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Books that are worse than the film (which was already bad?) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

156 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've started reading Jumper by NameDoesNotMatter. I would like to formally apologise about all the harsh things I've ever spoken about that film.

Fine, the cast is unlikeable and the action scenes are just fisticuffs in the air, but my god, in comparison to the teenage dreck that is the book, it's a masterpiece. At least they tried to build a credible back story for the main character.

In the book, he literally thinks everyone is out to sexually assault him (and somehow they seem to), he solves his problems by throwing money at it, instead of any actual creativity, and the author desperately tries to portray him as a mature-for-his-age adult, despite the fact that his first reaction to anything is crying followed by petty revenge.

I'm just flicking through the pages, pausing at any plot bits, and then flicking on.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

An absurd amount of marketing, mainly. Very easy to shove YA/childrens books down kids throats, they don't have a lot of natural exposure to literature. Fuck, eragorn was the best example of the YA industry pushing a bad series (they even tried a movie series), I remember loaning it from my school library and being legitimately confused as to why it was becoming popular. I ended up finding a weird romance+fantasy series at the time that I largely consider as not being actually good, but remember finding it way more engaging. Maybe it's better now that kids are largely terminally online.

It's really my biggest gripe with it. There's better fantasy, better wizard centric fantasy, and better YA books out there. It's not great by any means, and I'm not surprised that I dropped the series without finishing it as a kid because I was reading much better stuff by the time the last few books came out.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Honestly I kind of liked the eragon books though if asked I couldn't say why.

The attempted movie adaptation was horrible though

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Eragon was good for a YA book, which is damning by faint praise

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

same. It was long enough ago that I have no real recollection of why but I thought they were good. I even saw the movies. I guess kids aren't very picky

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

There was more than one movie? I thought they gave up after the first

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Guess you're right. I remember seeing one in theater, which I thought was the second one, but looking it up now that was 2006 (god how was that 18 years ago lmao) and they never made the second one. 100 million budget, made 250 million at the box office, I guess that's considered a flop. (Edit: yeah I guess it was a flop in the US box office, the majority of that was worldwide)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Eragon is likeable despite not being very good. Probably its greatest strength is just how sincere and inoffensive it is. You can really feel that the author was just a kid writing some fantasy stories. I think there's value in that.