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Concept Artwork For Snowcrash?
onethumb writes: "Looks like an artist has been commissioned to do some concept artwork for Snowcrash, a movie adaptation of Neal Stephenson [?] 's book " Obviously we have no confirmation, and the artist says he messed up and did a "Real" city instead of a metaverse one, but regardless, it's the first I've heard of a Snowcrash [?] movie.
There's some other cool stuff on that site too, but the images aren't quite high enough resolution to qualify for Rob's First Rule of Art [?] ;)
...I think that it's a lot of what makes the book great is the narrative. For example, the part where it's talking about being a bad-ass motherfucker, and how Raven's nuclear umbrella has put the world title just out of reach. (I think that's pretty much a direct quote, but I don't have the book handy, so I'm not sure.) If you take stuff like that out, you lose a big part of the book. I think to preserve that, there would have to have some form of narration along with the action. That would probably be pretty awkward, though ... depending on how it was done, anyway.
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I think Neal Stephenson said he imagines Hiro as looking like that guy whose name I can't remember, but was the lead singer of Fine Young Cannibals. He was even on Highlander a couple times, but I don't know how well he handled a sword... (his character got an arm chopped off, though.)
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The Rastafarians adopted Zion before Gundam.
The Rastas identified themselves with the Hebrews
of the Old Testament, seeing themselves as Jah's
true Chosen People; consequently they borrowed
from Jewish religious terminology (well, what they
could find in common literature; I don't think there were too many Rastafarian Cabbalists or anysuch). As such, Rastafarians used the word "Zion" as their promised land, as many Bob Marley songs attest to.
They make her 21 or something, and have her played by someone who looks more like an ass-kicking cyber-ninja than teenage jailbait.
Anyone else care to check in on actor choices and/or how to deal with the size without causing massive CRC errors in the story?
It isn't going to happen. Hollywood is in the business of selling to the largest possible audience. Since the demise of mid-list films in the 80s, they don't release anything unless it can be sold to a broad audience. And a few thousand hard-core scifi geeks wouldn't cut it.
Besides the story being too long, parts of it are unworkable (the sex scene, for example; hints at underage sex are OK in an arthouse film but would seem prurient in a scifi blockbuster), or unmarketable (the whole "nam shub of Enki" thing would either have to be dumbed down tremendously into a sort of Ghostbusters metaphysics or else done away with altogether, if they're going to not bore non-fan audiences (and reviewers) waiting for the next SFX sequence).
It's sort of like the much dreaded film of Neil Gaiman's Sandman books, which for a while looked like a Morpheus-vs.-Corinthian action blockbuster. There would be no way to make it true to the story and meet mass-market goals. Mercifully, though, there's no indication that it will ever see the light of day.
There's a whole list of good candidates, which would only suffer the same obstacles to the translation as any other genre: too many plot threads, too long, they'd just screw it up, etc.
Personally, I thought Islands in the Net would make an excellent translation to the big screen. It's not as flashy-FX-laden as other stories, but offers plenty of opportunities to work in cyber [ghod I hate that term] elements in a plot that otherwise could have a lot of appeal to the non-SF fan.
OK, so it's just me. [shrug]
I can see the fnords!
Actually, there's a Museum of Bad Art...Works retrieved from the dumpsters outside of art schools, mostly. You can visit it here. I laughed so hard I nearly puked when I first came across it. :)
In the meantime, don't be so down on this guy. He tells you upfront that they are _early_ test sketches. Not final products.
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I think another problem is the long, long passages in the book explaining the Sumerian folklore. It was interesting but a real drag on the plot (while being essential for it). It's hard for me to see how that would either translate to film, or how a film could leave out that information.
Underage sex shouldn't be a problem. Did you see American Beauty? That borders on pedophilia in osme people's opinion.
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I agree, here's one for you Trek fans (like me)
I was looking for a "buy this print", but couldn't find one.
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+&x
While we're on the topic, it might be of interest that a screenplay for Vernor Vinge's seminal work True Names was adapted as a screenplay last year and may eventually go into production sometime. (it's also finally getting republished)
Hiro - Christopher Judge (Teal'c on Stargate-SG1)
Since I first saw him in that show, I've been thinking how perfect he would be as Hiro in a Snow Crash movie. As for the length of the book, I'd like to see it done as Lucas says Star Wars was done. Take one huge story, and break it up into managable chunks, making each chunk its own movie. The only problem is I can't really remember a point where things slow down enough to wait for the sequel...
Anyone else care to check in on actor choices and/or how to deal with the size without causing massive CRC errors in the story?
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
Whether the adaption of "Snowcrash" comes to fruition or not, there is always that danger in adapting "cult" books like "Snowcrash" (OK, you might disagree with my loose use of cult, but you get the idea). The only way it will work is by somehow creating a perfect movie, because any way you do it, I can guarantee you're going to have a legion of pissed off fans of the book, angry at the adaption. "Johnny Mnemonic" anyone? (Yeah, it was a bad movie any way you look at it.....a bit of a loaded example).
Worst of all is adapting a sci-fi novel, as the image presented is _never_ going to match what people visualise by the text itself....What do _you_ think the Metaverse looks like? How about the Ringworld? Rama? (Yeah "Bladerunner" was an awesome adaption of "Do androids dream of electric sheep", but the novel was more about atmosphere anyway....and though a cool novel, it didn't quite have the status of "Snowcrash" at the time - feel free to disagree with me here).
Anyway, if the "Neuromancer" and "Snowcrash" projects end up coming to fruition, I hope they kick ass. Classic sci-fi films are generally thin on the ground.....
Cheers,
SuperG
Can you say "rewrite"? Probably just one reason why the movie would suck.
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Juliet as depicted in the play is far more mature than a 12 year old girl is in this day and age, so casting up in that case makes sense. With Kyle in Dune (which I hated), the 10 year difference is fairly insignificant..
But with YT, the whole young, naive, brash part of her is what makes the character work. It would look silly having a 20+ actress playing that part, IMO.
The story is complex, the sets would have to be extremely expensive and/or digital ala Episode1,
the Uneducated Masses would think it was a rip-off of The Matrix...
If anything, that would doubly damn the Neuromancer film project, as The Matrix lifts most of the names from there (the Matrix itself, Zion (without the funky rasta back-story), &c.) Well, at least Neo (k3wl name d00d) and Trinity aren't named Case and Molly..
But another thing to consider is that large portions of the book are a thinly veiled jab at L Ron Hubbard (AKA L Bob Rife).
Other than the name I don't see much similarity. Hubbard's a pulp scifi author who founded a kooky religion on a bet, whereas Rife seems to be an industrialist who rode in on the middle-American Christian power base. They could always just call him Bob L. Rife or something if the scienos complain.
I think I speak for a lot of people when i say that a movie simply could NOT do Snow Crash justice.
There are too many constraints which would pull down the potential of the movie. Cost of course being one, but time is the most important one. There is TOO much going on in the novel to cram it into 2 hours (2.5? 3? 5? 10? still not enough).
If there was a movie adaptation of Snow Crash, I'd almost be afraid to see it. I'd be horribly scared to think of how much it would be butchered to fit the constraints of time and money...
If it has to be done, I just hope they do it as best that they can; but to me it still won't be as good as it could be.
According to the most excellent Corona Films' Coming Attractions page on Snow Crash.
"Nothing new has been reported about the development of the project, except for this one scoop we received: "The project is dead." With nothing new to report of in months the film may very well be trapped in limbo. [Scoop submitted anonymously.].
We'll see... stir up some interest!!!
When Stephenson began working on Snow Crash, he intended it to be a video game (super-interactive novel). Unfortunately, we're only getting to the point where that would be a plausibility. Or is that fortunately? If Ion Storm can succeed at Deus Ex, someone can succeed at Snow Crash...though Juanita's avatar tech is still a ways away (see Pixar's advances in this realm!)
Speaking of Pixar, it's always easier to fake tech in a movie; you get to pre-render everything. Snow Crash would make a great movie without too much trouble, because of its many high-octane visual elements. Also: the political/social satire that runs rampant is surprisingly easy to do visually: just show the Uncle Nunzio Pizza billboard and you're done.
Of course the movie would be radically different from the book, but it wouldn't be an insane adaptation like LotR--you just cut out the boring stuff, and you've got a whole bunch of cool action sequences. Stephenson's namshub mumbo-jumbo barely makes sense anyway (though it _nearly_ fits together quite neatly); the book could do with the bit of narrative tightening a movie would provide.
Snow Crash is hobbled by the importance of Juanita to the outcome of the book, and her near-complete absence from the book. A rewrite that dealt with the narrative problems caused by her would be welcome. My suspicion is the whole rewrite issue is what's killing this project: the book, while amazingly cool and smart and readable and one of my all-time favorite books, is seriously flawed by its tenuously connected plot threads.
Visually, the movie would be great in so many ways: the avatar world could be done anime-style, the Sumerian backstory (if it even entered) could be covered in a killer animation sequence like that from Todd McFarlane's Do the Evolution video, etc.
Stephenson deliberately drew on pop-culture ideas and imagery for the book, and took a lot from movies. Snow Crash could make a very good movie.
It probably would make a better computer game, but I'm not convinced we really have the tech for it.
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You can find a bit of background on Corona's Coming Attractions site... They started reporting on it back in 1996, though there are very few updates.
The only way I'd watch the movie is if they are faithful to the ending: all the characters appear on screen and say to each other "Well....I guess this is the end of the movie. I guess we'll just leave then."
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The story is complex, the sets would have to be extremely expensive and/or digital ala Episode1, the Uneducated Masses would think it was a rip-off of The Matrix...
But another thing to consider is that large portions of the book are a thinly veiled jab at L Ron Hubbard (AKA L Bob Rife).
The Scientologists are pretty powerful in Hollywood...How do you think John Travolta managed to make what looks to be the huge stinking turd of this year... Battlefield Earth?