Neuromancer enters preproduction

[divedivedive]

Zylon, dude, let me start from the beginning. Sinnick made the joke about the opening lines referring to blue skies which yes, I do now grasp, thanks. My reference to amusement was due to the fact that I, having read the book in the 80s as I assume most of us did, thought of static. But sinnick’s remark could also be literally true, since someone completely new to the story might well put it on current context, where as bluemax pointed out, static no longer really exists. Apologies for any perceived density.

[wisefool]

It’s kinda funny how a “snow crash” is now also a blue screen…

[Dave47]

@Zylon

Mainly, everyone now knows that cyberspace – aka the Internet – does not work that way. Heck, Neuromancer was borderline silly the day it was published to people who knew anything about computers.

But that is an incredibly minor part of the story. The actual details of the technology presented by Neuromancer are not important, which is why I feel it aged so well.

[belgerog]

@Dave47

But that is an incredibly minor part of the story. The actual details of the technology presented by Neuromancer are not important, which is why I feel it aged so well.

(Spoilers I guess)

Yeah, the concept of cyberspace as a 3D thing is very outdated but that wasn’t the best part of the story anyways (I read it for the first time around 2008).

The sprawls and all the weird shit from the book are still great, like the inbred megacorp family, the crazy rastafarians and and the illusionist dude. I’m not even sure I understood the ending at all, but I thought the world was great.

[Robert_Sharp]

Is a 3d cyberspace outdated? I suppose. But it could still be seen as futuristic too. Some day, we’ll swim through cyberspace (or fly…whatever) instead of having to type. Why? Ummm…I don’t know. Maybe it’s the only way to get to the good info. Only slicers/splicers/hackers/deckers/etc. can do it.

[Zylon]

@Dave47

But that is an incredibly minor part of the story.

True, but it’s the part that it’s most known for.

[belgerog]

@Robert Sharp

Is a 3d cyberspace outdated? I suppose. But it could still be seen as futuristic too. Some day, we’ll swim through cyberspace (or fly…whatever) instead of having to type. Why? Ummm…I don’t know. Maybe it’s the only way to get to the good info. Only slicers/splicers/hackers/deckers/etc. can do it.

Yes, it could be seen as futuristic since it never really was deployed on a large scale like the web. But for me it’s weird to imagine that hackers would use the cyberspace, instead of dealing with low level stuff, since cyberspace is only a very abstract representation of the data you’re dealing with.

[RepoMan]

I am a big fat fucking Vincenzo Natali fan (I loved – yes, loved – Splice), so this interview with him has me quite optimistic.

@Slashfilm quoting Natali

For me, it’s a story of redemption, if you want to get down to the core element of it. I think in terms of how you approach Neuromancer now, post-Matrix, post-all the other films that have poached from it, in the 21st century (because the book was written in 1984), I think you have to take those things and use them to your advantage, because what they give you, what The Matrix, for instance, gives you is the opportunity to make Neuromancer in a culture that is already aware of what The Matrix is. I mean, the very word “matrix” is in Neuromancer. It was borrowed by the Wachowski brothers for their film. I think that’s a good thing, because I don’t even know how someone would have been able to make that film 10 years ago or 15 years ago, because it’s so abstract. I don’t even know how people understood the book when it first came out. I think I read it in the late 1980s, but in 1984, how would people even understand it, because it was just so far ahead of the curve?

I think when you read it now, it still feels very relevant, maybe in some ways more relevant, because so much of what it predicted has come to pass. And therefore, my approach to it would be to be very realistic. I think The Matrix is a wonderful film, but it absolutely takes place in a comic book universe…everything about it, in the best possible way mind you, but really I think it’s a very heightened reality…

[Neuromancer] is a future reality, but I don’t want to glamorize it, I don’t want to inject steroids into it. I want it to feel very palpable and real, and still exciting, of course, but I think if I had to make a comparison, a little more of the Blade Runner type universe, which is kind of a more adult-type of movie. And that’s what I think this film should be because it’s dealing with very important and exciting themes. And I think that’s where my take on it and what excites me about the book will distinguish it from other films, in so much as, in my mind, Neuromancer is really about our post-human future. It’s about how we, in the future, are going to relate to machine consciousness. In the same way that Splice is sort of a treatise on how we’re changing our bodies, Neuromancer could be a treatise on how we’re changing our minds, evolving our consciousness.

I actually really started to break down the book, now that this is looking like it might happen, and I actually don’t think you need to stray too far from the book. I think you have to add some connective tissue, and I think that the ending needs to be finessed. I had a conversation with William Gibson about a week and a half ago, and he kind of agreed. You have to retool the ending a little bit. But basically I think the structure is there. And I actually see my version, if it were to be made, as having a little bit more of a literary kind of a structure. There would be a little bit of trickery with the timeline, and we would delve into characters’ pasts and then come back into the present. I think that’s the way to approach it. And that really excites me, because as somebody who watches a lot of movies and a lot of science fiction films, I’m really getting tired of the same old tropes, the same old kind of structures. If you’re going to experiment with narrative structures, this is the movie to do it with.

VERY EXCITED.

[Disconnected]

@Dave47

How so? I re-read the book recently, and was pleasantly surprised how well it had aged.

This is the book where the protagonist’s strung-out ex nicks the 2MB RAM he’s smuggling, right? :p

@Zylon

Mainly, everyone now knows that cyberspace – aka the Internet – does not work that way. Heck, Neuromancer was borderline silly the day it was published to people who knew anything about computers.

It’s kind of like that awful scene in A.I. where they go visit “Dr. Know” instead of just using Google. Now base an entire movie around concepts that dated.

Real-world interwebs & Neuromancer’s cyberspace are very different things. You do not send your consciousness out of your body and into the wires to post on Qt3. In the world of Neuromancer, you do.
The 3d pseudo-world stuff is perhaps not so ridiculous seen in that context, because the way we [can] interface with cyberspace is very different from the way people [can] interface with cyberspace in Neuromancer’s universe.

[Wing_of_ilium]

@belgerog

Yes, it could be seen as futuristic since it never really was deployed on a large scale like the web. But for me it’s weird to imagine that hackers would use the cyberspace, instead of dealing with low level stuff, since cyberspace is only a very abstract representation of the data you’re dealing with.

I always figured the point of an abstract cyberspace was to communicate the underlying nature of cognition and how it subverts the strict parameters of content. It opens a space for symbols and allows hackers to be their manifestos instead of the particular strings in their zero day exploits. Which I guess is very “now”? It’s less about the nuts and bolts of what the philosopher-hackers get up to, and more about why they do it and how it filters through to the rest of us through a malthusian lens of technology as ideology. I mean, Paprika is a movie about ideological hackers, it just excuses its particularly tangible metaphysics by mentioning dreams.

[divedivedive]

Well, there are quite a few things from the story that will probably end up changed in the transition to film - off the top of my head I am thinking of the illusion dude’s little performance art, which would be pretty gruesome if shown as-is. But I can’t wait to see stuff like the Villa Straylight. This could be amazing.

[Mark_Asher]

I’d like to see them do Snow Crash. They could do some cool things with the metaverse, and the opening pizza delivery sequence is perfect for the movies.

[Jasper_Phillips]

@RepoMan

I am a big fat fucking Vincenzo Natali fan (I loved – yes, loved – Splice), so this interview with him has me quite optimistic.

Sweet. Like Blade Runner is exactly the right sort of angle to shoot for.

Hope this gets made!

[RepoMan]

@Wing of ilium

I always figured the point of an abstract cyberspace was to communicate the underlying nature of cognition and how it subverts the strict parameters of content. It opens a space for symbols and allows hackers to be their manifestos instead of the particular strings in their zero day exploits. Which I guess is very “now”? It’s less about the nuts and bolts of what the philosopher-hackers get up to, and more about why they do it and how it filters through to the rest of us through a malthusian lens of technology as ideology. I mean, Paprika is a movie about ideological hackers, it just excuses its particularly tangible metaphysics by mentioning dreams.

Actually, you are continuing in a very fine vein of cyberspatial deconstructionism. Carry on.

[RepoMan]

@Pogue Mahone

off the top of my head I am thinking of the illusion dude’s little performance art, which would be pretty gruesome if shown as-is.

You haven’t seen many Vincenzo Natali movies, have you?

[Wing_of_ilium]

@RepoMan

Actually, you are continuing in a very fine vein of cyberspatial deconstructionism. Carry on.

We could input the same query into Google and get radically different depictions of reality because of our (un)willing occupancy of conflicting frames in the depiction of reality. We are genuinely developing different scopes of experience by virtue of some dull algorithm figuring itself kismet to one and all.

So you can look at this treacle and say “This is how it does!”. Or you can look at it and say “This is what it does!”. And I think Gibson works from the latter.

[RepoMan]

I think you are working from the latter part of your butt.

(Or perhaps, “Son, I was a-readin’ Neuromancer back in nineteen-eighty-frickin-six. Don’t try to teach yer daddy how to subjectivize memetics!”)

[Wing_of_ilium]

Yes yes, you’re a dad now, well done.

[RepoMan]

I’m just saying, if your point is that cyberspace is a subjective linguistic projection, then yes, you’re clearly right, but you’ve got to realize that language itself is subjective, and in fact that cyberspace is language.

And this is not a new observation:

If you knew your history, then you would know where I’m comin’ from.

(Or maybe you do know, and I’ve been too busy giving you shit to listen, in which case thank you very deeply for your patience with my juvenile behavior.)

[divedivedive]

@RepoMan

You haven’t seen many Vincenzo Natali movies, have you?

None, actually.