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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 [?] ;)
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?