That sounds sensible to me. If they made the kind of adaptation that I found compelling it probably wouldn't do great business, and might in fact crash and burn. This reads as, yeah, safe. But if it gets halfway decent reviews, I imagine I will see it eventually. And if it gets rave reviews, I'll see it in the…

I think you could make a really interesting 90 minute movie (cable TV episode?) covering just the story of Lud. Especially if they could get the music rights for the ZZ Top song. And that's not close to the best story in Roland's life of adventure.

I think it looks perfectly competent as a movie, and Elba is the personification of cool. It just doesn't look like it has any ambition to capture what was great about the books. Might it still be a reasonably entertaining movie in its own right? Maybe! But it's not going to be great. And it might be hopelessly…

I'm willing to believe that their ambition got scaled back way before they started shooting. Right about the point they hired their screenwriter.

Ah, I remember reading that detail before, and I like it. If they added 2 or 3 more movies and a TV series to cover this story it would have the potential to be kind of interesting. But I think this movie won't do enough business to justify spending any more money towards making this a franchise. If this is their best…

The point: they bought the rights to the story, and it has name recognition, so lots of people will see it. At least on the opening weekend. The point is "money". But they won't be getting any of mine. I'm not even curious any more. Honestly, it doesn't look horrible to me, it just looks generic. I don't see any…

Walking and talking and thinking and scheming and moral dilemmas. Can that be reduced to 90 minutes that amalgamates this whole epic experience into a standard action movie? No.

The movie that plays in my head after I read a good book is always better than the actually movie. But this one looks like it's not even trying. I guess they are counting on people to go just out of name recognition and that might even work. Might.

I watched someone play "Alien vs. Predator" on a Jaguar, at a retro gaming MeetUp. It looked amazing in concept but maybe not actually fun to play. OK. Can I try it anyway? No. I didn't know the guy so I didn't make a big deal about it, I just assumed it was super-expensive / fragile.

It was like a Twilight Zone ending, because as I remember it the guy kept trying to bully his way on into being chosen to travel with them, his efforts including hacking the computer that was to determine the ideal candidate. It was SO unfair for him to be chosen instead of someone much more worthy. He was such an…

Did you get the impression that the "Americans" were supposed to be white Viking settlers, ones that came over before Asians crossed over? Is there any reason to think the director was trying to sneak in support for the White Supremacist interpretation of who the original American settlers were?

"extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" … maybe it's actually an authentic find, but it's so out of line with everything else ever found that it's more likely to be a case of contamination. Maybe!

My post was supposed to indicate that I understood that completely and shared the view. Tone is hard on the internet.

Some games and cartoons get around this by having you shoot robots. It still doesn't answer the question as to why there is so much violence in this story. Other than the obvious one: it's a violent video game (that also includes nuanced relationships).

Yeah, I'm not laughing.

My Crew is contemplating making a run a the Bloodstone tier in Season 1 of Rock Band Rivals. It's going to involve lots of grinding for XP in the featured songs this week [=tracks 6 minutes or longer]. One of the 3 Spotlight Songs is the new DLC, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Yes, the 17 minute version.

If we really are making a…

One of my friends mentioned that GameStop was having a great trade-in offer, but I'm a hoarder. I'm keeping all of my discs, forever!
But is the offer still on, and is there a way to look up online what I could get in trade credit?

Yes indeed, I played for at least 6 hours in the days after this post, and made it to Megaton! I neither blew it up nor saved it in that time, instead I created an orphan. It was fun and I am glad I tried more of it. I didn't get very far in FO4 but that game is much more overwhelming. People report spending so much…

Sounds like they didn't have the budget for anything else.

The only thing I'm reading up above that makes sense is that maybe he got an aggressive new agent / asked for a raise, and they wanted to say "NO WAY" in a way that made sure no one else ever tried that kind of stunt. But how is that "two issues" that he promised to address? Like maybe he fired his agent + withdrew…