEAS JEWEL-LIKE COLOURS IDEAS GAY SEX IDEAS IDEAS WIP AMNESTY, Banks takes the intelligent worldbuilding and tells a much more "normal" space opera story on top. Too normal, in fact. The McGuffin is a McGuffin, character motives and backgrounds are universally underdeveloped, and what one observes of said characters' dialogue and actions does not render them sympathetic. The protagonist is an awful person on all levels, tbh, from his attitude toward romantic relationships to his political stance. Then again, I may be more biased than Banks' imagined audience at time of writing: I realized after a while that the entire book would remain cogent if you search-replaced "Culture" with "Mac users". Or possibly "SXSW attendees". I mean, if I understood the argument correctly, these 12 trillion humans and AIs basically went to galactic war in order not to be called out as moral hypocrites on Tumblr. And then they gave all their jellybean-coloured ships ironic hipster names.
Where the book performs best is in special effects - the sort of massive-scale, inventively destructive action sequence that's a dime a dozen in summer blockbusters now, but rare even in Bruckheimers before the advent of CGI. Banks is much better at visual description than Delany is: if you have a cinematographic inner eye like I do, it's like being shown a stack of concept illustrations and having the physics of all that shiz being blown sky-high explained in minute detail. I imagine an experienced production designer could eyeball the overall budget at plus or minus 50% on the spot, without having to wait for a script. It's by no means easy to write that stuff without confusing the reader or resorting to infodump, but it's also not the sort of "good writing" that gets plaudits... well. Maybe hard-SF fanboys appreciate it.
Super 8: speaking of inventively destructive action sequences. This was sort of like, idk, Kill Bill - homage reference homage TARENTINO homage pastiche homage homage - only all the loving references were to 80s Spielberg. So it was more like Spielberg Spielberg Spielberg, vast improvements in green-screen technology, Spielberg Spielberg, ~*LENS FLARE*~ Spielberg Spielberg. Also, JJ Abrams's 14-year-old Gary Stu. He's not the hero, of course: he's the auteur.
Speaking as someone who has no sentimental attachment to classic Spielberg (I saw all the 80s touchstones much later, as an adult), I enjoyed every moment of it as it was happening, but in retrospect agree with Ebert (not to mention G, whom I saw it with) that the punch doesn't fully connect. Too much reliance on old dog tricks, probably; every storytelling element present and accounted for and exactly what you'd expect. I would watch it again, but not because it looms in the imagination.
Where the book performs best is in special effects - the sort of massive-scale, inventively destructive action sequence that's a dime a dozen in summer blockbusters now, but rare even in Bruckheimers before the advent of CGI. Banks is much better at visual description than Delany is: if you have a cinematographic inner eye like I do, it's like being shown a stack of concept illustrations and having the physics of all that shiz being blown sky-high explained in minute detail. I imagine an experienced production designer could eyeball the overall budget at plus or minus 50% on the spot, without having to wait for a script. It's by no means easy to write that stuff without confusing the reader or resorting to infodump, but it's also not the sort of "good writing" that gets plaudits... well. Maybe hard-SF fanboys appreciate it.
Super 8: speaking of inventively destructive action sequences. This was sort of like, idk, Kill Bill - homage reference homage TARENTINO homage pastiche homage homage - only all the loving references were to 80s Spielberg. So it was more like Spielberg Spielberg Spielberg, vast improvements in green-screen technology, Spielberg Spielberg, ~*LENS FLARE*~ Spielberg Spielberg. Also, JJ Abrams's 14-year-old Gary Stu. He's not the hero, of course: he's the auteur.
Speaking as someone who has no sentimental attachment to classic Spielberg (I saw all the 80s touchstones much later, as an adult), I enjoyed every moment of it as it was happening, but in retrospect agree with Ebert (not to mention G, whom I saw it with) that the punch doesn't fully connect. Too much reliance on old dog tricks, probably; every storytelling element present and accounted for and exactly what you'd expect. I would watch it again, but not because it looms in the imagination.
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Date: 2011-07-05 08:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-06 01:13 am (UTC)I will HOLD YOU TO THIS REVIEW, just so you know. XDDDDD
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Date: 2011-07-06 10:01 pm (UTC)