Now, we have absolutely no problem with Altered Carbon's insane levels of violence. However, there's one ultra-violent scene from the novel's source material we're glad they didn't include.
Before we continue, be warned, this is for all of the people who binged the series this weekend – major spoilers for episode four of Altered Carbon follow, so don't read on unless you've watched it.
Still with us? Good, because things are about to get horrible.
In 'Force of Evil', Takeshi Kovacs (Joel Kinnaman) has been kidnapped and shoved into a virtual reality world in which he can essentially be tortured indefinitely.
First, Tak gets his fingernails ripped out, with the violence getting increasingly intense, graduating to limb-chopping.
Then things get odd, with a Matrix-style slug alien being dropped into Tak's open wounds.
Eventually Tak escapes, and goes on a blood-spattered rampage, gunning down anyone who had anything to do with his imprisonment.
It's all very gross and weird, but is nowhere near as gross and weird as the book's take on the concept of bad dudes being able to do whatever they want to a VR prisoner. Brace yourself – this is your last chance to close the browser before we give you information you'll never be able to unsee.
In Richard K Morgan's original book, Tak is turned into a woman when he's placed in the virtual torture chamber; a woman on her period, which Richard suggests would make her more vulnerable to pain. Morgan then goes into gruesome detail about how the bad dudes take advantage of the situation. Here's a sample quote:
"There's no kind of conditioning in the known universe that can prepare you for having your feet burnt off. Or your nails torn out. Cigarettes stubbed out on your breasts. A heated iron inserted into your vagina."
It's such a controversial element of the book it was seen as a significant removal amongst fans, especially as the Netflix show doesn't hold back in terms of the general violence of the novel.
As it turns out, the sequence was removed on showrunner Laeta Kalogridis's insistence.
"There was no pushback from Netflix or Skydance [Media] about that sequence," Kalogridis told i09. "But there was pushback from me... The whole point of that [scene] in the book is, I believe the quote is, 'Women are the race.' Men are just f**king fighting machines. We have more nerves per square inch, we have heightened pain tolerance, we last longer. And the point of torturing a woman is that she feels more and she endures longer.
"You can't get that across [on television], there's just no way. It's going to turn into some torture porn thing, and I wasn't comfortable with that. So pre-emptively – again, it was never a conversation with the studio or the network, it was my decision – that isn't something I wanted to make. And if I PC'd myself, I seriously do not care."
And there was some solid story-logic to justify the deletion, too, highlighting a major difference between how we read books and stream TV.
"Whoever got tortured has to be the person who gets up and does the killing," Kalogridis added. "[Otherwise] the emotional math doesn't add up. There's no moment when I can really enjoy, for lack of a better word, the vengeance. Because what I've done is I've objectified the female form, made her the object of all the torture, and put a dude in the place of taking care of the business."
Kalogridis is completely right, of course. And anyone scoffing at the concept of Altered Carbon going easy on women (the show has a LOT of violence against women), Kalogridis' comments are evidence that it's not gratuitous, and has been carefully considered.
As for whether the show starts to lose its way plot-wise after 'Force of Evil', well... that's a talking point for another feature.
For now, we're just relieved that, as faithful as Netflix has been to the Altered Carbon source text, the service didn't subject us to one of the nastiest scenes in science fiction.
Freelancer writer
Sam is an entertainment writer with NCTJ accreditation and a twenty-year career as a film journalist.
Starting out as a staff writer at Total Film, moving up to Deputy Online Editor, Sam was responsible for Total Film’s YouTube channel, where he revolutionised the magazine’s approach to video junkets, creating influential formats that spread to other outlets.
He’s interviewed a wide range of film icons, including directors such as David Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Ridley Scott, Michael Bay and Sam Raimi, as well as actors such as Meryl Streep, Nic Cage, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Anne Hathaway, Margot Robbie, Natalie Portman, Kermit the Frog, all of the Avengers and many more.
Sam has also interviewed several comic creators, including Stan Lee, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and he has a zombie cameo in The Walking Dead comic.
In 2014, Sam went freelance, working directly for film studios including Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox and Disney, as well as covering red carpet events for film marketing company PMA Productions.
Sam is the co-host, producer and editor of the Arrow Video podcast, which has seen year-on-year growth since its creation in 2017, gaining over half a million listens in that time.
His byline has appeared in outlets such as Yahoo, MTV, Dazed, Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Elle, and Good Housekeeping among others.
In 2012, Sam made it to the final of the Leicester Square Theatre New Comedian of the Year competition, and went on to become a filmmaker himself, directing three features that have all played major festivals, and secured distribution – starring in two of them.
Jim Carrey once mistook Sam for Johnny Cash, and John Carpenter told him to ‘Keep up the good work.’ He promises to try his best.
