If I want to see my favourite book on the big screen, then I will have to buy a big screen, because Television has learned the best medium to tell a complicated story is the small screen. The best that they could do to tell a story on the big screen, a complex story, was an eleven hour epic with three movies. And it was glorious, and I was so upset, because I had to give up parts of the book because they could not sell a thirty hour movie. I am talking about Lord of the Rings.
Game of Thrones, The Expanse, and now Altered Carbon. There are perhaps hundreds of others like TruBlood, that apparently was a book too, but not my book. Not something that I read, not something that I held dear.
Part of the problem has been that the idea of television being a high production medium has finally ended. It might be that computers are so much better and it might be that they have realized that people will pay for strong stories told in ten episodes if they are done correctly. No pressure to extend the story out to 26 episodes a year. No pressure at all. Add that they are now making the episode a non standard length, between 45 and 70 minutes. Add that they are going deep on the non standard PG or G ratings and they are just going straight the Adult or Mature ratings.
Everyone knows Game of Thrones. It has become so popular that more people think Rob's wife died in the Red Wedding than know the book truth. The books and the television diverge significantly in some areas and not at all in most of it. I think about Lord of the Rings movie diverging from the book a lot more. A lot more. There are hundreds of millions of people who don't know that Frodo was fifty when he started out with the ring to Rivendale—who don't know who Tom Bombadil is, who never saw Gandalf cast a spell, use his sword to kill things, but still it was amazingly accurate. If it had been a television show, it would have been seven season, ten episodes a season, epic show from Bilbo to the Grey Havens.
The Expanse it is a nine book series, one book published a year, two books extant, and the television series is almost as compelling as the books, and still is the best SciFi on television now, better than the Treks for sure. Better than Farscape, (Only because Farscape was episodic and more fantastic; The Expanse is gritty and real). It is made for television and it is good. It is also tenuous; it is made for television and that means that if it is not popular enough to warrant the expense, they will kill it.
Altered Carbon is different, a Netflix production, not for television but for Webvision. Ten episodes of varying length, based on the most violent book I have ever read. Set in the future where murder is a less serious crime, because people's minds are backed up on a disc they carry in their bodies and the wealthy can move between bodies that are genetically enhanced and live forever. It explores ideas of what life means if death were taken off the table.
I read the book about fifteen years ago and I have fallen the author ever since. There are three books in the trilogy and two prequels. The prequels will probably not be part of the series, they are to far away from the main story line. The first is in the present+15 years, Market Forces, Ad men pack military issue handguns and fast armoured cars and advance through the ranks of corporate society with automobile and gun carnage, legally. The second, Blackman, or 13 in the States, was a genetically advanced made person just when the disc were being invented around 2099.
The series is based in several worlds around the year 2250 and 2500, flash backs between the main character from his early life before his mind was put in deep freeze for 250 years and after he was re-sleeved in a body.
Awesome recreation of the book. I am happy that Richard K. Morgan has gotten this exposure. Soon you will know Patrick Rothfass and Brandon Sanderson. One last thing. Altered Carbon book vs ten episode Webivision epic, I am not sure which was better.
No comments:
Post a Comment