

Snow Crash movie to be written and directed by Joe Cornish - raywalters
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/snow-crash-movie-to-be-written-and-directed-by-joe-cornish-20120615/

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pault
I'm afraid they'll leave out the most interesting parts of the book and make
it a dumb action movie. For me, what makes the book great isn't the plot, it's
the satire of american suburbia, globalization, and the weird tangents into
sumerian mythology and NLP. I hate when they make movies out of my favorite
books...

~~~
tptacek
If you like weird tangents and biting satire of American suburban culture, try
_Infinite Jest_.

Both Stephenson and David Foster Wallace owe a debt to Thomas Pynchon, but
Stephenson's relationship to Pynchon is unfortunately a lot like Dan Brown's
(_The Da Vinci Code_) relationship to Umberto Eco (_Foucault's Pendulum_,
another great hacker book): it's simultaneously superficial and exploitative,
a kind of literary mountaintop-removal exercise.

Wallace isn't going to give you guns with with funny names or high-speed
chases, but almost everything you say you like about _Snow Crash_ is
abundantly scattered throughout _Jest_. Stephenson was also notorious for his
thuddingly unsatisfying conclusions. Wallace solves that problem in way I
think is very congenial to hackers. :)

It's a much longer book. And you're going to spend a lot more time decoding
than you ever would in a Stephenson novel. But it's fun, and worth it.

~~~
euroclydon
I read hundreds of pages of Infinite Jest, on your recommendation, and while I
did find certain scenes compelling, it finally dawned on me why I didn't like
it: It's totally devoid of hope. Maybe I just didn't bring enough internal
_upbeatness_ to the table to enjoy IJ, but to me, the best part of reading a
long novel, is enjoying the distillation of a big part of the authors life and
getting to know them. I found DFW (in this book) just brought me down.

[EDIT: Maybe it didn't help that it was a Kindle book. I've read long books on
Kindle, and it's gone fine when the books are mostly enjoyable and easy to
follow throughout, but when they're not, it probably helps to have more
physical clues as to where you are in the novel. IJ's chapter titles certainly
didn't help me to know my way around the book either.]

~~~
tptacek
How far into it did you get? It's bleak throughout, but it gets less
depressing when the plot starts picking up.

I found it much easier to read on an eReader than I did in paper, if only
because the footnotes were easier to seek to.

~~~
euroclydon
I think the triple or quadruple agent dialogs on the mesa were what did me in.

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waterlesscloud
Relating this back to a recent blog post from Michael Abrash on how and why he
got to where he is, the post starts thusly:

"It all started with Snow Crash.

If I hadn’t read it and fallen in love with the idea of the Metaverse, if it
hadn’t made me realize how close networked 3D was to being a reality, if I
hadn’t thought I can do that, and more importantly I want to do that, I’d
never have embarked on the path that eventually wound up at Valve."

[http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-
here-w...](http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/abrash/valve-how-i-got-here-what-
its-like-and-what-im-doing-2/)

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JPKab
I would feel a lot better about it if it was being done by Christopher Nolan.
Inception was proof that he doesn't let suits dumb down complex plots. But you
have to admit that the opening sequence will at least be awesome: a pizza
delivery guy who works for the Mafia flying through an extremely dangerous
libertarian dystopia.

~~~
bitwize
_Inception_ was a shaky plot wrapped in enough accidental complexity to make
studio execs -- and audiences -- think they were watching something profound.
I get a sense of Christopher Nolan as a filmmaker who desperately wants to be
taken seriously, which is just the opposite of who we need for _Snow Crash_.
Given his admittedly short body of work ( _Attack the Block_ , _The Adventures
of Tintin_ ), Joe Cornish seems a great choice for handling the action and
outragous weird stuff in _Snow Crash_.

~~~
engtech
I think Inception, Memento and The Dark Night show that Christopher Nolan is a
filmmaker who _is_ taken seriously.

<http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0634240/awards>

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sp332
More discussion from yesterday: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4114513>
Jon6 points out that an audience today might not realize how cool this all was
because (as ynniv puts it) they're seeing it in _the future_.

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npsimons
Considering that one of the cool toys in this story was the inspiration for
Google Earth, yeah, most people might not be too impressed. I love the story
(love most of Stephenson's works, quirks/"flaws" and all), but it was "20
minutes in the future" when it was released in 1992. Hopefully they'll keep
the snarkiness towards capitalism and religion and won't do a whitewash on
Hiro or Raven.

~~~
darkarmani
So google earth was released soon after 1992?

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sp332
The _style_ of writing was near-future, not the actual tech :)

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excuse-me
Yes - odd to think that once the idea of the military being outsourced to
Haliburton, 3D city models on your phone/glasses and a cyberspace landgrab for
new domain names was in the future.

~~~
mindcrime
_I used to wonder when the cyberpunk future was going to happen. Then I
realized it already has._

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waterlesscloud
"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet."

~~~
technomancy
IIRC the original quotation didn't have "yet", and Gibson has remarked that
adding it misses the point; the idea that the future will ever be evenly
distributed is naive.

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Lambent_Cactus
I fell like Snow Crash would be much more successful as an animated movie.
There's a lot of whimsical, somewhat silly stuff in there that works in a book
and could work animated but doesn't translate well to live action.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
I fully agree. Cyberpunk (or post-cyberpunk nostalgia) will work really well
in animated or comic form. Its actually silly to see a guy in a three piece
suit run around with a katana or a cyborg girl in a fishnet bodysuit shoot a
machinegun at a group of robot assassins.

Once you try to make it "gritty" and "real" you end up with clunkers like
Hackers or Johnny Mnemonic. I guess you could point out stuff like the Matrix
or the recent Batman franchise, but those tend to be the exception not the
rule, and to be frank, cater to an almost goth-level of drama and pathos.

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adavies42
what about something like _Kill Bill_ that's basically an animated movie that
just happens to be live action? (i'm pretty sure it actually had both "a guy
in a three piece suit run around with a katana" and "a cyborg girl in a
fishnet bodysuit shoot a machinegun at a group of robot assassins".)

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excuse-me
There must be coming a cross-over where live actors will be cheaper than
animation and it will be easier to make Shrek17 as live than CGI

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voidfiles
Neal Stephenson is a master of the diatribe. In almost all of his books he
takes the time to go into detail on some arcane subject. While I may not be a
master after he is done I feel like one.

When it comes to a mainstream adaptation I wonder if they will retain the
diatribes. It would be really interesting to see how an audience takes to his
level of engagement in a specific subject.

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knieveltech
Rev. Wayne's Pearly Gates is going to require some serious refactoring if the
studio (and director) want to avoid legions of pissed off fundies protesting
at local theaters.

~~~
rabidsnail
Why would they want to avoid legions of pissed off fundies protesting? You
couldn't buy advertising that good for any amount of money.

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knieveltech
There's good and bad publicity, and while the line might be blurred for
software startups, it's fairly clear for film studios. Pissing off the
conservative crowd in North America comes with some consequences for an
entertainment/media company.

Case in point: The Golden Compass. The studio was shooting for a $30 million
dollar opening weekend. They grossed something like $8.8 mil. You might recall
that leading up to the opening there was a lot discussion (and a few calls for
protests) surrounding some of the material in the books.

Compare/contrast "The Chronicles of Narnia". Both movies had similar budgets
and targeted the same audience. Chronicles wasn't burdened by a bunch of
controversy and pulled in ~$20 mil on the opening weekend.

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ceejayoz
Yeah, but The Golden Compass wound up being just a _bad movie_. I loved the
books.

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excuse-me
TO be fair adapting a book about the evil church with the studio forcing them
not to mention the church. It's a bit like having Sony insisting that Pearl
Harbor shouldn't mention the Japanese.

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newman314
I feel torn about this.

On one hand, I'm excited that this is finally being made into a movie but on
the other hand, IMO Snow Crash is one of those books which the movie has to
faithfully reproduce much like the Lord of the Rings movies.

Not knowing much about Joe Cornish, I hope he is able to properly capture the
outrageous, over the top parts of the story.

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Sthorpe
Why isn't Mr. Stephenson writing the script? Doesn't even look like he
cares,...which makes me wonder if I should.

On another note, Ender's Game is coming out and Orson Scott Card fought hard
to get the right actors and write the script. Oh how I can't wait for this....

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ataggart
On a related note, when is someone going to make _The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress_ into a movie?

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excuse-me
When they can manage to fit a high school full of teenage vampires into the
plot ?

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Jtsummers
Combine it with Time Enough for Love or The Cat Who Walks Through walls and
you can have the immortal 30-40 year old looking people, wind the ages down a
bit, voila: immortal, time travelling, teenager Lazarus Long encounters a
relative and shags them during the struggle for the Moon's liberation from
Earth.

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HarrietJones
I'll watch this. As long as the main protaganist is some kind of Hero.

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chaostheory
imo Diamond Age has a much better plot for a movie and is a better book than
Snow Crash.

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excuse-me
Classic - but possibly unfilmable - scifi book

Exciting new director - but a budget high enough that it will need the theme
park and fast food tie-ins

A pitch which probably included phrases like, "it's the Matrix but with
samurai swords and girls on skateboards"

.... and it will probably be in 3d .......

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pault
...and now when you tell people you like Neal Stephenson, they'll say "Oh, I
saw Snow Crash!", and you'll say "The book is better than the movie", and
everyone will think you're a jerk.

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bitwize
On the other hand the book will sell like hotcakes in a new shiny-covered
reprint with a "Now a Major Motion Picture" banner across the cover.

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nemo1618
can we stop now, I'm getting really upset

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excuse-me
And 20 years later there will be a series of directors cuts with/without the
voice over explaining the metaverse

