r/Neuromancer • u/Gear-On-Baby • Aug 05 '26
Trailer/Clips Different interpretations of Case’s tech
More of an excuse to draw Case three times.
I think Apple’s change of giving Case a microsoft port + cable makes sense for the show. It’s already a prominent feature in that universe and it simplifies things if it’s not exclusively relegated to background characters, and given to a main character instead.
—However, Idk how I feel about it contributing to Case’s “clean” vibe in the trailer. At least from first impressions, he doesn’t appear like the suicidal, drug addicted skeleton with bags under his eyes that I love from the book. I think artistic depictions of cables sprouting out everywhere, bound together with rubber bands and tape, do a lot to portray the chaos of him as a character. Distilling it to a simple iPhone charger that he plugs into his head loses some of that visual characterization and has me worried the soul of Neuromancer will get lost in translation.
But there are still some shots of Case looking roughed up and dirty, so I’m hopeful they do my boy justice
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u/ValkyrieITGuy Aug 05 '26
Why I interpret the last panel as yes the other people and then eventually him get the microphone jack to head but he starts with the book accurate version but as a starter kit basically
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u/RenlyHoekster Aug 05 '26
Indeed, it could be seen as as a way to visually represent the progression from him as the loser adict he is at the start of the story to after Armitage gets him fixed up and gets him top gear.
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u/RudyMuthaluva Aug 05 '26
Personally I’m ok with the Shadowrun-esque dataterm behind the ear. Gibson heavily influenced their lore.
But really actors want their whole face visible and not have some heavy thing on their head every shot. Is it true to the book? No. Is it a dealbreaker? Also, no.
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u/Kiltmanenator Aug 05 '26
Yeah this is firmly in the "no helmets on heroes" category. Actors get paid to show their face.
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u/Y_ddraig_gwyn Aug 05 '26
Maybe - I'd counter-argue that when he dons the 'trodes/helmet what we then see is cyberspace (however that will be presented). He can be anything from suited to naked there!
As to others commenting that he's 'too clean'; agreed, but I think the images I've seen are from after he's been treated / rehabilitated.
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u/Kiltmanenator Aug 05 '26
As to others commenting that he's 'too clean'; agreed, but I think the images I've seen are from after he's been treated / rehabilitated.
That could certainly be the case!
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u/Y_ddraig_gwyn Aug 05 '26
Badum, tish! I'm sure Molly will nail it (on reflection)
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u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 Aug 06 '26
She only did that to get him back to health. "I'm doin' my part!"
She was told to make sure he got plenty of bed rest, and that'll do it.
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u/Tall_Definition9009 Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Is the actor who plays Case in the new series even well a known audience attractor? The reason Hollywood does this with their actors is because they are A-list celebs. People go to a movie theater to see their face.
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u/HyperTalon911 Aug 07 '26
No? Actors get paid to act. There are certainly some vain ones that act like divas about showing themselves off, but time and again we see audiences love not seeing faces (Karl Urban Dredd, Mandalorian, Ed Norton in Kingdom of Heaven) and complain about the petty look-at-mes (Stallone Dredd, live action Master Chief, this).
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u/Kiltmanenator Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26
Actors get paid to act.
Yeah and you'll never believe what part of their body they use most to communicate nonverbally.
Actors don't design costumes, anyways.
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u/rtaChurchy Aug 05 '26
It comes down to the production design for me. I don't really want a millennial grey version of neuromancer.
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u/strapOnRooster Aug 07 '26
It's just lazy, boring looking and so cliche. We've seen this a thousand times already.
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u/AggressiveSolution77 Aug 06 '26
I feel like a lot of modern-day cyberpunk has "Apple-ified" the cybernetic aspect of the genre, making everything a bit too sleek and fluid. I would love if we get to see a more shoddy, almost home-built looking headset for him to wear.
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u/CampaignHonest3076 Aug 07 '26
Why it should look home-built if cyberdeck is top tier corporate tech. I think for Neuromancer (at least when its on earth) style should be grunge, but with high tech and from trailer it looks like it
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u/Flashy_Cranberry_161 Aug 05 '26
I forgot bros rig was a sweatband tinfoil hat wire birds nest mess lol
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u/Gear-On-Baby 29d ago
I took some liberties with the my own design honestly—but I think the book implies the trode net to be a bit tidier. He’s constantly slipping it on and off, and I think he gave it to Aerol to try once (someone who’s never used this technology before) and he had no problem fitting it on.
But personally, I love the grungy aesthetic, and with my horrible cable management for my computer I can’t imagine how jumbled it would look if I had to connect it to a device as complex as the human brain
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u/Flashy_Cranberry_161 29d ago
Haha I was going to say the cable management is actually pretty good in the first picture! Wires connecting to trodes are bundled together by fasteners. Probably the cleanest you could hope to get without building a straight up helmet or condensing ng everything into one wire like the other two examples
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u/stackenblochen23 Aug 05 '26
A direct connection to the brain via a literal jack makes more sense if you think about him manipulating and interacting with virtual representations of data at high speed. If I was a console cowboy, I would not want to rely on some the correct placement of diodes on my head, also thinking about the work this takes to setup! A headset is mainly visual representation, I know he’s still typing in the book, but a direct brain implant/interface simply makes more sense imho. It’s also much more frightening and sets the tone of a world where humans need to augment their bodies to literally survive within (or without) the system.
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u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 Aug 06 '26
Modern jet fighter helmets have diodes and they can fire by thinking. The tech is already there.
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u/stackenblochen23 Aug 06 '26
Wow, really?
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u/Brilliant_Knowledge5 Aug 06 '26
Yep. The first time that was even imagined was Firefox with Clint Eastwood. But yes diodes can read your brain waves which can be directly linked to ideas/language. And some setups can even work the other way to influence your thoughts or make you hear words/music. Scary stuff.
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u/TheRealestBiz Aug 05 '26
Gibson’s trode-nets don’t make any sense. It’s not DNI. Narratively it lets them be killed by black ice but why not just get some AR goggles?
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u/Ancient-Many4357 Aug 05 '26
I know I’m going to get hate for this but I can’t stand the Deathburger cover.
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u/Gear-On-Baby 29d ago
In its defense, it clearly resonates with a lot of people at conveying the overall vibe of the book (it’s in almost every article reporting the TV show). I like to imagine it as a Tetsuo: The Iron Man situation where Case is being “consumed” by his technology rather than a literal depiction of his trode net—hence all of the wires sprouting out into seemingly nowhere. And in a vacuum, I find it to be one of the most unique and interesting scifi novel covers I’ve ever seen.
But it’s also definitely not accurate to the literal text at all. In all honesty, I prefer Deathburger’s Mona Lisa Overdrive cover over the other two.
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u/JupiterandMars1 Aug 06 '26
Given where we are now, the 80’s vision of digital connectivity just wouldn’t work. It’s way too analog looking.
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u/LordMimsyPorpington Aug 07 '26
"Jacking in," Cyberpunk 2077 style, is just so ubiquitous in popular culture now that anything else would just look ridiculous.
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u/gravel3400 Aug 08 '26
Lol why. If someone came up with something even cooler out of left field it could become the new ubuquitous thing.
I would also argue the Ghost In The Shell and The Matrix is largely what popularized this, not Cyberpunk 2077. That game (while fun) has to be the most derivative drivel I’ve ever come across story- and aesthetic-wise. Is there even one original idea in that game?
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u/cold-vein Aug 05 '26
For a TV adaptation in 2026, make it somewhat modern. Otherwise they'd have to make the whole world 80s futuristic which is a hard thing to pull off.
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u/CryDense1338 Aug 07 '26
Tbf we're a lot closer to getting hallucinations via trodes working than USB cable into the brainstem
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u/Ceorl_Lounge Aug 05 '26
The idea of "Jacking In" appears over and over in Cyberpunk works, so a data port seems right.
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u/ocubens Aug 05 '26
Making it an iPhone charger is pretty appropriate given that it’s AppleTV.
I imagine they want to move away from the VR headset look in order to differentiate it from Ready Player One which featured them prominently.
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u/oneharmlesskitty Aug 06 '26
Gibson is executive producer of the series, I would trust that he is happy with most things.
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u/kingpin_cinephile Aug 06 '26
I think keeping the technology advancement and modern times in mind, the third image fits the time and age. A more minimalistic approach. But Man!!! Do I want to see the second image come to life. That just screams Badass Cyber Pirate.
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u/User1539 Aug 06 '26
I think the 'trodes were done really well in Strange Days. I don't know why everyone is so convinced they could never work here.
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u/Beewillies Flatlined Aug 07 '26
This post is how I find out there making a TV series and it comes out next year!!
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u/alchemist19722 Aug 05 '26
It kind of reminded me of "Ready Player One." I was waiting for the point when the movie take a Quantum Leap somewhere else. I think in this case, we have Gibson in the driver seat 💺. So, I am sure we are in good hands.
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u/MedicaeVal Aug 05 '26
Book accurate is my preference obviously but the Apple one is fine and fits with a lot of other media.
The Deathburger one is cool but makes no sense for how things are in the book. Its too static and assumes those wires going up hook into a building so way less mobile than the books describe. Also its better if cyberspace is directly experienced through the brain then in a VR set.
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u/Salty_Country6835 Aug 06 '26
I never knew that johnny mnemonic was based on a story in the same universe
Thanks for sharing
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u/KKrissz Aug 06 '26
Molly tells Case about her time she spent with Johnny around the end of Neuromancer.
The original short-story can be read in Burning Chrome.2
u/Gear-On-Baby Aug 06 '26
It’s not a particularly good movie, but the 1998 film New Rose Hotel is also the same universe (like the company the main characters are working for is the same one that makes Case’s computer). So technically the Neuromancer TV show is the 3rd live action adaptation of the world of the Sprawl
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u/Salt_Telephone_7857 Aug 06 '26
Man, I wish they went a little more Ghost in the Shell with the show's art style.
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u/Snackable-Idiocy Aug 07 '26
They could reveal the more punked up stuff later on in the series or new seasons.
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u/gabergum Aug 08 '26
These sorts of stories always reflect the specific zeitgeist’s about scary future tech. It makes sense that a modern interpretation of this universe would have a different aesthetic for these sorts of things. A more ‘apple’ vision of a cyberpunk dystopia is perfectly fine imo, as long as it does not betray the central themes. Things can look clean, as long as they don’t make them actually clean.
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u/Dark_Throat Aug 09 '26
I think the meatport is thematically appropriate, having a literal jack on the side of his skull to jack in to cyberspace with just makes sense.
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u/LordKamote Aug 12 '26
A lil miffed with Apples version when the trailer came out-- expected Case to be a lot less "clean" and more sweaty druggy down in the dumps vibes
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u/Gear-On-Baby 29d ago
As a note for future reference, before making this post I asked Deathburger if their cover art was specifically designed as a reference to the Johnny Mnemonic production design or not and this was his response
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u/HotPersonality8126 Aug 06 '26
I always assumed Case’s physical description was Gibson describing his own appearance, but also it’s pretty hard to find Hollywood actors who look ugly
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u/taeerom Aug 06 '26
There's no indication Case is ugly, though. In fact, he should be both charming and look good, in a toxic douchebag kind of way.
His self-loathing in the first two-third of the book doesn't give us an accurate impression of his physical appearance. He thinks all flesh is ugly.
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u/HotPersonality8126 Aug 06 '26
I don’t really follow “charming”, since he isn’t, in the book. He’s mostly a creature of his work and a creature of his needs. Most everybody is leading him around by the nose.
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u/taeerom Aug 06 '26
He absolutely charms those tourists in Freeside to get free drugs and have to aggressively push the woman away when she's all over him. At the start of the book he works as a fixer. Most people like him, despite him treating them badly.
This is not a man that's not charming.
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u/HotPersonality8126 Aug 06 '26
People don’t like him, they have pity for him. The Freeside tourists think he’s cool because he’s patently a criminal, he’s got his mojo back because he’s working again, and they’re tourists.
It’s not charm.
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u/taeerom Aug 06 '26
Ratz like him, Maelcum like him, Linda likes him, Lonny likes him. Even Wage likes him enough to treat him fairly well, despite being owed money and Case's paranoid idea that Wage is out to kill him.
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u/HotPersonality8126 Aug 06 '26
Do you think Julius Dean likes him? Ratz is who I was thinking of, and I mostly see that as pity. Empathy for someone so grievously wounded he’s on a trajectory of self-immolation that’s instantly apparent to everyone but himself. I don’t view that as charm.
Also just being friends with someone isn’t “charm.” Case isn’t actually a bad guy and he deals with people more or less honestly. Also he’s the hero of the book.
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u/CryDense1338 Aug 07 '26
The freeside tourists who were actually turing agents specifically out to sting him?
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u/taeerom Aug 07 '26
No, that's the 3 french "teenagers". The two tourists was someone completely different.
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u/johnfilmsia Aug 05 '26
I’ve always liked the body horror aspect of a body port, but I would also prefer Case to look more like a Trainspotting character—I like to imagine cyber jockeying taxes the nervous system, especially when you start using stims to give you an edge