I don’t have Netflix, but this may motivate me to get it. I’m a big fan of this series, along with Morgan’s fantasy series follow up (starting with “The Cold Commands”, IIRC).
Those are some fine books! Any details or a link you could share?
That’s something that could be done very well or… not very well. Interested to see how it turns out.
Fuck me; that’s awesome news (as long as they do it well)!
Takeshi Kovacs is one of my favorite characters of the past 30 years.
The guy who directed Game of Thrones’ Battle of the Bastards is doing at least some of the episodes. I read an interview in the NYTimes.
Shit’s getting real!
I read the first one, but never realized it was an entire series.
The Takeshi Kovacs novels aren’t a series in that they don’t really tell one over-arcing story or focus exclusively on one character. Kovacs is like Mad Max in Fury Road: central to the story but not necessarily the focus of the story itself. It works in both because of the adopted noir stance of having the story be told as a 1st person narrative (Morgan is particularly good at this motif, IMO; my cite is the fact that his work is overwhelmingly from a 1st person perspective).
What is awesome is how much richer the background gets as you read more. By the time you have all 3 novels read, the history of the Protectorate, the Envoy Corps, the story of colonizing and Harlan’s World in particular, etc. all show a rich attention to detail and (most importantly IMO) plausibility. The progressions and history described seem like reasonable outcomes and consequences or reasonable situations that were reasonably resolved. To be sure, the worlds that Morgan describes are far from perfect; his intent isn’t to write about Utopias at all. But they do seem realistic, as if they could come to be.
Takeshi Kovacs is no different: deeply flawed and fully aware of it, driven, passionate, complex and righteous with a rich and varied life that seems like it could realistically lead to the man we are reading about. As I said earlier, he is one of my favorite characters of the last 30 years.
A pity that Morgan has said he is done writing Takeshi Kovacs stories in many ways but also perhaps the smartest thing to do: these 3 novels, taken together, comprise an amazing body of work that is subtle, detailed and so very, very thought-provoking as to be near perfect.
ETA: Here’s the story from January about Netflix ordering the 10 episode series. I noticed on re-reading the thread that no one ever provided the link.
WordMan, was there any mention of when any filming was starting or other details? Any word on when Netflix is set to start airing this?
All it says is that this interview, which focuses on the GoT episodes he directed, is taking place in Vancouver where he’s filming AC for Netflix.
Thanks, WordMan.
I went looking and found an article from 4 August on the same site I linked to earlier: ‘Altered Carbon’: James Purefoy, Martha Higareda Join Netflix Series – Deadline
It has a bunch of info as far as casting goes, but not much else.
For those who just want the info without having to click the link:
Takeshi Kovacs - Joel Kinnaman
Lauren’s Bancroft - James Purefoy
Kristin Ortega - Martha Higareda
Other characters listed in the article are new for the series (they don’t exist at all in the novels).
I do not know any of the people mentioned in the article AFAIK, so I have no idea if any of this is good casting or not.
Oh, I wasn’t expecting a continuation of the same plotline, or anything like that. But the setting was what I found most interesting about the book, anyway: He had some interesting ideas that he ran with, and I wouldn’t mind seeing them explored more.
I’ve felt that way about all of Morgan’s novels except Market Forces (the easy contractual obligation fulfiller novel, IMO) but I’ve also been glad that he has elected to stop and to let the world’s stand as is, without further embellishment. He seems to both have a knack for creating plausible futureworlds and the ability to spend sufficient time on them so they seem fully fleshed out, and I kind of like the idea of allowing works to stand without exploring everything on the page. It let’s the reader speculate and fill in gaps and imagine and thus leads to a rich experience that resonates long after the book(s) are put down.
This is up on Netflix as of today. I’m a big fan of the books, and I just saw the first episode – I liked it a lot. The setting and visuals were amazing, and the performances were very good. The dialogue was hit and miss (with tons of exposition), but overall I thought it was very promising, and I look forward to the rest.
Thanks for the heads-up, iiandyiiii! I just re-started my Netflix so I can watch this.
I think that dialog with tons of exposition is kind of unavoidable with a story like this: There are some pretty out-there ideas (at least from our point of view) that need to be well-explained to an audience who mostly probably hasn’t given them much thought before.
Aye, and Morgan’s books are pretty heavy on it at times. I’m not at all plussed about a lot of exposition in a story and setting like this one, not for the first episode or three anyway.
I had never heard of this show, but i got an email about it this morning from Netflix, and i thought it looked like something i might like, so i watched the first episode.
I might give it one more episode, but if it’s going to make the rotation, then it needs to improve. A lot.
Exposition i can handle. I understand that the world needs to be set up, especially for people who haven’t read the book. And some of the ideas behind it are pretty cool (maybe i should read the book instead).
But that wasn’t really the problem. They need someone who can write dialog that doesn’t sound like it was hijacked from a third-rate hard-boiled noir film. I didn’t think much of the acting performances, either, although Meryl Streep and Daniel Day Lewis probably couldn’t have done very much with that script.
It’s clearly expensive, and it looks good, but as someone coming to it with no preconceptions and no particular expectations, i thought it came off as the mutant bastard child of Blade Runner and Mike Hammer, envisioned by a first-year film student who still hasn’t gotten over his obsession with breasts.
I am a few episodes in and am enjoying it. So far, the extended view at OTK (Original Takeshi Kovacs) is a good thing - the scenes are interesting, and it feels like we are grounded in the fact that he is an Asian man. In this day and age, handled pretty well.
I have also enjoyed the AI Hotels and Poe in particular.
The premise of this world - digital minds - is as profound as WestWorld’s, but it feels like they exploring it in a classic noir/cyberpunk way, not all Profound and Shit™ like WW.
It would be nice if they can stick the landing. I will have to see when I can get through the rest of it.
I’ve watched the first two episodes - mostly because it has Marc Anthony (James Purefoy) from Rome in it and I’ll generally give anything he’s in a try.
It is way more sci-fi than I normally like but I an enjoying it so far, especially Poe. I thought the scene in the hotel lobby where he’s trying to get Kovacs to pay for his “amenities” was very cleverly done.
I’m 3 episodes in, and I while I find myself unsettled by certain details and I agree that there are some weak spots, overall I think this is at least very good; at times it is excellent.
The worst things:
The lead actors face is a bit too expressionless, even his eyes. I’m just not really getting the “worlds-weary” thing quite the way it comes across in the book. It’s a minor nitpick, but I’m not really getting the sense that he quite understands his role. I started to see glimpses of it in the scene in Jack’s where he pretends to be Ava, a woman, but it was more the writing than the acting that carried the scene. He’s not bad at all, just not quite as good as I would have hoped, somehow.
Ortega is, IMO, seriously miscast, poorly acted and poorly directed. Nearly every second she’s onscreen is awful.
The Raven and Poe initially bothered me quite a bit, but only because I’ve been waiting decades now to see The Hendrix. I know why they couldn’t do it (a fortune in licensing) but still, it would have been awesome. The lobby scene went a big way towards winning me over, both to Poe and to the screenplay.
My biggest bitch is about production values. All of the 1st unit footage, shot with a soft focus so it looks like film, looked amazing. Most of the 2nd unit stuff (I hope I have this right) is shot on straight 4K, tho, and it’s really jarring to go from “beautifully shot film” to “in-your-face music video” and back again over and over. I wish they’d pick one and go with it (and pick the film look; it’s better).
There’s a few other things that nag at me, but until I re-read the book I’m hesitant to let them bother me too much and I’m just considering that this is not, in fact, the book.
The best things:
My biggest praise of for the product values (:D). The Blade Runner-esque shots of Bay City are fantastic. The flying cars look amazing. The VR sequence was fucking phenomenal. The fights are well choreographed and executed. Most of the cinematography is excellent. Most of the cast is good, some are very good.
I’m looking forward to watching more after tonight’s UNLV hockey game.