{"id":6667,"date":"2013-07-26T19:39:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T10:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/?p=6667"},"modified":"2013-07-26T19:39:03","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T10:39:03","slug":"ruining-science-fiction-tropes-since-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/archives\/2013\/07\/26\/ruining-science-fiction-tropes-since-1998\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruining Science-Fiction Tropes Since 1998"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Amidst a bunch of mediocre-to-abysmal blockbusters, the in-flight entertainment system on my Delta flight had on offer a movie I had never heard of: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/the_host_2013\/\"><em>The Host<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Figuring that a movie about body-snatching aliens could not possibly be that bad (or rather: no matter how bad, would have to be somewhat entertaining), I ended up subjecting myself to what turned out to be 90 tedious minutes of some of the worst moviemaking I have ever seen, only made bearable by occasional bits of unintentional hilarity through sheer ineptitude. I belatedly gave up somewhere around the two-third mark.<\/p>\n<p>All along, I could not quite put my finger on it, but there was something vaguely familiar in the movie&#8217;s over-simplistic linear plot, incredibly dull treatment of otherwise time-tested genre tropes, barely-defined one-dimensional characters and empty dialogs masquerading as profundity&#8230; not to mention the obvious (though badly muddled) religious undertones. Despite having never heard of that movie until then, it felt as if I may have watched it before.<\/p>\n<p>And then today, while browsing Detroit airport&#8217;s equally indigent Travel Bookstore, I happened upon the book that apparently inspired that abortion of a movie. And it all made sense.<\/p>\n<p>Just in case the author&#8217;s name alone may not have been enough, a big sticker above it proclaimed, in big gaudy gold letters: &#8220;By the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stephenie_Meyer\">author of the Twilight\u2122 series<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amidst a bunch of mediocre-to-abysmal blockbusters, the in-flight entertainment system on my Delta flight had on offer a movie I had never heard of: The Host. Figuring that a movie about body-snatching aliens could not possibly be that bad (or rather: no matter how bad, would have to be somewhat entertaining), I ended up subjecting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6668,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6667\/revisions\/6668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unknowngenius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}