Gibson has had his fingers in this. I hope that leads them away from making this a complete wash. Even if it flops, maybe it'll get the ball rolling on more media critical of our apparent now and near future prospects (with a little pizazz)
In the late 90’s it looked like we were going to get a Neuromancer film by the amazing director Chris Cunningham, known for his Aphex Twin and Bjork videos. Gibson strongly approved of Cunningham, reportedly stating he was the only person he had met whom he trusted to do the adaptation justice. Sadly, it never came to be.
Neuromancer is my favorite book. Not one of, but the one.
After watching the trailer I must say that the overall vibe is substantially off. Very pretty, but it lacks the perpetually disoriented, if you will, atmosphere that dominates the narration in the book. It's all too clean and predictable in the trailer.
But it is a difficult book to adapt, I will give them that.
The best books usually are quite difficult to adapt. It's a lot easier to give characters internality because you can just say what they're thinking in a book quickly in a way that's jarring in a show or movie. I can't remember the last time I heard an internal dialog on a show.
I watched the trailer, and it doesn't mesh with anything I remember from the book. As the GP says, the book is disorienting. Not because of internal monologue, but because of the language. It places new words in essential places, where you can't really parse the sentence, and have to form some sort of impression. The rest of the imagery has been done to death. Some bits from the trailer looked a lot like Blade Runner. But the neologisms, feeling out of depth, that's an essential part of the book, never done in movies AFAIK, and I don't see it in the trailer.
Dexter had the best internal dialog I can remember; it's like the protagonist had two greatly contrasting personalities (his outward demeanor and then his internal dialog) which were constantly riffing off each other on screen, though it never got in the way. Just pitch perfect throughout.
For a show where the internal dialog eventually does become a bit annoying, look at You (in my mind, greatly inspired by Dexter).
Trailer doesn't match the way I pictured it when I read it as a kid (which wasn't that long after it was published).
That's fine, that's usually the case, few adaptations get close to what you build in your head (The Expanse did, it pretty much nailed that which is I suspect why I liked it so much) but yeah, the world looks too clean.
Looks bad. It does not look nowhere near as dark and dystopic. Looks like a comic con in NYC. Altered Carbon S1 nailed it, also Ghost in the Shell (the live action film with Scarlett Johanson)... that's like peak cyberpunk aesthetic in recent years, this looks like too pretty on purpose. Cast looks weak as well.
I've read Neuromancer and liked it back in 2002, as a teenager. And whenever rumors about an adaptation came up, I was curious.
So in that 42-year journey I'm along for 24 years, more than half.
I think the adaptation will probably be neither a masterpiece nor a flop. So... kinda anticlimactic: wait for 24 years and get some "middle ground" that will be mostly forgotten in the end.
But still, it's interesting for me to see it. Because Gibson dreamed the cyberpunk, and we kinda live it. AI is one of the main characters in Neuromancer. And AI is what we talk about all day nowadays. Of course, there's a world of difference between his vision and our reality... But the more interesting it is to compare.
I'm hyped for this, hope it makes justice to the book. The cast looks spot on, let's see how they imagined Freeside, Chiba and my favourite: the orbital Rastafarian colony Zion.
I hope real true fans and talented people that make, produce, and direct it and it's not just a cash grab like so many modern nostalgia works (Star Wars, Rings of Power, etc.).
It was okay, but was a bit disappointing changing the colonists from competent space hippies, into incompetent space hippies. The weird digression from the book at the 2/3 mark of the season seemed purely to try to contort the story back around this unnecessary change.
The production brought some serious talent like Alexander Skarsgård, Noma Dumezweni, and David Dastmalchian. Sci-fi comedic drama is always difficult to do well, and I agree trying to glue on the PC subplots stood out too much. =3
I really hope the industry keeps its grubby mitts off "Snow Crash". As far as I'm concerned it could only ever be made as an epic Japanese-style animation (which the industry would never do).
Hard agree. Both Neuromancer and Snow Crash were formative, but the latter feels like it would be damaged by trying to film it, where the former has so deeply informed what film even means for so many decades that it seems more likely to survive.
I wouldn't even assume that someone bringing Snow Crash to the screen would get that it's supposed to make you laugh.
The fact that we get a Neuromancer movie made by an Internet streaming service owned by one of the founding companies of the personal computing revolution, which is now the most valuable company in the world, is somehow quite fitting for a cyberpunk story...
I started reading it as a teenager and found it essentially unreadable, and quickly moved on to something else. I wonder if I'd find it any better as an adult...
After watching the trailer I must say that the overall vibe is substantially off. Very pretty, but it lacks the perpetually disoriented, if you will, atmosphere that dominates the narration in the book. It's all too clean and predictable in the trailer.
But it is a difficult book to adapt, I will give them that.
I watched the trailer, and it doesn't mesh with anything I remember from the book. As the GP says, the book is disorienting. Not because of internal monologue, but because of the language. It places new words in essential places, where you can't really parse the sentence, and have to form some sort of impression. The rest of the imagery has been done to death. Some bits from the trailer looked a lot like Blade Runner. But the neologisms, feeling out of depth, that's an essential part of the book, never done in movies AFAIK, and I don't see it in the trailer.
For a show where the internal dialog eventually does become a bit annoying, look at You (in my mind, greatly inspired by Dexter).
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7335184/
That's fine, that's usually the case, few adaptations get close to what you build in your head (The Expanse did, it pretty much nailed that which is I suspect why I liked it so much) but yeah, the world looks too clean.
Waaaaaay to clean. The video started in 240p and looked promising but no. Also whatsup with the Gaspar Noe title screens
So in that 42-year journey I'm along for 24 years, more than half.
I think the adaptation will probably be neither a masterpiece nor a flop. So... kinda anticlimactic: wait for 24 years and get some "middle ground" that will be mostly forgotten in the end.
But still, it's interesting for me to see it. Because Gibson dreamed the cyberpunk, and we kinda live it. AI is one of the main characters in Neuromancer. And AI is what we talk about all day nowadays. Of course, there's a world of difference between his vision and our reality... But the more interesting it is to compare.
I really hope the industry keeps its grubby mitts off "Snow Crash". As far as I'm concerned it could only ever be made as an epic Japanese-style animation (which the industry would never do).
I wouldn't even assume that someone bringing Snow Crash to the screen would get that it's supposed to make you laugh.