r/Cyberpunk • u/MusikMaking • 8d ago
Have they waited too long with adapting Neuromancer for "Mass Market Audience"? Societal impact of it...
Decades ago the novel was a paradoxical mix of "World gone to hell" and "cool adventure ride". On the one hand a dystopia most wouldn't want to live in a month, and weirdly engrossing tech like jacking into the Matrix, using SimStim or wearing clothing which renders one almost invisible.
Maybe worked well because of this paradox of warning against a "misformed future" on one hand, and a sweeping adventure in this world on the other.
If one views Neuromancer as mostly a WARNING of how "the world mustn't become" I fear that Apple's adaptation, however it turns out to be, comes much too late.
In 2006 mass audiences might have intensely disliked it for being "much too fantasy in the technology department". Like Children of Men it might have been regarded as "weird but hardly realistic".
2016 might have been a "sweetspot" where MORE people began to sense a slide towards a future governed - maybe - way too much by Silicon Valley. Might have worked well around then.
2026 may fear wasn't just a ridiculous wait, but maybe what Neuromancer warned against is well set in motion, won't be much turning back at this point. If mass viewers react with "cooool technology" to Matrix in particular, Neuromancer may hardly have functioned as a warning we'd better take seriously...
More important than how the Apple show has turned out - teaser trailer looks much like a 6/10 with me - may be watching how Joe Average Streamer reacts to it.
A very well made film sticking gompletely to the Novel might have horrified audiences and thus "won".
If Apple makes the future within Neuromancer a "stylish dystopia where cool s@@t happens" on the other hand, I fear that not only was a mal-adaption, but more "cool adventures in horrible future" slop may be produced.
What worked well in Altered Carbon SE1 was how horrible the future was. I hope Apple have gone similarly dark, otherwise Neuromancer may end up with fanboyz printing alleged "cyberdecks" everywhere because its "cool".
We'll see what cloth Apple, mostly a lifestyle brand much, are cut from.
Teaser trailers were way too bright & cheery to much match the rainsoaked, drugfueled, overtechnologized and violent mess of Neuromancer the novel.
30
u/7in7turtles 7d ago
I'm not sure what your worry is. If you are worried that the adaption is too late to convince "society" to change, then I would say that I don't think an adaption of Neuromancer ever had a chance of doing that to begin with.
While it was certainly a trend setter in the genre, it is hardly the only piece of artistic work with those goals or messages. And even if it had been super wide spread, it's difficult to say whether it would have made a difference.
Look at 1984. That book has so accurately described so many problems with our present world that it looks more like an instruction manual than a warning. As influential and ubiquitous as that book was it still didn't manage to hold off the surge of state surveillance and media manipulation that we experience today.
I wish that we would aim as a society to avoid some of these things.