The man who stood blinking now in the doorway behind them, the blanket draping one shoulder like a cape, seemed to have been designed in a wind tunnel. His ears were very small, plastered flat against his narrow skull, and his large front teeth, revealed in something that wasn’t quite a smile, were canted sharply backward. He wore an ancient tweed jacket and held a handgun of some kind in his left hand. He peered at them, blinked, and dropped the gun into a jacket pocket. He gestured to Case, pointed at a slab of white plastic that leaned near the doorway. Case crossed to it and saw that it was a solid sandwich of circuitry, nearly a centimeter thick. He helped the man lift it and position it in the doorway. Quick, nicotine-stained fingers secured it with a white velcro border. A hidden exhaust fan began to purr.
“Time,” the man said, straightening up, “and counting. You know the rate, Moll.”
“We need a scan, Finn. For implants.”
William Gibson, Neuromancer
Today we saw the Comic-Con-synced release of a new teaser for AppleTV's upcoming adaptation of Neuromancer, William Gibson's seminal cyberpunk masterpiece. It's a rapid-fire montage that provides an intriguing glimpse into the look and feel of the series: settings, characters, action and technology. And, I was pleased to see that it felt good, that it had the right flavour, for want of a better word - the Sprawl, Chiba City, a flash of Freeside, Case jacking into cyberspace.
However, the teaser is exactly that, a teaser (as it should be, I hate trailers that tell me too much) and as such, I couldn't quite make out who was playing Armitage, the ex-Special Forces soldier who recruits Case, the console cowboy/protagonist.
I paid a hopeful visit to IMDB to see if there was a cast list for the series, where I made some interesting discoveries.
Neuromancer is in fact listed on the site, and I was able to discover that Armitage is played by Mark Strong - presumably with a hairpiece of some sort, based on the brief glimpses of the character in the trailer. Not necessarily who I would have picked for the part, but I'm willing to give him a chance.
I already knew that Callum Turner was playing Case, a casting choice which I don't have strong feelings about one way or another, and I have absolutely no familiarity with Briana Middleton, so it's a case of wait and see in terms of how she handles the pivotal role of street ronin Molly Millions, with her scalpel-tipped fingers and integral mirrorshades.* Dane DeHaan, who I did not immediately recognize in the teaser, takes the role of the perversely sociopathic Peter Riviera - interesting casting choice, and a good one, I suspect he'll do well with the role.
IMDB helpfully lists how many episodes each actor appears in, and it's worth noting that members of the millionaire Tessier-Ashpool dynasty appear in every episode, which suggests that there's more focus on their back story than in the books.**
The Dixie Flatline - check, although again, no one whose name I recognize. Oddly, they've changed the spelling of the Zion orbital tug pilot's name from Maelcum to Malceum, which may well just be a typo. There are some character names that I don't recognize at all, which is interesting, and one glaring absence.
Where's the Finn?
This is not really a minor omission. In one form or another, the Finn appears in all three books of Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy*** - it would involve some notable alterations to the storyline to accommodate his absences.
In researching this post, I read some suggestions that the duties of the Finn might have been combined with the character of Julius Deane, one of Case's underworld contacts. I really don't see the roles as interchangeable: Deane occupies a very specific slot in Case's self-destructive criminal existence, whereas the Finn is more a part of Molly's world.
Deane does appear in the IMDB listing, and is shown as being in all ten episodes, which lends some credence to the possibility that he's been combined with the Finn in the interests of simplifying the number of characters in the story. However, there's an assumption there that I don't agree with: why in the world would I want the story to be simplified?
- Sid
*As a sidebar, I'm not wild about how they've done the shades, I pictured them as smooth ovoids rather than faceted lenses. But that's just nitpicking.
** I'm second guessing myself a bit on this one. I'm going to have to revisit the book to refresh my memory on exactly how many references to Tessier-Ashpool there actually are throughout the text.
*** Neuromancer tends to get all the attention due to its breakout reputation - the other two books are Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, both excellent reads.
