Netflix cyberpunk thriller Altered Carbon looks jaw-dropping

There are definite shades of the cyberpunk aesthetics of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Denis Villeneuve’s stunning sequel, Blade Runner 2049, in Altered Carbon, the ambitious new sci-fi show from Netflix. Set some 300 years into the future, it imagines a world where a person’s consciousness can be digitally stored and then uploaded into a new body. “Your body is not who you are, you shed it like a snake sheds its skin, we transfer the human consciousness between bodies to live for an eternal life,” we hear in voiceover.

Based on Richard K. Morgan’s novel of the same name, Altered Carbon follows a soldier who was killed on a distant planet, but wakes up again 250 years later on Earth in a new body, and is tasked with investigating the murder of a rich and powerful man. Joel Kinnaman, who plays the reanimated soldier, has commented that the show’s scale and ambition is huge.

“They’re really going to be able to create a world that’s got a bigger budget than the first three seasons of Game of Thrones,” Kinnaman told the Vancouver Sun. “It’s something that’s never been done before, and I’m a big fan of intelligent sci-fi. To see a sci-fi show that’s a hard R-rated sci-fi show with a big budget, so they’re really going to be able to create this entire world … I just started drooling at that possibility.”

Looking at the trailer above (or here on YouTube), we can see why.

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Altered Carbon arrives on Netflix, 2 Feb