Novel prequel to the movie
Moderator: crazyankan
Novel prequel to the movie
I just found out that there is a Novel prequel to the movie, If you enjoyed the movie you could be interested to it. It could be a complete new story. I did find the audiobook also.
Re: Novel prequel to the movie
I'm reading through it at the moment. I'm planning on doing a review when I finish. So far I'm finding it very difficult. I've been a huge apologist for the movie, but the novel I'm really not liking.
Gut wrenching bang-head-against-wall moment from last night's reading: after a tussle between Hugo and Tanji, Koyomi says that one of them has to buy her an iced coffee to calm down. An "iced coffee". AN EXPLETIVE ICED COFFEE.
This is the goddamn scrapyard. Or even the "Iron City" of the movie setting. It's the collection of things that have been thrown out and only cobbled together enough to support Zalem. It's not like there's a Starbucks on every corner. So maybe coffee is grown somewhere for Zalem and someone filched some. Well, that would be a super-expensive luxury, not a casual street punk diversion. And ice? Sure, making ice isn't hard, but who wants to waste the power? All together it's such a trivial, casual luxury that, itself, could barely exist in the setting, let alone an infrastructure or society where "getting one" was a casual happenstance.
This sort of thing is why reading the book has been slow going.
Gut wrenching bang-head-against-wall moment from last night's reading: after a tussle between Hugo and Tanji, Koyomi says that one of them has to buy her an iced coffee to calm down. An "iced coffee". AN EXPLETIVE ICED COFFEE.
This is the goddamn scrapyard. Or even the "Iron City" of the movie setting. It's the collection of things that have been thrown out and only cobbled together enough to support Zalem. It's not like there's a Starbucks on every corner. So maybe coffee is grown somewhere for Zalem and someone filched some. Well, that would be a super-expensive luxury, not a casual street punk diversion. And ice? Sure, making ice isn't hard, but who wants to waste the power? All together it's such a trivial, casual luxury that, itself, could barely exist in the setting, let alone an infrastructure or society where "getting one" was a casual happenstance.
This sort of thing is why reading the book has been slow going.
Re: Novel prequel to the movie
What someone considers an immersion-breaking detail differs from person to person, of course, but I feel like you're overthinking it a bit. That coffee might as well be just some shitty artificial flavouring, and would ice be that hard to make? I'm pretty sure that at least some Scrapyardians have fridges, not to mention that various equipment needs cooling - another opportunity to make some ice. In general people tend to be creative. Have you ever heard of the WWII pilots who used their planes to make ice cream?
Re: Novel prequel to the movie
It seems probable that YK never gave it a look
Re: Novel prequel to the movie
Well, there is no doubt that I have thought a lot about this. I had my own ambitions to novelize Battle Angel Alita, and even posted the first sample chapter here somewhere. But I was never able to make the right contacts to find out who owned the rights. Plus my currently stalled efforts to fan-translate the one novel that's been written and only available in Japanese.
Whether that has lead me to overthinking... as you said, each will have to decide. Here is another passage that irked me last night. It is in the process of introducing a cyborg character, Soledad, who kind of has the fleshy bits on the outside and the cyber bits on the inside. The idea is that she can adjust the cyber bits to change her face and body to appear as other people.
But here, that kind of goes out the window. There's the implication that new things come along, and that Zalem's interest is more detailed and specific that just getting stuff done. Why should they care if one person is lying cheating or stealing from another? The whole "unauthorized deception" makes the Factory far more involved in the daily affairs of the Scrapyard than the whole "we'll post some bounties for the major things we've seen that threaten stability and anything less than a capital offense we don't care about.
It is this needless sort of background breaking the author does that annoys me. There are other ways it could have been handled. But the author either doesn't know or care about the canonical background. I mean, the face-changing-cyborg idea is cool, and easily fits in the setting. It is just these throwaway background breaking comments.
Again, I probably haven't given enough context and you are free to say I'm nit picking. I'm just shy of halfway through and finding it hard to reserve judgement on the rest of it.
Whether that has lead me to overthinking... as you said, each will have to decide. Here is another passage that irked me last night. It is in the process of introducing a cyborg character, Soledad, who kind of has the fleshy bits on the outside and the cyber bits on the inside. The idea is that she can adjust the cyber bits to change her face and body to appear as other people.
One of the key factors for me, in the setting, is the indifference Tiphares has to the Scrapyard. As long as they get everything delivered on time, they could care less. Another factor is that things are basically static. The Scrapyard limps along on the trash of Tiphares. There's no real new advances, other than micro-improvements in how they do things. The minimal law is the law, and it's been that way for most of people's memory.The didn't make them like Soledad any more. Having a mutable facial structure was now a criminal offence. But the Factory allowed her to retain the ability to alter her appearance as long as she was useful and didn't engage in unauthorized deception.
But here, that kind of goes out the window. There's the implication that new things come along, and that Zalem's interest is more detailed and specific that just getting stuff done. Why should they care if one person is lying cheating or stealing from another? The whole "unauthorized deception" makes the Factory far more involved in the daily affairs of the Scrapyard than the whole "we'll post some bounties for the major things we've seen that threaten stability and anything less than a capital offense we don't care about.
It is this needless sort of background breaking the author does that annoys me. There are other ways it could have been handled. But the author either doesn't know or care about the canonical background. I mean, the face-changing-cyborg idea is cool, and easily fits in the setting. It is just these throwaway background breaking comments.
Again, I probably haven't given enough context and you are free to say I'm nit picking. I'm just shy of halfway through and finding it hard to reserve judgement on the rest of it.
Re: Novel prequel to the movie
I'm super bad when it comes to remembering about replying, sorry. I'll quote you again so that you get notified.
About the other passage you mentioned - I think it's good to remember that this is not THE Scrapyard, not THE Factory, etc. It's the movie Scrapyard (hell, it's not even called "Scrapyard"), the movie Factory, etc. This might be how they run things in this timeline. (As a fan of fictional universes such as Transformers or Gundam I'm more accustomed to many timelines and variations of the original fiction, I guess.)
The part that doesn't sit well with *me* is the general idea of Soledad. I mean, I appreciate the concept of a cyborg who's able to change their face, but for me "fleshy outer bits, mecha inner bits" is more of a GitS thing rather than a Gunnm thing (especially pre-LO Gunnm). But, well - different timelines.
I'm not saying that you have to like it, of course; I'm just saying that we can't expect that a loose adaptation will be a straight copy of the original fiction. While I won't praise a book that I haven't read (yet?), I actually - surprisingly - liked some of the changes.