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[partyphone]

We need more cyberpunk shows. What was the last one? Almost Human?

By the way, how was Woken Furies? Couldn't get into it.

i thought it was great and probably the most cyberpunk of the three.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Of course more white washing. Before that though a truly overrated book.

Scandinavian blonde white actor Joel Kinnamon is playing Takeshi?

Ok

Have you people read the book? He spends literally 100% of the story in a body that is not his own.

 

[harSon]

I absolutely don't see the issue here. The brain imprint of Takeshi Kovac was inserted into a generic athletic white male body when he was defrosted from his multi-century sentence. Did people really expect his first body in the show will be some half-asian dude? If they have flashback back to Harlans World, for those sections I expect Asian casting.

I'm glad they got great actor for it. Joel Kinnaman can definitely deliver the goods.

That's the problem. With each legitimate opportunity for an Asian actor to be cast in a lead role, the role is 'whitewashed' instead, and people 'don't see the issue.' And while mental gymnastics to justify the whitewashing undergoes, Asians continue to be underrepresented.

Have you people read the book? He spends literally 100% of the story in a body that is not his own.

Everything defaults to white male though. He could be in a Black vessel. He could be in an Indian vessel. He could be in a Middle Eastern vessel. He could be in a female vessel. But the industry always defaults to white. Always. And that's the problem.

 

[antispin]

The more I think about it the less I'm interested in watching a TV show based on the book

I mean, the book is alright, but wouldn't the screen adaptation just be a stereotypical hyper violent cyberpunk show?

Hopefully

 

[partyphone]

Have you people read the book? He spends literally 100% of the story in a body that is not his own.

i honestly never pictured his primary sleeve in the novel as white.

it'll be interesting to see how they handle flashbacks and virtual.

 

[Futurematic]

Yeah I can see that, though you know my biases and Hollywood (Japanese would have been way more cyberpunk). Super curious as to see the casting on the sleeves, and of course far more so on how it shapes up. But damn Netflix, that's a better fate than I thought.

Anybody know what happened to Joel Silver's rights, or is he involved and I missed it?

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Everything defaults to white male though. He could be in a Black vessel. He could be in an Indian vessel. He could be in a Middle Eastern vessel. He could be in a female vessel. But the industry always defaults to white. Always. And that's the problem.

He downloads into the sleeve of Elias Ryker. They could have changed that for the adaptation if they wanted, that is a completely different complaint than "it's whitewashing". Now you're in the generic realm of "wouldn't it be nice if the industry had some more diversity?" There is no compunction to specifically alter this role, nor get upset when specifically this role was cast as it has been.

i honestly never pictured his primary sleeve in the novel as white.

it'll be interesting to see how they handle flashbacks and virtual.

It's possible they fuck the adaptation completely and use the same actor for flashbacks in a quantum leap style decision, but the body switching is a really important part of the story so if they do it properly they should have a different actor playing him when he's in the past (if they have flashbacks).

 

[More Fun To Compute]

People are just working on the nugget that his name is Takeshi. The planet he was from was culturally Japanese so it doesn't tell you what he looks like. You couldn't say a guy called John from the USA should be played by a white guy because it's a white name.

 

[berzeli]

The rest of the creative team is good, Miguel Sapochnik did good on Hardhome (GoT), but man the writers fill me with nothing but dread.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

People are just working on the nugget that his name is Takeshi. The planet he was from was culturally Japanese so it doesn't tell you what he looks like. You couldn't say a guy called John from the USA should be played by a white guy because it's a white name.

His surname is Hungarian, my imagining of him was as a Hungarian/Japanese but I don't know if that was just me extrapolating or if the text was explicit. His sleeve has a Dutch surname.

 

[deadscreensky]

I do.

I really like Altered Carbon myself, but I'd say it's probably the third book in the series that reaches "great literature" territory. It's a devastating look at masculinity, it blew me away.

But Altered Carbon is really fun hardboiled cyberpunk, I definitely recommend it to fans of sci-fi. And Woken Furies just won't have the right impact if you don't start from the 'beginning' here.

EDIT: As other people have mentioned, this is only (possibly) whitewashing if they screw up the flashbacks.

 

[jond76]

Really like Kinnaman. I'll keep an eye on this.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

His surname is Hungarian, my imagining of him was as a Hungarian/Japanese but I don't know if that was just me extrapolating or if the text was explicit. His sleeve has a Dutch surname.

Yeah Lev Kovacs. It's a while ago since I read the books but I think that he never shows much affinity for Japanese culture and I believe felt like he was an outsider due to his minority migrant worker racial origins.

 

[michaelius]

i honestly never pictured his primary sleeve in the novel as white.

it'll be interesting to see how they handle flashbacks and virtual.

There were also parts where he used special ninja body from what I remember so it will be interesting how it's done.

 

[partyphone]

There were also parts where he used special ninja body from what I remember so it will be interesting how it's done.

yeah. late book spoilers:

Spoiler

he double sleeves towards the end of the book. the ninja sleeve goes off on an airship adventure while the other has a clone orgy

 

[AgentOtaku]

Is it bad the only thing I recall from the book is the fairly....uh... specific sex-scene bits early on involving...uh semen


...sorry, I'm a wee bit intoxicated this evening

cool that they're doing a show though!

 

[Slightly Live]

The first book was cyberpunk noir, but the other books weren't. And they were godawful trash.

Hope, if this is successful, they make shit up after the first book and forget about the later books.