Please, Don't Screw Up Neuromancer

freddiedeboer.substack.com

5 points·paulpauper··3 comments

The track record for book-to-TV adaptations across Hollywood is pretty poor on average.

An adaptation can't always be 100% true to the source material, but the LOTR trilogy is a near-perfect example of how source material can be adapted well into a different medium without abandoning its spirit.

I will be waiting to see what the reviews say after a season before I give it my time. I've been burned by too many shallow adaptations by people who seem to lack appreciation for the stories they're strip mining.

Yeah, what people tend to forget is that a movie only has room to tell a short story. If you're adapting a novel to a movie, then most of the novel has to get cut, so the odds of the movie being true to the source material are very, very low (although not zero). It's why I tend to avoid movies that are based on books that I value.

A series, however, has enough time and space that it could, at least in theory, be more true to the novel. I think the odds of that happening are low for other reasons, but higher than with a movie.

I don't have a dog in this particular fight, though. While I value the novel, I'm not an Apple TV subscriber, so I'll probably never see the series anyway.

The Lord of the Rings also taught us that it's possible to take a very short prequel novel and stretch it out so long that you have to add material, and that doing so can make it worse.

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