OK, this might be what tips me over the edge to subscribe to AppleTV.
When reading the books, I understood that Murderbot is genderless, but my brain always pictured them as presenting more female than male, so this will be tough for me.
oh holy fuckballs YES GIVE THIS TO ME NOW!!!
As an aside, autocorrect really thought I wanted to say “duckbills.”
Interesting - I pictured MB as a dude!
I too will finally get Apple TV for this …,
Even if Murderbot thinks of itself as an it, I always thought of it as a her. My bad!
Also, the Weitz Brothers are working together again!
The Weitz brothers are writing, directing, and producing under their Depth of Field banner.
And… I hope this won’t be a problem.
Chris Weitz most recently wrote The Creator…
Yeah, I remember having this exchange with someone before as well.
I absolutely adore the books, which is exactly why I have no interest in a TV adaptation. Does anyone else have that kind of reaction to these things? It’s like, it’s pretty much perfect in its native format, all an adaptation is likely to do is screw it up somehow.
It’s not how I think about things, but of course it’s an equally valid approach. For me, they are each their own things and I can appreciate them separately and differently. Adaptations don’t always work for me - I’m still not a big fan of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. But it doesn’t affect my appreciation of the books, and I don’t anticipate this will either.
Nope. I understand that the two mediums are generally entirely different and I accept that it is virtually impossible to make a video adaptation of a work of fiction and make it work for everyone. You can not expect the video director to be able to reach into everyone’s minds and translate that to film. After all, with a novel your imagination supplies your view of the world in the book whereas in video you are being shown the director’s vision. That right there makes it a tough task for them to put on film what you expect for a direct adaptation. Then there is the issue of internal dialog and the depth of character developments that the written word provides that video simply can not do adequately.
I view these video adaptations as their own thing separate and different from the novel. I try to judge them on their own merits and not place the expectation that they will make this who I envisioned it. For example I feel that Foundation is an entertaining series and worth watching but it is a terrible adaptation of the original written works. So I choose to enjoy it for what it is and not for what I think it should be. I tend to do that with most adaptations. Anyway I am looking forward to Murderbot, the books are great and if they can keep the tone of the novels it should be a lot of fun.
I think it could be good, but what I love the most about the series is the little asides and insolence that usually comes through as Murderbot the narrator. I don’t think that would be as present in TV form.
Huh, I always envisioned Murderbot as a genderless construct. Skarsgård is a good actor. This might turn out really good. Like Canuck I am not sure how they best can translate my favorite elements of the books to the TV-format:
- Murderbot’s internal commentary to events as they unfold, and
- Murderbot’s ongoing feud with the Risk Assessment Module.
That was my reaction too. Murderbot’s internal dialogue is what makes the books so engaging. Be interesting to see if/how they incorporate that without seeming like bad noir narration.
Worked for Blade Runner! Oh wait no, that was bad noir narration.
That’s explicitly the authorial intent. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with Skarsgard.
But at one point, and I forget which book this is, Murderbot opts to get modified to look more human, or least kind of cyborg-y, at least less android-y. My assumption was that at that point Murderbot took on a gendered appearance though I don’t believe it’s ever explicitly mentioned what gender that was.
I am reading book 5 or 6 right now, and Mensah uses “it” to refer to Murderbot.
I love these books but never noticed the lack of gendering (since it’s first person). But because I listened to the first one on Audible and there was a male narrator, it became male in my brain. Very interesting.
I don’t mean whether Murderbot identifies as male or female, it seems pretty clear that it doesn’t think that way. I’m referring to a point in one of the stories where Murderbot decides that in order to operate independently it will have to be able to “pass” as human, albeit heavily modified. I forget when that happens, guess I could reread those early stories. They were pretty short.
Any change is before Network Effect then (book 5).
I’m excited to see how this turns out. Skarsgard is a solid choice, though it’ll be weird hearing the inner monologue at all. I also subconsciously assumed a masculine tone from the books, but I’m delighted by the breadth of interpretations.