that’s good, because I felt nothing of the mood of the novel.

I did (wrongly) feel the same way when the fallout tv show didn’t start with “war. war never changes”.

There’s something that’s so profoundly disappointing in the adaptation of a work that begins with an incredible line that instantly sets the mood of the work, and maybe an entire genre. With Neuromancer, you HAD TO show , not just your hand, but your entire arm in showing that your creative team can make “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”, and when we see that sky, your principal actor has to be able to set the mood and protagonist’s definition in stone by being able to deliver that line in voiceover. This line isn’t about a colour, this line is about the entire mood of the book, and the genre as a whole; the failure of technology as it permeates everything and fails humanity.

Lots of daytime shots, I didn’t have much of an image of what I expected Case to look like, but it wasn’t him. Probably thinner, frailer and paler. He looks too generically white. The characters seem confident in a very straightforward way, I felt they were more broken and unsure in the book.

Because I’m writing this post for having fun, I want to expand on the point of initial lines in books/works. Some works have that kind of line. This is one.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas nails this. What’s the book about? Uncontrolled substance abuse, a road trip, the unseen corners of the United States and the freak Americans that fill those spaces. The Terry Gilliam adaptation fucking nailed it (alongside everything else from that book).

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife

I don’t give a single fuck about Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen or any of her ilk, nor this genre of romantic novels from whenever the fuck it is. This opening line is still fucking gold, and completely establishes every single aspect of the work it comes from and all other works to follow in its footsteps.

Space. The final frontier.

Shatner delivered it like shit. Patrick Stewart/Jean Luc forever. Yes there’s more, but it says so much about the optimistic future and the way our moral heroes are meant to keep pushing humanity into its full potential.

War. War never changes.

The mood of pessimism and inevitability of the human struggles that make up the serious side of fallout gets established in this one line, which Ron Perlman read for the measily price of a sandwich. The man delivered the knockout opening punch by half assedly reading this in 20 minutes, which is something the show should have had, and this show should have had from the actor who is doing the part of Case.

Yes, this work is about the war to end all wars. But even though this is the war to end all wars, it’s like every fucking war before it, and every war since it will also be the same.

Because the technology and the times change, but the stupid monkey wearing clothes is the same.