Help - Search - Members - Calendar
Full Version: 'Neuromancer' Film Greenlit...
Dumpshock Forums > Discussion > Shadowrun
Pages: 1, 2
SuperFly
>>>Dark Horizons Report<<<

Fantastic!! cyber.gif nuyen.gif biggrin.gif biggrin.gif biggrin.gif nuyen.gif cyber.gif
mfb
they're getting the guy from friggin' Torque on this? great. looks like this is shaping up to be just as bad as every other attempt to make a Gibson-based movie. 'cept maybe New Rose Hotel, and even that had some seriously deep-seated flaws.

of course, i'm gonna go see it anyway. Torque did have hot chicks with tats and piercings wearing skintight leather, so maybe there's still hope!
Darkest Angel
QUOTE (mfb)
Torque did have hot chicks with tats and piercings wearing skintight leather, so maybe there's still hope!

I'm gonna have sky plus that now.
Demonseed Elite
William Gibson's view on this news from his blog:

QUOTE
I'VE FORGOTTEN MORE NEUROMANCER FILM DEALS THAN YOU'VE EVER HEARD OF
posted 3:45 PM
Word from the Croisette has some of our posters gnashing their teeth at the possibility that someone who's made Britney vids might attempt a feature film of Neuromancer.

Discussing said possibility, earlier today, with Cory Doctorow, he said:

"I've noticed that everything in Hollywood always appears to be in a liminal state of nearly there, with enormous, gallumphing enthusiasm all around, then long periods of indifference. I get almost weekly calls about the amazing things that are just about to happen for me. I go to studio meetings with people who tell me about the amazing things we'll do together. Somehow, nothing much comes of it... It reminds me a little of bubble-era tech entrepreneurs, especially the business development people who always seemed about to close a GIANT DEAL."

If you're a novelist, or hope one day to be, and haven't yet had a film option, I suggest you remember that. It's as concise and accurate a description of this very liminal business as you're ever likely to run across.

Myself, I'll be willing to entertain the idea that Neuromancer is really "headed for the big screen" when I'm watching it being shot

As the old saying goes, I'll believe it when I see it.

I *do* believe, though, that Peter Weir will not be going forward with Pattern Recognition. That is one utterly solid little factoid of film news, alas.

I no longer get very wrought up over the liminals, myself, except to be annoyed by people who seem to assume that feature films are the ultimate stage of novelistic creation, thereby relegating the book to the status of dull gray chrysalis.
Backgammon
QUOTE
[...] except to be annoyed by people who seem to assume that feature films are the ultimate stage of novelistic creation, thereby relegating the book to the status of dull gray chrysalis.


Ah, that's true. Neuromancer is Neuromancer. No movie will do it justice. We're not going to get another Blade Runner. Hell, Blade Runner had very little to do with Do Androids..., thank god. Blade Runner was an exceptionnal aligning of planets and circumstances. We're just not in the 80s anymore, the kind of cyberpunk vision we crave is gone now. A Neuromancer movie might be good, in the same way the XBOX 360 SR game is good. Objectively good, but it'll never satisfy us hard core shadowrunners.

Speaking of Blade Runner, though, there is supposed to be a theatrical re-release soonish, like this year or next or something (unless that gets scrapped too). I think that'll do for me smile.gif
Kagetenshi
QUOTE (Backgammon)
Hell, Blade Runner had very little to do with Do Androids..., thank god.

I burn with the fires of rage.

~J
Backgammon
Why?
Kagetenshi
Because you suggest it was a good thing.

~J
Vvornth
I have my hopes set that this will be the best Hollywood movie since Johnny Mnemoic!

</irony>
mfb
QUOTE (Backgammon)
Hell, Blade Runner had very little to do with Do Androids..., thank god.

i sorta agree. not that i wouldn't want to see a more accurate version of Do Android Dream, but it wouldn't have been Blade Runner.

the only PKD-based movie i've ever seen that comes even remotely close to capturing the feel of the novel is A Scanner Darkly. PKD novels read like dreams, or hallucinations.
Demonseed Elite
I agree too. Do Androids Dream.. is great and Blade Runner is great and I think it's because one didn't attempt to be the other too much.
mfb
caveat: the original theatrical release was not great.

"Sushi! That's what ex-wife called me. Cold fish!"

"Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life--anybody's life. My life."
BookWyrm
I'll reserve judgement until I see a teaser or a trailer.
Meriss
Hmmm... Tempted. As long as Keanu Reeves isn't in it I may watch.
Kagetenshi
Keanu Reeves fits shockingly well with a lot of cyberpunk and pre-cyberpunk. The same bewilderedness that made him perfect for Neo (in the first Matrix movie, back when the character had an excuse for being totally lost) was perfect for Arctor in A Scanner Darkly. Now, I don't really see Case as being quite that lost, but I could see it being pulled off decently.

~J
eidolon
QUOTE (William Gibson)
I *do* believe, though, that Peter Weir will not be going forward with Pattern Recognition. That is one utterly solid little factoid of film news, alas.


Thank fuck. That book sucked ass. Pure "I'm William Gibson, and I can't get past that fact to write anymore."

@Kage: I agree on Reeves. The cyberpunk "lost dude" is about all he's actually good at.
Kagetenshi
That's probably all he's good at in cyberpunk. I dare you to watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and tell me that's all he's good at, period.

Admittedly, we're not getting the broadest range of characters here.

~J
eidolon
QUOTE (Kagetenshi)
That's probably all he's good at in cyberpunk. I dare you to watch Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and tell me that's all he's good at, period.

Admittedly, we're not getting the broadest range of characters here.

~J

Yeah, cyberpunk brainless jackass, or teenage highschool brainless jackass. biggrin.gif
mfb
whoah.
Lindt
No way!
SuperFly
QUOTE (Backgammon)
Speaking of Blade Runner, though, there is supposed to be a theatrical re-release soonish, like this year or next or something (unless that gets scrapped too). I think that'll do for me smile.gif

Ridley Scott is doing a finalized 'Director's Cut', as he was never happy with the one released in like '92. They've even done some new scenes with the actress who plays Zora.

Maybe it will get a limited theatrical run, I don't know... It's supposed to be out by November of '07, though.
Moon-Hawk
QUOTE (SuperFly)
QUOTE (Backgammon)
Speaking of Blade Runner, though, there is supposed to be a theatrical re-release soonish, like this year or next or something (unless that gets scrapped too). I think that'll do for me smile.gif

Ridley Scott is doing a finalized 'Director's Cut', as he was never happy with the one released in like '92. They've even done some new scenes with the actress who plays Zora.

Maybe it will get a limited theatrical run, I don't know... It's supposed to be out by November of '07, though.

The real question is, will Deckard be human in this version? smile.gif I know there were some people who were unhappy with the loss of ambiguity in the last director's cut.
SuperFly
QUOTE (Vvornth)
I have my hopes set that this will be the best Hollywood movie since Johnny Mnemoic!

</irony>

Haha!

You have to remember that the Johnny Mnemonic released everywhere in the world (but Japan) was a mutilated piece of Hollywood garbage in comparison to Robert Longo's original vision:

Longo and Gibson collaborated on the film, and came up with a nifty little cyberpunk flick. It was going to be low budget, but they then got studio funding for about 10-12mil. They modified the idea to accomidate the larger budget, and made the film.

The original 'final cut' of the film was supposedly much longer than the theatrical release -- around 2 hours long -- but no known copies still exist. It was then edited down a good deal to accomodate a shorter run time. What was submitted to the studios was what is now the 'extended cut' -- and is about 14 minutes longer than what you saw in theaters or can get on US DVD.

The Extended Japanese Cut is actually a GOOD cyberpunk movie, a satirecal piece that never gets too campy. Some of the smallest throw-away lines add TONS of atmosphere to the piece, and a lot of valuable but short scenes are put back in. Most of the major characters get a meatier background, and the original soundtrack sets an entirely different tone, pace, and feel for the movie.

Once the studios got their claws to it they chopped it down to under 90 minutes, added some lame-ass footage/cgi regarding Johnny's mom and some red bike, and added a completely different soundtrack -- all in an attempt to make a more watered-down, kinetic, and palletable action movie to capitalize on Keanu's then-infant fame.

If all you've seen is the theatrical cut, I HIGHLY recommend getting your mits on the Japanese Extended Cut and give it a second look. In my mind, the theatrical cut doesn't even exist, and the only reason I still own a copy is for collection purposes.

...It might also help that the copy I own is PAL, so the movie runs at a faster speed -- making Keanu's performance much less lethargic. biggrin.gif ("I need...a...com..put..er!")
SuperFly
QUOTE (Moon-Hawk)
The real question is, will Deckard be human in this version? smile.gif I know there were some people who were unhappy with the loss of ambiguity in the last director's cut.

***SPOILERS AHEAD...well, maybe for 1 or 2 of you.***





No. Ridley Scott has stated numerous times that Deckard is a replicant.

I can forsee the new version will have much heavier hints toward this ultimate truth. The current Director's Cut has clues that, while effective on subsequent viewings, present very little your average viewer can pick up on. Lots might not notice that only the replicants' eyes glow in the dark -- and that Deckard's do the same...that the love scene is not about controlling a sexbot, but more 'blind leading the blind'...and that the cripple with the cane is Deckard's case-worker, assigned to monitor him for obvious reasons.
Fix-it
it's painfully obvious. "You've done a man's job, sir"

and even in the cut without the dream sequence. the origami man. then the unicorn.
Wounded Ronin
QUOTE (Fix-it)
it's painfully obvious. "You've done a man's job, sir"

and even in the cut without the dream sequence. the origami man. then the unicorn.

What? I've seen Blade Runner a couple of times and I never would have guessed that Deckard was a replicant. Nothing made it occur to me, not even the random director's cut unicorn.

The only reason I know about the idea is that any time someone talks about Blade Runner on the internet people aways point to Deckard's replicant-ness as some kind of obvious aside.

I guess I failed that movie.
Shadow
You didn't Wounded, there was NOTHING in the movie that suggested he was a replicant. All the Commander Adama mutterings were about Sean Young, not Deckard. It was something that was hinted at in a sequal to the Androids, but again never, ever hinted at in the movie.

As for Neuroumancer coming to the screen, I must say that the idea intrigues me, but this guy,

QUOTE (IMDB)

Mobb Deep: Life of the Infamous... The Videos (2006) (V) (segment "Quiet Storm")
Britney Spears: Greatest Hits - My Prerogative (2004) (V) (video "Stronger") (video "Toxic")
Britney Spears: In the Zone (2004) (V) (video "Toxic")
20th Century Masters: The Best of New Edition - The DVD Collection (2004) (V) (video "I'm Still in Love With You")
Torque (2004)
U2: The Best of 1990-2000 (2002) (V) (video "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of")


Is not going to be the idiot to pull it off. Movies are not books, they, by there very nature, cannot be books. Expecting to see the book in film is a recipe for disaster (alal Harry Potter).

However, great books are founded on great ideas (Blade Runner) and that idea can, by a skilled screen writer (Shooter), be crafted into a great film. So don't expect to ever see any book word for word, scene for scene, on the screen, but the idea that made the book great.
Wounded Ronin
Oh, that's good. I'm glad I wasn't missing something obvious. wink.gif
mfb
Deckard's replicantery is obviously an internetism--true, but very clearly something that people on the the internet use to beat other people over the head with their superiority. you don't even have to have picked the information up by watching the movie--the 'spoiler' is all over the web, perpetuating the internetism. i mean, come on, everybody knows that! you people must be dumb. god!
Shadow
The same people who say they knew Deckard was a rep are the same people who "knew" that Bruce was dead all the way through Six Sense.
Vvornth
Assholes?
Ravor
Really? Then what does it mean if you missed the fact that Deckard was a rep but figured out where the Sixth Sense was going within a couple of minutes after the guy was shot? cyber.gif
eidolon
Meh, I think that if not voluntarily turning off my brain while I watch movies makes me an asshole, then so be it. wink.gif

Fix-it
hey now, those things set off alarms in my mind when I was watching that movie. so then i looked up ridley scott's interview where he says deckerd is a replicant. made sense.
Shadow
Except Ridley Scott (genius that he is) didn't write the story it was based on, nor did he write the screen play the movie was made from. He has no power over the story after the fact to say anything to that effect. He basically is talking out of his butt. It is what 'he imagined' while filming.
Fix-it
hah. directors have a lot of power. they can cut scenes, lines, re-arrange it until it says something entirely different. it's been done with several films. the writer only controls what the director begins, not where they end up.
mfb
yeah, what Fix-it said. besides, i believe that the original intention with the script that was written and the film that was shot was that Deckard would be a replicant. the studio, from what i've heard, didn't like it and didn't like Scott's directing, so they made him change things and add voiceovers. terrible, horrible voiceovers.
Wounded Ronin
Why would the studios care whether or not Deckard was a replicant?
mfb
this is all hearsay, to me, so i couldn't tell you for sure. my guess would be that they balked at the line between human and robot being so thin (despite the fact that that's the entire point of the movie), which gives the movie a very downer feel even if all the 'good guys' live. you can't have a movie with an unhappy ending, after all!
Shadow
Belive me I know exactly what a director can do. As I said, 'after the fact'. He didn't write any part of the story (if he did he would have got writing credit). The whole replicant thing is conjecture on his part.

The studio did feel the first cut of the movie was very dark with an undefinable ending. So they went back to Harrison and had him do the voice over (there is writer credit for that) so that they felt people could understand it better. Then they added the sunny ending on to the end of it (a cut from The Shining).

I have seen several cuts of the film, including the directors cut, in none of them was there any hint that Deckard was a replicant. It is just something Ridley Said years later with no real facts to back it up. Maybe he wanted Deckard to be a replicant, maybe he got confused. Again, he had no part in writing the story, either the book it was based on or the Screen Play. That also meens he did not re-write the screen play during production. So he shot the SP as writen (for the most part).

So when I say he has no power to say Deckard was a replicant, it is like if he said Deckard was an alien. He can say it, but it doesn't make it so. If it wasn't in the movie, it wasn't IN the movie.
Shadow
EDIT: If it helps don't think of Ridley Scott of Gladiator and Black Hawk Down, who can do whatever he wants with a film.

Think Ridley Scott I have directed 2 movies, one of which was a huge failure that cost money, and one which earned that money back. At that point in his career he was given a script and told by the studio to shoot it as written. At the time he didn't have the power to go against the studio.
mfb
there are quite a few hints in both versions, all of which are open to interpretation. the director does not have to take part in the writing process to change the story in a film. Scott could have had Harrison Ford record a voiceover saying "and then i realized i'm a replicant", and ended the film with that. whether or not the producers allow him to get away with it is another question entirely.
Shadow
Thatts true, but if he doesn't flm it with the changed story, the story isn't changed. As written all the so called hints are about Rachel. You were supposed to wonder about her, was she a replicant, was she human, something new etc. None of the writers wrote Deckard as a replicant. Scott didn't film him as a replicant. So he can't come back years later and say, oh he was a replicant.

Well he can but it doesn't mean anything. The Director of a film is not the end all be all of the story. I don't want this to turn into a debate on if He was or wasn't, the one overwhelming piece of evidence that he wasn't was the fact that he got the crap kicked out of him 3 times in that movie and could barely walk. All the replicants shown had to have a bullet put in them to stop them.

Like I said he wasn't, there were no hints that he was. It was just Ridley Scott wishing he hadn't been forced to make the movie.
SuperFly
I bet you're a fan of those sequel novels... =P

'Edge of Human' was pretty good, in my opinion. Never got to read the second one, though....

Oh, and I think it's obvious that Deckard's a Replicant from the amount of subtle clues in the DC (which was RECUT, not re-edited) -- which honestly would not have been a far stretch for the director to make if the clues were written for Rachel.

What studio head is REALLY going to notice lighting effects on the eyes -- which is a very poignant indicator that Deckard is a replicant? They're more worried about counting their ticket stub dollars.

Show me a version where anyone who isn't obviously a replicant or a suspected replicant has glowing eyes in the dark, please? If you can, I'll be forced to give your idea some credit, but not until.
mfb
QUOTE (Shadow)
Well he can but it doesn't mean anything. The Director of a film is not the end all be all of the story.

yes, he is. the script is just a tool the producer gives him to make a movie that suits the producer's taste, same as the props, the actors, and the cameras. from what i understand, Scott filmed the movie as if Deckard were a replicant, then was forced to cut it to make Deckard human, and then released the director's cut to make Deckard a replicant again.

as i said, there were hints in both versions of the film, including Deckard's glowing eyes and the fact that he survives getting punched by a replicant several times, whatever his condition afterwards. the fact that those hints are open to interpretation doesn't make them not hints.

(and, yeah, i'm aware of the irony of the fact that i made fun of people who argue about this, a few posts back. just because i make fun of geeks doesn't mean i'm not one!)
Shadow
I get you MFB. Geeks all!

Well Like I aid, I didn't want this to become a argument about him being a replicant. So will sign off on this for now. I know it seems like directors ar the end all be all of a movie, but they really arn't. Not till they posted a few 100 mil + hits.
Shadow
QUOTE (SuperFly)
Show me a version where anyone who isn't obviously a replicant or a suspected replicant has glowing eyes in the dark, please? If you can, I'll be forced to give your idea some credit, but not until.

Oh no, what ever shall I do without your meaningless validation!
Kagetenshi
You are in-valid.

~J
Moon-Hawk
QUOTE (Shadow)
I get you MFB. Geeks all!

Well Like I aid, I didn't want this to become a argument about him being a replicant. So will sign off on this for now.

Personally, I'd love to see an argument about him being a replicant. biggrin.gif
Fix-it
here's most of the arguement

I also point out that Gaff's interaction with deckard is very indicative.

more arguement, for your enjoyment
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.
Dumpshock Forums © 2001-2012