Set leaks Showcase first Look at Briana Middleton as Molly in 'Neuromancer' for Apple TV+
Set leaks Showcase first Look at Briana Middleton as Molly in 'Neuromancer' for Apple TV+
Well, there's a very meaningful set of differences there. For one thing, by the time Dune first got adapted there weren't that many derivatives. Some of the imagery landed in Star Wars, but that was about it, by the time Lynch had his shot.
The issue with Neuromancer is that it's been adapted dozens, hundreds of times in all but name. Every iconic piece of that story has a hundred spins and spins of those spins elsewhere.
So when you do Paul Atreides you maaay have to contend with the fact that you're doing Luke Skywalker on LSD. When you do Molly you have to choose which pieces of Trinity, the like five iterations of Motoko Kusanagi, Ellen Ripley, Flynne Fisher and a dozen others, including at least one other version of Molly herself you're embracing or ignoring. You have to choose where you go with Blade Runner, The Matrix, Ghost in the Shell, Pantheon, Deus Ex, The Peripheral, Cyberpunk 2077, Westworld, Robocop, Shadowrun, Escape from NY, Aeon Flux, System Shock, Minority Report or a bunch of others. There are like four different Keanu Reeves characters you may choose to embrace or dismiss in this process. Just the fact that you're going to have to work around a bunch of talk about The Matrix and Zion is an issue.
I'm not saying that is or will be the problem with this version specifically. We'll see what they have when they're ready to show their homework. I'm saying that would definitely be one of my main anxieties if I had to find the way to do this accurately in 2025.
Salient points, all.
Yeah... Finally got around to reading Hamlet and "it's just a bunch of cliches"
But my main reservation with this adaptation is not which artistic choices are being made or the direction they decide to take things or even the difficulties in adapting the story (actually argued the other side of all this in FAVOR of the latest Dune) - and more that the source material was (likely) chosen simply for being a rich vein of dork-culture ore, one intended to be quickly and easily processed into a homogenized block of monetized consumer content..
The end result, once stripped of all pedigree and drained of any residial artistic expression, left as little more than a thumbnail to be scrolled past and forgotten alongside other milquetoast sci-fi projects like Travelers, or Continuum, Solo, etc..
An adaptation with nothing to say; "art" as a meaningless multimedia content experience
I genuinely don't know enough about the project to know if that tracks. As with anything, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt until it's an actual thing and see if they figured out something that doesn't seem obvious.
I'm just... you know, also ready for it to suck for all those reasons, too.
otoh. One of my all time favorite shows is Batman The Animated Series. They used stuff from pretty much every iteration of Batman and threw in some new ones.
For sure. That said, Batman is on the other end of the spectrum, where a bunch of iterations of THE Batman were already there in the first place. For the most part TAS is conceptually Tim Burton's Batman: The Cartoon, it just so happens that by 1992 you also could pull from multiple generations of comics and shows as well.
The problem with Neuromancer is it doesn't have a definitive, iconic iteration, let alone multiple. The closest you get is Johnny Mnemonic, which definitely isn't it. Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell or The Matrix are all more of a definitive iteration of Neuromancer than anything Neuromancer (besides the book, obviously).
I remember specific details from the books, like the pocket-sized VCRs or Count Zero's holoporn poster and infinite T-shirt. In my mind, the entire world looks like Times Square on New Years Eve 1985. I think if you start with the idea that the boom box was the greatest thing ever invented you'll have the right ascetic.
I think that's itself a bit of a problem. Is Neuromancer futuristic or retrofuturistic? It's one thing to adapt Dune, which may be from the 60s, but is in such a weird technological tangent it may as well be The Lord of the Rings. Neuromancer is THE FUTURE specifically as seen in the 80s, which now ranges somewhere between nostalgic, prescient and quaint. And actually done right elsewhere in the actual 80s.
I still think it is relevant enough you could get away with making it THE FUTURE as per the 2020s, but then people who envision it like you do (which is legitimate) would feel it's out of place, I suppose.
Look, it's not my job to figure it out, but let's at least agree that if it is doable, it is at least a big, big challenge.
I mentioned this movie already.
"Predestination." The book was written about the year 1975 AD in 1950s. They film makers made their 1975 conform to what the original writer imagined. I won't giver you a lot of details because it's the kind of science fiction that works better if you go in knowing very little.
The point is that I want 'retrofuture.' I want the writer's version of the future. I want the TVs to show grey static and people to be amazed by the idea of a computer virus.
In a similar way, a movie like 'The Great Gatsby' was based on a contemporary novel where the writer had a specific vision of how New York looked.
I see what you're saying, but I think sci-fi is in a bit of a different place there. Neuromancer is concerned with what's coming. It's not painting a 2000s of the 80s, it's painting the future of a present.
Predestination is a bit different in that it's a time travel story. In Neuromancer (or Blade Runner, for that matter) the technology is not about extrapolating technology, it's about extrapolating society.
It's not impossible for sci-fi to be coded to a time. I don't think you could make Strange Days today, it's so ingrained into the idea of the end of the millenium and the rise of the Internet. It'd be different even if you kept the setting. A nostalgic look back instead of an anxious look forward.
Neuromancer has the same problem, only on top of everything else it's also just vaguely futuristic, so it's not like the 80s look and feel is integral to the story (in case the endless rehashes of the stories for the past forty years hadn't proven that).
We'll see. The worst case scenario is we're thinking this through more than the people making the actual thing.
The first line is 'the television colored sky.' Gibson talks about how that went from grey static to bright blue to black. Seeing as how we've already surpassed a lot of the book's future, I think the film makers should embrace it and make a show that looks like it was made in the 1980s looking at a bizarre future.
On a related note; "Stand On Zanzibar" was written in 1968 and won the Hugo for best science fiction novel. It was set in the early 21st Century and is being republished because of how well the author predicted the future. You might want to give it a read.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/stand-on-zanzibar-john-brunner/7252770?ean=9781250781222&next=t