Lemmy needs more content that isn’t about US politics right now so I’m making a random post.
What’s the most obscure cyberpunk movie you’ve seen? Name a cyberpunk movie you don’t think anyone else has heard of.
I’m not saying you have to think it’s a good movie (or that you even like it), I just want to discuss obscure, unknown cyberpunk movies. Come on, let’s talk about something other than politics here.
I will watch every movie in this thread. Election promise.
(I feel like there’s a conversation waiting to happen about what really counts as cyberpunk. Codifying genres is hard, robocop never walks around the internet, blade runner has space travel, is space truckers cyberpunk? I think there does have to be a sort of 80s lo fi vibe of some sort, unless it’s a serious modernisation like Black Mirror.
I feel like you could talk about speculative near future technology being used to critique modern society, but theres also something to be said for trench coats and two pistols. Hypothetically Equilibrium would fill both even though its not particularly cyber. Underworld also checks some of these boxes, despite not being cyberpunk to most people, probably because it pulled a lot of visual style from The Matrix, which is a very trad cyberpunk that transcended (as it were) the genre watching audience.
Is Demolition Man cyberpunk? It has spec tech with both low and high society, but very little walking around the internet and the tech only marginally interacts with the story except as a device to get a 1993 cop into the grim dark future of 2032. It’s not very goth either)
Oh boy… now we’re getting into the deep discussions. Here comes a long rambling response.
This is something I’ve been thinking about before; there seems to be two different “brands” of cyberpunk. There’s the “hard-boiled detective in neon-lit rainy streets” and there’s “literally anything involving cyberspace”. Either one of those things can be considered cyberpunk and yet they rarely overlap. Also, there’s the American version of cyberpunk which is more “punk” and anti-authority/anti-conformity while simultaneously the Japanese version of cyberpunk which relies more on law enforcement and preserving the status quo (Ghost in the Shell, Appleseed, Psycho Pass, etc.). And yet both of those are considered cyberpunk too. And that doesn’t even touch on the “what does it mean to be human?” brands of cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is such a broad term that it almost encompasses any story with high-technology that excludes space travel.
I’ve tried having this discussion before, asking things like is Demolition Man cyberpunk?, is The Fifth Element cyberpunk?, is Super Mario Bros (1993) cyberpunk?, is They Live cyberpunk?, is Alien cyberpunk? because it’s fun to see where people draw the line. I’m not trying to gate-keep, it’s just that cyberpunk is such a nebulous genre that it almost comes down to personal preference.
One argument I’ll make (that is more pedantic than most people care to discuss with me) is that I personally believe rebellions do not belong in cyberpunk works. The one exception is if the rebellion is destined to fail. One fact in cyberpunk fiction is that the megacorps are too big to bring down. If Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077 wants to blow up Arasaka he’s welcome to try, but he’s doomed to fail. Same with David in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. I believe the “optimism” in cyberpunk comes from finding your place in the world, accepting it as it is, and not trying to change it. That’s the difference between a “punk” and a “rebel” to me. A punk might be pissed off at authority, but it’s aimless, directionless. There’s no attempt at systemic change. Yet I would define a rebel as someone who does want to institute systemic change. That’s why I would say movies like Equilibrium and Hunger Games aren’t cyberpunk. They’re actually trying to bring about systemic change. I’d say this stems from hard-boiled detective novels where the detective knows the police force is ineffective and corrupt. But he’s not trying to fix that problem, he’s trying to find his place in the world despite that problem.
Anyway, good luck with your attempt to watch everything on this thread! There’s a lot of obscure weirdness described here.
I think there’s also a tonal thing. It’s hard to imagine cyberpunk comedy, at least structurally. The cynicism does disclude the matrix and ready player one.
Maybe a list of concepts and if you tick 7 out of 9 boxes it’s cyberpunk. Things like:
I think this winds up being “is a hot dog a sandwich” conversation, trying to cram fluffy social concepts into rigid categories, but even more so with art. Two cyberpunk movies will be a lot further apart conceptually than two separate kilograms of steel.
But also at some point you have to sort your vhs tapes and whether a movie goes in “Action” or “Sci-fi” is a pragmatic decision and not a deep philosophical one
We can discuss it forever, but my take is that the movies you mention are not cyberpunk; well, maybe demolition man is. RoboCop, on the other hand, is 100% cyberpunk.
Cube and The Purge are really pushing the limits here. I’m also running out of hard drive space
I’ve heard someone describe it a long time ago as “high tech, low life”, where technology has permeated society to the point where even poor people have access to it, but at the same time most people do not live a good life and the tech is not helping. I haven’t been able to think of something that fits that description and doesn’t feel cyberpunk to me.
So, this definition encompasses a lot of sci-fi, I think. For instance, the triviality of tech in Star Wars and the low life is definitely present, but it would be a struggle to vibe Star Wars with cyberpunk. You can make an argument that the stories in Star Wars is not about the tech, but as you do that you have away from the original definition.
I think this applies with a lot of “sci-fantasy” settings. Basic workers in 40k can acquire (or involuntarily be gifted) cybernetic implants and this does not change their social position. 40k is not cyberpunk. The stories largely do not focus on a critique of society through the expression of tech that would solve our particular problems. 40k mostly focuses on what would be cool for sword guy to do, and is largely viewed through the auspices of the top of society (players and great heroes).
An experience of a different setting that is definitely cyberpunk despite also being “sci-fantasy” is Shadowrun. People run around hacking mega-corporations computers by fighting their cyber-dragon firewall. But that also doesn’t fit with my above experimental positions of cyberpunk, its much more an aesthetic choice for a heist game. Nothing wrong with that, but I think it hints towards cyberpunk being at least partly an aesthetic definition of cyberpunk.
That’s not the say the thought is without merit. The focus of cyberpunk could be reflected in our own experience of, say, “having a device in our pocket that can trivially access all of human knowledge but I cannot use this to change my position in society”. This is heavily reflected in Black Mirror. The plot that our protagonists have what would be a life changing device if you were the only one to have it, but are just coasting by (if that) is very cyberpunk and very Black Mirror.
I think one could play around with this concept quite a lot with TV shows, which tend to have a wider variety of focus, vibe, etc with the same initial concept. One could imagine a Doctor Who episode that fills a number of cyberpunk definitions, but Doctor Who does not vibe with cyberpunk generally.
What about Andor? Star Wars, while aesthetically grimy, is certainly not usually cyberpunk. Andor pushes “high tech, low life”, and has an anti-hero and other morally grey characters fighting a totalitarian government. So now that I think about it it does feel a bit cyberpunk, but I’d say it isn’t because ultimately its problems and solutions are too far divorced from those of our world.
But that is what I think is most important about cyberpunk, that it extrapolates the problems and struggles of our current world. The tech themes and 80s aesthetics are just incidental. Which has me asking “Is 1984 (proto) cyberpunk?” 🤔