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Neuromancer: The Movie
Anonymous Coward writes "i don't know if anyone has reported this but there is to be a Neuromancer movie. For those of you who don't know, Neuromancer is a book by William Gibson which basically started the cyberpunk culture. If you're at all interested in computers and/or science fiction, you should read the book and await this movie!
NEUROMANCER.ORG
--horfus " Neuromancer is one of my favorite books (I need to get Cryptonomicon!), and I'd heard a bit here and there about this before, but I'm glad to see it has a website, and should be out in the not-too-distant future. I'm eager to see how the director handles a Gibsonian world (especially compared to Johnny Mnemonic).
I've read Idoru and Neuromancer and I found them, while having interesting ideas at times, far lacking as novels. They were a pain in the @ss to read because he way overdoes the descriptive language. I mean, how many times did we need to know that one of the guys in Idoru blinked like a maniac? He must have mentioned that 30 times in the book.
Although, I've heard that overly descriptive style was in vogue in the 1980s and I guess he just hasn't moved out of it.
Another complaint I have with both those books is that the protagonists act very weakly. Cade never really stands up to Armitage and the protagonist in Idoru is even worse. They both just go with the flow of action, never really taking control of their lives. The women come across as more vital, but you never really get to know them very deeply.
Also, his books never seem to reach a cresendo. They build, but the very endings are always so lackluster.
It's hard to imagine them doing the book justice, but the videos I've seen by that director ("Come to Daddy", "Windowlicker", and "Frozen") have been pretty cool.
Johnny Mnemonic was horrible (it had its moments, but overall, it was horrible), and it doesn't bode well that this is from the same studio.
I think the movie that most captured the Gibson spirit was Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days. And it did so without even using cyberspace, or being set far in the future. Absolutely brilliant movie.
Well, David Fincher had only directed Madonna videos ("Express Yourself" and a few others) before doing "Alien 3" (an ok but not great movie) followed by "Seven" and "The Game" (two of my all-time favorites), so I wouldn't dismiss someone on that basis alone.
Also, Russell Mulcahy, who did Highlander, had a ten-year career directing Duran Duran videos before that (including "Union of the Snake" and "Wild Boys".)
Uh, maybe that's because Snow Crash was comedy and Neuromancer was noir? I'm always amazed at how many people totally miss the joke, and don't realize that Snow Crash is at least half parody of the very genre it is putatively a member of.
I loved Snow Crash, but comparing it to Neuromancer is like comparing ``Dr. Strangelove'' and ``Fail-Safe.''
service" was a TERRIBLE LINE!
However, it's hard to believe that bit of tripe
*WAS* from William Gibson's hand (And I am
talking about the screenplay, not the original
work... here's the IMDB entry for
JM.
I think at the time of the production of the movie,
there was talk of a Neuromancer movie, but no
definite word, so I have a feeling that Gibson
tried to encorporate a few of the elements that
existed in the other Neuromancer books into
this (as well as his more recent series which the name slips, but the bridge is a definitely pointer to that). It obviously didn't work very well.
My only concern is that Neuromancer is good at two
levels: the idea of cyberspace and what the real
world is like because of it, and the writing style
such that you can read it twice and get two different impressions of what's going on. It's
not that Gibson is vague, but his language is
used so well that the reader's emotions will
read into the story. Sometimes when I read it,
Case is the good guy, sometimes he's an
innocent being dragged along by Wintermute, and sometime's he's the villian, cracking into
3Jane's private life. There is no way in heck
that the movie can convey that; instead, we
*ARE* going to know what finally happens, FOR
SURE, and the mystism of the book will be wrecked.
He might be able to keep some ideas arguable
(For example, this was done with the woman scientist on the plane in the final scene of 12
Monkeys; how exactly was she in "insurance"?)
but I believe that after seeing this movie,
I will never be able to read Case as any of the
3 situations above.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Neuromancer is probably going to suck for just this reason - that CC is going to go gonzo on the music video special effects, and leave any sort of character or plot development to the dogs. The whole thing that made Neuromancer's world so compelling were the type of people that inhabited the Sprawl. Just making a cool looking city, and neat-o cyberspace effects, inhabited by cardboard cutouts of characters will make a shitty, disappointing movie. Case was a perfect Anti-Hero - he encountered transcendence, touched divinity, and then went back and got a new liver so he could take more drugs. He simply didn't care about anyone but himself. How has hollywood ever made a protagonist like that? Even Ralph Fiennes from Strange Days was a good guy, albiet an ambiuous one. Try and imagine how hollywood is going to treat the sexual encounter between Molly & Case in the foam-padded 'hotel room'. Do you really think that it's going to be in tune with the character's attitudes, or is it just going to be an excuse for CC to show off Molly's body (probably with more cybernetics than we expect).
Neruomancer was compelling because it was about people who were not heros, who were not hollywoodesque leading men & women - they were moral and physical degenerates that needed to be threatend with thier life and have the capacity to take drugs be cut off in order to get them to do anything.
Do we really think that this is what we're going to see in the movie? Or are we going to see Case as an actual 'hero' who actually cares about what he is doing? And if we, god forbid, do actually see someone as degenerate and apathetic as Case on the screen, is it going to be enjoyable to watch? (See Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas for an example of something that can be enjoyable to read, but not to watch). Neuromancer was an excellent book, because Gibson took (in some people's opinion too much) advantage of the English language to describe everything in a nearly poetic and gritty manner. Is seeing it on the screen going to be at all worthwhile? I doubt it.
This is going to suck.
Admittedly, Escaflowne is not so cyberpunkish as the others, but it's got supurb animation and an excellent storyline. Naturally you'll need to watch episodes in order, and I suggest you stick with subtitled anime; most dubs are pretty bad.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The above is pretty much how everyone on the net feels, based on my own experience. Quite sad, but what do you expect from the net.generation who brought us the September that never ended?
Fuck Slashdot
Don't dismiss Metropolis's relevance too quickly. Yeah, the technology's sort of silly, but the Big Picture hold up rather well.
And dammit, now you've got the Metropolis theme music stuck in my head. Dah-da... da-da-da da-da... grrrr
----------------------
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Unfortunatelly, there's no real information at the site... Just a few names - Author, Producer, Director... But anyway.
Now that The Matrix has shown that a good cyberpunk movie, with effects, can be done, maybe we will see a good vision of Neuromancer. Personally, Carrie Ann Moss (?) is a dead-ringer for Molly (IMHO). The "Dodge This!" line summed it up for me. Some unknown as Case, and Brian Denehy or Rutger Hauer as Armitage might work..
With the Predator camouflage on the street punks, The Matrix 'lobby scene'ish run to free Dixie Flatline, a bit of 2001 (as seen by Terentino) at Villa Straylight - and this puppy just might work.
But of course after Gibson sold out on the cinematic version of Johnny Mnemonic, I won't be holding my breath.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Oddly, in his native Poland, Lem's books are considered on par with Asimov, that is to say, geared towards boys in their early teens.
Couldn't tell you what qualifies as 'mature' SF there. So much has changed.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Let's not forget:
Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
LeGuin - Left Hand of Darkness (speaking of the human condition)
Asimov - Foundation I-III, personal favorites
Herbert - Dune
Stephenson - Snow Crash
[I forgot] - Gravity's Rainbow
And certainly not least Straczynski - Babylon 5 - Absolutely Brilliant!!
BTW: Gibson - Olga's Seashell.. in Burning Chrome collection. read it.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Hellraiser (in all it's gory) is exactly what we (I) wouldn't want to see Neuromancer become. Hellraiser is an example of precisely what people are afraid Neuromancer will be.
A movie full of visuals, ad nauseum, effects upon effects, wich obviously accounted for 90% of the film's budget. Very BAD acting, no plot to speak of whatsoever. Some miniscule interaction between characters that is so vague that it could fit into ANY movie in the genre...
If Neuromancer becomes Hellraiser in Cyberspace, Gibson should commit hari-kari for ever letting it be made.
C'mon now. There's potential to make a 2001, and you have me expecting Event Horizon.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
This could be very cool if they choose to step outside of the hype and make something thats true to Gibson's novel, unlike Johnny Mnemonic, which was a shitty movie altogether. Honestly I don't see how they're gonna bring Case to the big screen and not ruin it, but I sure as hell hope they do... This was my favorite book for a VERY long time..
God, I feel so...NORMAL writing so many serious posts in a row. Shudder.
:)
Anyway, the book was incredible; just about everyone agrees on that. But the computer game waas kickin' as well.
I spent COUNTLESS hours in front of my good old Apple IIc+ (with the processor overclocked to a P450, of course) making my character plod around the city looking for jacks and better decks. Sure, the dude was bright blue and looked like something out of the original Double Dragon, but it was a hell of a game. Cyberspace just looked COLD, but strangely alluring as well. The first time I accidentally discovered an AI hiding beneath the ICE, I nearly freaked out. The rush as I discovered the node for semi-hidden Copenhagen University and managed to hack inside, getting my hands on softwarez two levels above my current arsenal, almost made me feel like a real cyberspace cowboy. Okay, maybe not that far.
It took me about 5 years (taking a three year sabbatical) to actually beat the damn thing, and even then it took some minor help from an online walkthrough. A quality book, a quality game.
If they fuck up the movie, I won't be happy.
-
Chris Cunningham is definitely a master of
visuals as anyone who has seen the Aphex Twin
video can tell you. Scary stuff.
I guess it just remains to be seen how he copes
with realising the story, it's really a matter of
how he has perceived the book, but it sounds
promising.
I also hope he's clever enough not to make any of
the mistakes of `Johnny Mnemonic', the use of
`Alternative' actors maybe one of the worst (Ice
T, Henry Rollins, Dolph Lundgren? Give me a
break...).
Anders.
____
ZZ
As for the style, back in 1984 nearly all SF was the all-knowing scientists in a great future. Gibson and the other so-called cyberpunk writers (collected in Bruce Sterling's "Mirrorshaded") rebelled against that. These days everyone expects the future to be grimy and street-wise and vaguely dystopian, but that's because of the impact of the book (and of course "Blade Runner"). Gibson's quote "The street finds its own uses for technology" has become a cliche, but he wrote it.
As for the lack of action, surely the ringing phones from wintermute made the hair on the back of your neck stand on end? Or try out the last brief quote here
I maintain the complete bibliography, so I'm biased, but the Nebula, Hugo, Philip K. Dick, Seiun, and Ditmar awards for Neuromancer mean something.
Gibson's later work is weak, but for most readers Burning Chrome - Neuromancer - Count Zero - Mona Lisa Overdrive is a sensational ride.
As for the movie, who knows. Neuromancer is a pretty resilient story and worked well as an audiobook and graphic novel, but there's a lot of ways they could screw it up.
=S