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A Neuromancer movie should be able to distinguish itself from The Matrix easily in terms of look and feel. The Matrix was ponderous, self-indulgent, and took itself way too seriously. Neuromancer should look like Bladerunner but feel like a cross between Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and A Clockwork Orange. Balls out action and unapologetic stylization. And they shouldn't shy away from all the cyberpunk slang that Gibson pioneered either. Done right, there's no way anyone should mistake Neuromancer for a Matrix rip-off. #neuromancer
Hope it doesn't end up like the script that's been floating around the internet from 1990. Basically, in the script, Wintermute's aim is not to merge with Neuromancer but with a human mind, and it ends up with Molly merging with Wintermute to become Neuromancer. The name Neuromancer isn't explained, it just comes out of nowhere. The whole scene involving the infiltration of the Sense/Net building from the novel is condenced to just Armitage handing the Dixie Flatline to Case. Sense/Net now chases the heroes throughout the entire story, probably to add more action scenes I guess. A major character like Riviera comes out of nowhere. And the Finn has basically nothing more than a cameo, unlike his major role as Wintermute's avatar in the book.
I thought the script was a pretty big disappointment, basically a cliff note's version of the novel. It's written more like a generic action film than the slow burn film-noir the novel is.
You can read the script here. [www.scifiscripts.com] Mind you, the script is 20 years old and hopefully the film, fi it ever happens is closer to the book, though with the director's pedigree.....probably not. #neuromancer
@ClintonD: Don't worry. The novel will almost certainly be poorly to ridiculously poorly represented by the movie. It's how they make movies. Because they think they can create a better story flow than (in this case) William Gibson did. Which idea is both hilarious, and amazing. So far, there have almost no good movie versions of a good SF novel. I'm sure they're asking themselves, "why start now?"
You can name them all day. Johnny Mnemonic. Soylent Green (Make Room, Make Room.) Damnation Alley. Fantastic Journey. Dune (various.) Wizard of Earthsea. 2001. 2010. I am Legend (Omega Man, various.) A Boy and his Dog. Starship Troopers...
Yep, it's just how they make movies. That is to say, really, really badly.
Every once in a while we get a Blade Runner class movie, but I'm sure it's an accident caused by all the Hollywood writers and execs being on retreat in a sweat lodge somewhere. #neuromancer
Will we get a review of Sasha Grey's Neuromancer project?
EDIT: Just read the updates on that post. Not sure there could be much of a review with a straight reading of Neuromancer...but it still sounds pretty damn cool.
@neorandomizer: And yet it was so much better than the unspeakable "New Rose Hotel." How can you make a movie with Christopher Walken, William Dafoe and Asia Argenta, and have it come out like paint drying? #neuromancer
Dr.Quatermass: I have to say Dr. You are once again spot on with that oberservation and anything I am about to say that contradicts this statement is strictly for humor sake. was starred
Dr.Quatermass: I have to say Dr. You are once again spot on with that oberservation and anything I am about to say that contradicts this statement is strictly for humor sake. was unstarred
@Dr.Quatermass: shouldn't be too difficult to translated a crazy, convoluted mess into film. i feel like a see a film like that opening in theaters every week.
jokes aside, however, i still think it would be do able i just don't think anyone would be willing to fund it because, for reasons that the books lack of exposure expresses most poignantly, it wouldn't make any money. which, i guess, technically makes it unmakeable in a literal sense but not the sense i trying to express.
@firstanointed: brave new world is a much weaker argument in to my eye. the plot sounds like exactly the kind of thing it would be easy to get funding for today and with the right people attached it could be done very well. dicaprio could even be one of them, it's not like he doesn't have acting chops.
@neorandomizer: I don't think Neuromancer is impossible to make, but I do worry that your average movie goer unfamiliar with the history of cyberpunk will automatically assume that Neuromancer is a rip-off of the Matrix or something like that. #neuromancer
@tetracycloide: I agree to a degree. In a purely artistic sense, any idea can be made into a movie. I guess when I say otherwise, I am really really answering the question, "Should one make X into a movie?" Which, I realize, opens a whole new can of worms, but so be it. I don't want to see a Neuromancer movie but I will be first in line when it opens. I am opinionated and the older I get the more black and white my opinions become but I am not jaded enough to not enjoy these little cinematic excursions. Lord of the Rings is the best example of this. When I saw the first teaser, I laughed and laughed. I saw wrong on all levels. Who knows Tetra, who knows... #neuromancer
Dr.Quatermass: I have to say Dr. You are once again spot on with that oberservation and anything I am about to say that contradicts this statement is strictly for humor sake. was starred
Dr.Quatermass: I have to say Dr. You are once again spot on with that oberservation and anything I am about to say that contradicts this statement is strictly for humor sake. was unstarred
@neorandomizer: I think the studio had a major hand in the suck on that. Gibson actually said he'd never work with Hollywood again. I guess things change. Hopefully Gibson is in because he has more faith in this project #neuromancer
@DocMossy: given his opinion on mnemonic i think gibson's mere involvement at this point says everything about this film that need be said prior to seeing it. #neuromancer
@tetracycloide: I think some of the more post-modern fiction comes pretty damn close. A movie of the Illuminatus! Trilogy would be about 24 hours long, cost about a billion and end up rated NC-17, if not outright banned. #neuromancer
Daveinva promoted this comment
brentbent: C.O.C.K.R.O.A.C.H. )for all the queer super villians out there( was starred
brentbent: C.O.C.K.R.O.A.C.H. )for all the queer super villians out there( was unstarred
@atrus123: " I do worry that your average movie goer unfamiliar with the history of cyberpunk will automatically assume that Neuromancer is a rip-off of the Matrix or something like that. " This is my biggest fear!!!! It won't be appreciated for the greatness that it is. #neuromancer
@neorandomizer: 10 years ago I saw Burning Chrome done as a ultra-small scale stage production at the Piven Theater in Evanston. Great sci-fi doesn't have to cost $500 million. #neuromancer
@brentbent: C.O.C.K.R.O.A.C.H. )for all the queer super villians out there(: They *did* make a Flatland movie! As far as I know it went straight to DVD. #neuromancer
How come Kahn gets to do Neuromancer?! Why not someone who showed she can do good movies (unlike Torque...)?! It's not as if Neuromancer wasn't interesting enough for talented directors to adapt to a movie, right?
why couldn't the ending just be one phone call between case and wintermute/neuromancer kinda / pauley where the AI says hi, asked where molly went, case asks what wintermute/neuromancer kinda /pauley is, the AI responds with some enigmatic line about the sum of all the parts, then laughs in an oddly creepy, completly inhuman way, that reminds case of pauley, which slowly fades to static while the image fades to static with it. (the movie should obviously open with pure static that gradually fades into a gray sky that looks so similar it's hard to tell when it stopped being static and became a sky). #neuromancer
Ah, but how does it open? I want to see the sky tuned to a dead channel.
Little nervous about this. Dude's only done one feature, and it was Torque. Apparently, though, he's a major Blade Runner fan, so at least it will look interesting.
I'm also waiting for if and when it finally does come out for somebody to say "hey, this is just a ripoff of Strange Days and the Matrix! Cameron and the Wachowskis should sue!"
@tetracycloide: For a second I thought you were going to punch me. In any case, I read Neuromancer long after Matrix and Strange Days came out, and I thought, "boy, Gibson is way too nice, considering he didn't sue their asses." I did read an interview where he said he thought the Matrix owed more to PKD, however.
He was in town a couple years ago, and a friend wanted to take his DVD of the Matrix and get it autographed. I think Gibson would laugh. Maybe. #neuromancer
@SJ_Edwards: He's a smartass, but he's not stupid.
The line from Gibson about the Matrix was something like "it was a PKD story with Neuromancer's fashion sense." I think he's a little more stoical about it than Ellison was about Terminator. (at the very least the Wachowskis didn't go around bragging about how they stole the idea).
As well, if Gibson was indeed going to sue, he'd have to wait in line behind Grant Morrison and that lady who actually did sue. #neuromancer
@Wookie1972: I like that line :)
[well it's Gibson, isn't it?]
I think he was always much more concious of his role in drawing on the cultural zeitgeist of '70s and '80s British tribal and punk ethos, that he had immersed himself in when he was a voracious reader of the NME (New Musical Express) and the cross cultural influences on that, from Japanese pop and pre-otaku subculture and Californian surfer, skater, tech and geek subcultures and the feedback loop between them all.
Now he can afford (morally, and hopefully financially) to just shrug and say to himself:
It was there at the start,
I was one of the first to realize it,
I was one of the first to write it,
In writing it I changed it,
I made it something more.
That's what's there at the start for others. #neuromancer
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..an elevator malfunction on a tuesday morning."
Thanks for the link. Some of the best writing I've seen in ages :)
11/16/09
I thought the script was a pretty big disappointment, basically a cliff note's version of the novel. It's written more like a generic action film than the slow burn film-noir the novel is.
You can read the script here. [www.scifiscripts.com] Mind you, the script is 20 years old and hopefully the film, fi it ever happens is closer to the book, though with the director's pedigree.....probably not. #neuromancer
11/16/09
You can name them all day. Johnny Mnemonic. Soylent Green (Make Room, Make Room.) Damnation Alley. Fantastic Journey. Dune (various.) Wizard of Earthsea. 2001. 2010. I am Legend (Omega Man, various.) A Boy and his Dog. Starship Troopers...
Yep, it's just how they make movies. That is to say, really, really badly.
Every once in a while we get a Blade Runner class movie, but I'm sure it's an accident caused by all the Hollywood writers and execs being on retreat in a sweat lodge somewhere. #neuromancer
11/16/09
EDIT: Just read the updates on that post. Not sure there could be much of a review with a straight reading of Neuromancer...but it still sounds pretty damn cool.
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Ah, ask your parents. #neuromancer
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jokes aside, however, i still think it would be do able i just don't think anyone would be willing to fund it because, for reasons that the books lack of exposure expresses most poignantly, it wouldn't make any money. which, i guess, technically makes it unmakeable in a literal sense but not the sense i trying to express.
@firstanointed: brave new world is a much weaker argument in to my eye. the plot sounds like exactly the kind of thing it would be easy to get funding for today and with the right people attached it could be done very well. dicaprio could even be one of them, it's not like he doesn't have acting chops.
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[en.wikipedia.org] #neuromancer
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*cough* #neuromancer
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Little nervous about this. Dude's only done one feature, and it was Torque. Apparently, though, he's a major Blade Runner fan, so at least it will look interesting.
I'm also waiting for if and when it finally does come out for somebody to say "hey, this is just a ripoff of Strange Days and the Matrix! Cameron and the Wachowskis should sue!"
*cough* #neuromancer
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He was in town a couple years ago, and a friend wanted to take his DVD of the Matrix and get it autographed. I think Gibson would laugh. Maybe. #neuromancer
11/17/09
Where's he buried?
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The line from Gibson about the Matrix was something like "it was a PKD story with Neuromancer's fashion sense." I think he's a little more stoical about it than Ellison was about Terminator. (at the very least the Wachowskis didn't go around bragging about how they stole the idea).
As well, if Gibson was indeed going to sue, he'd have to wait in line behind Grant Morrison and that lady who actually did sue. #neuromancer
11/17/09
[well it's Gibson, isn't it?]
I think he was always much more concious of his role in drawing on the cultural zeitgeist of '70s and '80s British tribal and punk ethos, that he had immersed himself in when he was a voracious reader of the NME (New Musical Express) and the cross cultural influences on that, from Japanese pop and pre-otaku subculture and Californian surfer, skater, tech and geek subcultures and the feedback loop between them all.
Now he can afford (morally, and hopefully financially) to just shrug and say to himself:
It was there at the start,
I was one of the first to realize it,
I was one of the first to write it,
In writing it I changed it,
I made it something more.
That's what's there at the start for others. #neuromancer
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I always thought the ending was more of a white-out kinda thing. #neuromancer
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amatures. #neuromancer