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Redstar
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Post by Redstar »

SandChigger wrote:I'm not sure I understand the need for novelizations of video games.... I mean, it's bad enough that they make movies of them. :roll:


(That said, I do quite enjoy the Biohazard movies. Go, Alice! :P )

(And no, I've never played the game. Played an old version of Doom a few times. That movie sucked.)
Sometimes games get so big that it's near impossible for them to explain everything, so I suppose books are the logical direction. Considering most game novelizations are pretty good, at least for what they are, I'd consider it a good thing. Most of the movies suck, so at least the readers get their stuff.

I love classic D00M. It's the only game that's ever freaked me out, and it still does.
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Ampoliros
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Post by Ampoliros »

System Shock 2. best game ever.

As for the Doom Movie, i did appreciate one scene, at the point where any other horror movie would be killing people off for effect, they have one soldier in a totally unfair match against a big demon fight for his life. I liked that they actually showed him fighting, and giveing a good representation of himself. Most other films would have seen him dead in 3-4 seconds.
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TheDukester
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Post by TheDukester »

SandChigger wrote:I'm not sure I understand the need for novelizations of video games ...
Novelizations of anything are kind of a weird beastie. But as a direct appeal to hard-core fans, they are seemingly an easy revenue stream.

The British magazine SF Now recently did a story on the concept. It used to be a bigger deal, I guess, back in the '80s and '90s, when guys like Alan Dean Foster cranked out a few that were actually decent reads and some titles would sell quite a few copies.
"Anything I write will be remembered and listed in bibliographies on Dune for several hundred years ..." — some delusional halfwit troll.
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GamePlayer
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Post by GamePlayer »

See, everyone is always asking me why I get so furious when Hollywood makes a bad film adaptation of a good video game, classic comic book or great piece of literature. It's because people have a tendency to associate the low quality of film adaptations with a perceived low quality of the original source material.

This is why people don't read anymore; bad film adaptations. Some fool makes a lousy adaptation of Halo, The Punisher, or Dune, and people critically question (or outright dismiss) the worth of the original video game, comic book or novel. A bad movie becomes the de facto public face for the source material, because movies are the most pervasive medium in popular culture. Make enough bad movies from a common medium and you can diminish the perceived worth of those entire mediums.

This is something the idiots at the HLP don't understand. Every lame KJA novel, every Peter Berg adaptation, every lame product they produce under the "Dune" name ultimately undermines the original. Yes, sales of the original increase somewhat via exposure, but it's ultimately a short-term, cannibalizing effect upon the original's reputation. In the eyes of the vast majority of people who do not know better (or care to know any better) the original becomes synonymous with a perception of poor quality. People generally don't have time or patience to swim through a sea of shit to find the few gems. People are already filtering popular culture every day. Thus, most people won't bother to research and learn what Dune to avoid to find the "good Dune". Produce enough bad product under the "Dune" label and most people simply dismiss ALL DUNE by default.

Besides, most of these increased sales of the original are not by readers genuinely interested in Dune; they are sales by people reading KJA books and hence they are disappointed when the Frank Herbert books are "not like" what they read before.

To use an analogy, imagine you're enjoying some mindless, fast moving action flick only for the film's second half to turn into a slow moving, introspective and existential drama. Even if you happen to like both genres, you're totally perplexed by the sudden shift in story and angered because the movie isn't fulfilling as an action film and is only half a good drama. To digress back to Dune, fans might even dismiss Dune because they were in the mood for simple, undemanding fiction like KJA's books. Thus they miss out on Dune, which is ultimately much higher quality and more rewarding work of literature.

:twisted:
"They can chew you up, but they gotta spit you out."
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Redstar
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Post by Redstar »

"Don't judge a book by its movie."
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Rakis
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Post by Rakis »

Redstar wrote:"Don't judge a book by its movie."
That should be the catch line of the new Dune movie... :)
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