If you're spending literal billions, why not hire a big shot writer who can actually work with the source material instead of shoe horning their fringe political opinions?
It’s the only reason I signed up to Apple TV+. I looked for other shows on there, but cancelled not long after.
The first episode of Severance is quite slow with regards to plot but still visually compelling. The cinematography, music and character building stay consistently excellent throughout the series but the drama and tension increasingly ramp up so much that my wife and I were on the edge of our seats for the last few episodes. It was so good that I intend to re-watch Season One before watching Season Two (I’m guessing that there will be follow-up) comes out.
My wife and I both really enjoyed the first two seasons of For All Mankind. She generally dislikes science fiction and anything to do with space but was soon won over by the human element and the great characters. However, we both felt that the quality of the show (particularly the writing) fell hard with the third season.
We both also thought that Shining Girls was an excellent mini-series and have Slow Horses lined up to watch next.
In a different vein. Ted Lasso and The Morning Show.
Couldn't get into Foundation though. Not terrible but meh. May try again at some point.
And I’m massively underselling it :)
S02E04 that came out today (Friday) had me uttering "He's so fucking good" out loud, despite being alone in the apartment. About Gary Oldman, that is. The way he hates absolutely everyone and cares about nothing, while showing that he deeply cares about his employees/Joes and justice. It's all there in the writing too, of course. There's just something about the way Gary Oldman portrays it that gives it an extra layer of authenticity. The man can act.
On a more serious note, I'm open to the idea it could be great. I hate HBO and their business model, but I'll be damned if they didn't use their power to make some phenomenal television. That being said, the irony is more in the context of the source material, rather than how good or bad the show might be. At the very least, Rings of Power doesn't portray a Numenorean package fulfillment center...
I've watched it since I've seen it mentioned in positive light multiple times - the rebellion plotline is nice but main character development is super dragged out and feels pointless - the arduous childhood flashbacks, dramatic sister searching - to end up screwing in Miami - so many episodes felt weak and irrelevant. The heist was dragged out far too much - who cares what sw goat milk tastes like ?
Entire season could be condensed into a one and a half hour movie and nothing of value would be lost.
Not saying it's bad - but far from "the wire in SW universe" or other praises people seem to be singing it.
Also, the bittersweet sense of sacrifice and hope shining through a tsunami of oppression is so relevant and positive compared to so much of the pointlessly dark series out there.
Did you finish the season? It gets progressively more tense and entertaining.
Andor was compelling and very Star Wars. HotD lost me, I didn't make it through. It seemed kinda soap opera. People are raving about Severence, I watched it, and though decent, but didn't have the positive reaction others in this thread had. Though I'm old and have had time working for the big co under my belt, which may have skewed things.
But I guess everyones different tastes are why they're making so many shows...
Andor I haven't seen yet (not a disney guy) but I sorta get the same vibes. Disney, for all their artistic weal and woe, makes a ton of safe and boring films these days. It doesn't really impress me that they can put together an M-rated show that doesn't suck.
It's basically doing to Star Wars what The Wire did to Baltimore.
I didn't really dislike the sequels to the original trilogy but they were forced to do way too much fan service.
It's probably no coincidence that the best entrants in the universe in the modern era are probably Rogue One and the Mandalorian which in spite of very obvious tie-in are mostly unrelated to the original series.
I was totally sceptical about new Star Wars shows when Rogue One came out and had no interest in going to see it. However, I ended up watching it while I was tired (but not able to sleep) on a long-haul flight. To my surprise, I thoroughly enjoyed it as a solid adventure film and I watched it again a year or two later on Disney+.
edit: I will add one more thought. Assuming it is a decent adaptation, it may introduce a younger generation to what risks some people predicted in our developing society. At the very least, it may get them interested.
[1]https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-marketing-a...
But I am with you. Hoping to be pleasantly surprised.
We're in a golden age of IP right now, and now that superheroes are getting a bit tired, perhaps it's time for classic sci-fi adaptations to shine.
Considering that, I think the interactions were too articulate. Trainspotting was Dune with less drugs and internal conflict.
There was a lot left unsaid in the film to keep it concise and uncomplicated for a viewer like you who hasn't read the books. (Perhaps it was an overcorrection.) The director would occasionally reduce a long meandering sideplot to a quick distrustful glance from one of the characters. Someone who's read the book would pick up on it and feel like it did the book justice by acknowledging those events rather than cutting them out entirely, and the film doesn't burden viewers who haven't read the book with an impossibly hard to follow plot crammed into 2 hours.
And what might be attempted once might receive adaptations again, until someone gets it right.
For instance, in my earlier post I mentioned the live-action Ghost in the Shell, which in some parts Hollywood almost-mechanically adapted to be shot by shot identical to the original animated film, while completely missing the point with the racebent casting choices and much of the writing. I would count that as a poor adaptation, but not adapted so faithlessly that it has no resemblance to the original work.
Then again, Blade Runner is a loose adaptation of PKD's original story, yet does its central themes justice. So I guess "unflimable" is a relative term. Maybe it could ALSO just mean "no demand or desire to see adapted for film or television."
My overall point is that it's a golden age of IP and with the mainstreaming of nerd culture (and the endless demand for content from the streaming studios), all sorts of works that were once considered unfilmable are about to see the light of day.
Put that in Foundation's movie reel and film it!
This is the first time I've encountered this term! What an excellent word.
I assume Villeneuve got the deal safe for two parts but the numbers don't justify a part 3.
Maybe a TV show could raise more awareness.
That doesn't mean they'll go all the way to God Emperor, but I don't think we know for sure they won't.
I also doubt they'll go for 3 because all following books don't have that kind of action flick / visual extravaganza potential and this is what Villeneuve can do. Instead there is a lot of talk and this is what Villeneuve can't do. It'll still be the same ol' Dune with a lot of chamber play. I doubt he's even seriously interested in that.
Children takes a sharp turn with the whole possession thing and then Leto's metamorphosis. But Messiah is quite adaptable and is the real ending for many of the same characters as Book 1.
I always assumed this argument goes for the whole of the original Dune universe.
The first book is pretty straight forward and easy to understand. The further on you go with them, the more problematic it becomes as it is mainly dialogue and not much is really happening.
Neuromancer is far more challenging than the first books of Dune and I doubt from what Villeneuve did to the first book that he'd be capable of going even half way without gutting it of all the really interesting parts. This one felt pretty shallow already.
The effects were fine though.
I think the bigger challenge is that it's been partially adapted so many times already by inspiring so many shows and movies over the decades that the actual adaption would seem derivative and like treading old ground. Therefore, how do you make it it's own thing while respecting the source material.
However I'm not sure about the characters, their development and their emotional structures. You should read the book(s) again and watch out for the style in which Gibson build them. The books are a great re-read. I'll go for it myself once I'm finished with my current read.
How so? I'd expect that with both reality turning more and more cyberpunk, and the revived interest in the retrofuturistic '80s-early '90s form of the genre with Cyberpunk 2077 and its Netflix anime adaptation, audiences are primed for this sort of thing.
However I consider the hardest part being the emotional depth of the characters which get their unique taste through the authors way to describe them. The Burroughesque touch and the unknowns is what makes Gibsons early works truly special (it gets easier with his latests works as we can see with the current adaptation of Peripheral). The show needs a true artists touch. It doesn't have to be what Gibson did but it should be something special, not mainstream.
Dune on the other hand is a straight forward dynasty drama at the beginning and only later escalates into a philosophical exercise later on before it explodes into something completely different towards the end (of the original books).
The beginning has been done already in Game of Thrones for example and is pretty much doable.
Neuromancer is harder but I think Apple can pull this off because I feel this brave approach from them. A feeling I had with Netflix at the beginning.
Please explain how you make that imagery work in a way that's accessible to the old-school 80's crowd along with the younger folks who have no clue what that reference means.
They absolutely have to get that right. No one wants to see Johnny Mnemonic again. In the first chapter, Case can't jack in because his brain was wrecked by the Russian mycotoxin. The lazy thing to do is explain that by having him dump expositiory dialog out of his mouth. The hard thing to do is actually show how jacking in works, but you can't just rehash the classic 1982 Tron style visuals one more time. A fresh approach is what's needed, a vision that's futuristic but also gets the retro part right.
So yeah, good luck with that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33886291
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33886295
> No one wants to see Johnny Mnemonic again.
That adaptation is over 25 years old. I think we're probably a little better at adapting fiction as a society.
In particular I really liked Henry Rollins' performance. It was the one thing they got just right.
I really hope this is the direction they don't go. Cyberpunk should be a forward-looking critique of modern society, not retro-futuristic trope-baiting.
On the other, a proper Neuromancer adaptation should definitely have a lavishly ethereal synthwave soundtrack, and probably should have the future tech not include cyberpunk versions of smartphones. Also the world-building ought to have anachronistic details like the Soviet Union floating around in the background.
You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faHQA_0d9Mo
Honestly, I'd have to disagree. As far as novels go, it's actually fairly amenable to a film or TV adaptation -- the storyline is linear and follows a single main character with clear motivations, and the storytelling doesn't rely too heavily on internal monologue or implicit knowledge. It's perhaps a little too dense for a feature film, but as a TV series it'd be perfectly fine.
Some of the technical aspects of the story might make it more difficult to adapt -- like the scenes set in orbit, or in cyberspace -- but that's no longer the insurmountable obstacle it used to be. The Expanse had no problem realistically depicting scenes set in space, for example.
I was part of a group interview with Gibson years ago, and I didn't fully appreciate one of the things he said at the time until years later.
It was something about how everyone who loves a written story gets a very specific, vivid, custom image in their head of what it would be like to see it on screen. It can be so powerful that it's easy to forget that different people can come away with very different versions, based on what elements of the story resonated with them. He said this is why movie versions of beloved stories often get massive negative reactions.
For example, the Neuromancer in my head is a very gritty, 80s angular dark geometry highlighted in neon, Blade-Runner-esque film. It certainly doesn't have any comic relief in it. Most people I've talked to seem to have at least a vaguely similar vision.
I always thought it was a little weird that nearly every adaptation of his work was fairly light-hearted, even self-parodying in places. "Gibson must have the worst luck at being paired with screenwriters" was how I thought of it. The Neuromancer computer game, the film version of Johnny Mnemonic, his X-Files episodes, they all try to lighten things up.
A few years after his comment, I went back and re-read Neuromancer and Burning Chrome and realized the intended comic relief was there all along. The "Aryan reggae band". The space station full of Rastafarians (the implication being they're so high they're in outer space). The dolphin with a SQUID. Case running out of tanning lotion. etc. etc.
There are probably roughly just as many people that focus on that aspect of his work as the "looks like Blade Runner in my head" crowd. The people making this version can onlt make one version, so which do they go with?
I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out, but I expect the result will be very polarizing.
The adaption on Prime is worth watching, but it's a rewrite. None of the language or density of expression is there. They probably made it more comprehensible and I won't criticize that. But the books were invigorating and mind blowing.
Yes, I'm sure it wasn't the same as the books (though I haven't read any of those in my adult life), but taken on its own it was a good show.
I re-read the books before the release and was severely underwhelmed.
You should read the first three (chronological release). They're short and sweet.
I got about two episodes into Apple-Foundation and threw in the towel. It is a good show. However the problem is not that it's 'not the same as the book'. The show takes beloved characters and alters them a great deal to teach viewers tired lessons about progressive values. I don't even disagree with the lessons! It aligns right on my beliefs! But it just reminds me of stuff that was exciting in the original books and that I'm not watching a instant-classic adaptation of a classic book.
Instead I'm watching a half-decent Apple original wrapped in a well-known brand so that it's a safer investment. It's a show I'd probably find engaging and interesting if it didn't remind me over and over of how much I enjoyed the books and how unlike them it is.
I stayed up WAY too late to see what they would do next on a few occasions.
The emperors were horrible and yet I just couldn’t help but watch and sometimes hope they did X,y,or z. Not cheer for them but something like that.
It surely is not the books and one character is just annoying but the books are not good TV show material and they did a truly wonderful thing with it. I actually enjoyed what they did with the world. The show is full of stunning moments and there are fantastic characters in it.
I was more happy with what they did to it than what Villeneuve did with Dune and their characters for example.
The Lost argument though...
I think the Empire aspects they added were surprisingly VERY strong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S89BHnaxULo
Neuromancer would be hard to do well as a film. But as fairly short TV series it would be excellent. There is huge potential as well because you could do, say Neuromancer in 4 hours and then do the rest of the trilogy.
The best screen adaptation of a book I know of, Brideshead Revisited from 1981, took the book almost word for word and made a fairly long TV series. Neuromancer and the rest of the trilogy could be done the same way.
e.g. I was not holding out much hope when "Damon Lindelof producer of Lost, decided what we really needed was for him to create a new TV series in the Watchman universe"
Whether Neuromancer works out, I have no idea. There's no end of money being wasted by the streamers on prestigious properties - but occasionally you'll get a Watchmen or Good Omens or Sandman.
Other positive is that we're living in a time where these can be "done justice". If it needs to cost $15M an hour to make and run for 10 hours to tell the story properly - well it now can be made.
It might not be told well, it might make bile spew from my very core - but somebody can have a crack at it.
Well, Lindelof was also the showrunner for The Leftovers, which was a profoundly moving and well-made show. He also co-wrote the Alien prequel Prometheus. I wasn't too surprised that his Watchmen show was good!
Anyway, as for Neuromancer... Graham Roland was showrunner for Dark Winds, which was pretty solid, so maybe that bodes well. On the other hand, his writing work on Lost was entirely just on the final season, which was a nonsensical mess, so who knows.
It (probably) was groundbreaking. Is it amazing though? I tried reading it recently, it read like a generic pulp novel. After 100 pages, I saw no reason to continue.
In 1988 when I read it, it was pretty amazing. That was a world before iPhones, the internet, etc.
The book was published in 1984, which was 10 years before dialup internet services were offered and 20 years before the iPhone came into existence.
But a series could get a lot more of the detail and side characters in it.
No. It will not be good.