Neuromancer (Apple TV+)

bnt

A 10-episode series based on William Gibson's Neuromancer is now in production, and there are some photos from the set here. The cast includes Casey Mullins (Masters of the Air) as Case, Briana Middleton (Sharper) as Molly, Mark Strong as Armitage, Joseph Lee (Picard, BEEF) as Hideo, Peter Sarsgaard as John Ashpool, and Clémence Poésy as Marie-France Tessier.

The book came out in 1984, and various people have been trying to adapt it for the screen since 1985. (Robert Fripp reported that he had worked on music for a movie around 1986/7). There was a very short thread here on another attempt in 1999 …

the_amazing_raisin

You could saythere's already been several versions for the big screen given the number of films it has inspired

The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner and the mini series spinoff of Cyberpunk 2077 (Edgerunners?) were quite heavily inspired by the novel

I actually only read the book for the first time last year and I never realised how some of Gibson's ideas were lifted wholesale (a shared virtual experience called the matrix...hmm)

My two major concerns are precisely that there are so many copycats it's difficult to differentiate the original at this point

Like many pioneering works, the ideas in Neuromancer have been taken, refined and in some ways perfected in other works

Reading the book it seems like it's a bit rough around the edges on some of it's concepts. No disrespect to Gibson, that's often the reality of dealing with something new where you are lacking reference material

My other issue is that I felt the novel kind of fell apart a bit towards the end. The whole sequence where Molly was traversing the Tessier-Ashpool estate seemed drawn out for no reason while some of the other sequences seemed a bit rushed

I'll be interested to see how the series ties it all together

Anyway, it'll probably be enough to get me to check out Apple+ for a month so I guess it's mission accomplished in the C-suite

bnt

The book was expanded in to a trilogy (with Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive) and I will not be surprised if Apple wants to make a franchise out of it. We saw, with Foundation, that they're not too concerned about being faithful to source material ..!

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123337592#Comment_123337592

I didn't see the Foundation series but I was wondering how they'd handle some of the old timey stuff from the books

Pretty sure in the first book some is gifted a necklace made of radioactive material which would create a nice shimmering Aurora Borealis effect around the wearing using the emitted radiation

Not sure the cancer death ray jewelry would quite wash with audiences these days 😂

Anyway, I'm sure the crew at Apple will put their own pronounced spin on it and treat the source material as only a vague suggestion of how it should go

Admittedly Neuromancer also faces a few idea that don't make sense anymore. Gibson's opening line describing the sky above night city as looking like an untuned TV doesn't seem as bad nowadays considering most TVs show either a blue or black background instead of static 😁

My biggest concern is that with a tech company like Apple in charge the execs might start using their shiny new AI tools to stick their noses into the creative process and make a mess of the whole thing

Hangdogroad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123332754#Comment_123332754

Blade Runner was released two years before Neuromancer was published.

bnt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123349866#Comment_123349866

Blade Runner was influential in its future dystopia setting, but the story doesn't actually require technology to work, so I wouldn't call it Cyberpunk. The Replicants could have been conjured up by a wizard for the difference it would have made: the technology used to create them was not central to the story. Cyberpunk, on the other hand, needs the technology: one definition I have seen is "low life, high tech".

Nody

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123342187#Comment_123342187

They basically ignored most of the actual story in the books to write their own story in a very distant parallel universe. There's at best a tentative connection to the book story in the series name and a few character names and that's about it if you've read the books.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123351731#Comment_123351731

Better stock up on the memory loss vodka if I ever decide to sign up for Apple+ in that case

It's hard to decide which is more frustrating, the fact that studios keep buying up intellectual property to try to drum up some hype based on nostalgia, or the fact their own creative process is so hollowed out and locked down they seem incapable of coming up with any new ideas

I heard one critic describe it brilliantly, we've gone beyond IP mining into cultural fracking (might have been Darren Mooney I think)

Pretty sure of all the movies and shows I saw in the past couple of years the best ones were original works or based on very one off novels.

Anyway, I'm sure Neuromancer will be very visually appealing but I worry it'll lose some of the quite funny moments in it

For example the bit where Case takes the space meth/viagra and ends up with an 8 hour boner probably won't make it past the sterile and humour free executive suite in Apple

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123349866#Comment_123349866

Whoops, okay that's what I get for not checking my dates 😅

McFly85

Neuromancer, from a plot perspective, should be far more straightforward than Foundation and shouldn’t require wholesale changes to adapt. It’s a heist story based on a few central characters.

How they visualise the tech, the world and cyberspace will be critical to its success I think.

I loved the book and I think I’ll read it again soon, have high hopes for this because Apple will put the money required into it.

bnt

The other difference is that William Gibson is still alive and (hopefully) well, while Isaac Asimov died in 1992. It's worth noting that Asimov had been critical of his writing style in the original Foundation stories, and his own prequels and sequels were much more plot- and character-driven.

bnt

I may have been a bit harsh on Blade Runner earlier since I overlooked the film noir aspect of cyberpunk. Wikipedia puts it like this:

After viewing the first 20 minutes of landmark cyberpunk film Blade Runner (1982) which was released when Gibson had written a third of the novel, he "figured [Neuromancer] was sunk, done for. Everyone would assume I'd copped my visual texture from this astonishingly fine-looking film." He re-wrote the first two-thirds of the book twelve times, feared losing the reader's attention and was convinced that he would be "permanently shamed" following its publication; yet what resulted was a major imaginative leap forward for a first-time novelist.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123356417#Comment_123356417

Yeah it's pretty interesting that you can see Asimov's shift from hard science fiction to more character driven plots as he became a more experienced writer

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123356437#Comment_123356437

For all their similarities, I also felt they were quite different in the feel of the stories

As McFly85 mentioned, Neuromancer is a heist movie at it's core with a very kind of punk trashy aesthetic to it as well with lots of drugs, insomnia and colourful visuals

Blade Runner on the other hand is much more of a film noir with android

I'm actually starting to worry that the directors will make the mistake of trying to copy Blade Runner and similar films rather than trying to give Neuromancer it's own look