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.
Strange Days is one of those often listed near the bottom on lists of the best cyberpunk movies and I almost never see it talked about or mentioned in discussions. I think it goes under the radar because it’s not visually spectacular, nor is it very futuristic. Classic dialogue heavy sci-fi.
You’re right, Strange Days is definitely a classic yet visually it isn’t very sci-fi. The themes and plot are extremely sci-fi (and cyberpunk) yet if you just looked at a random frame from the movie you wouldn’t really be able to tell.
100% agree. This jumped right to the top for me, really enjoyed it and always recommend it to people.
…not super-obscure in its day but very much a product of the mid-eighties, i doubt many folks are familiar with it fourty years later: michael crichton, tom selleck, gene simmons, peak kirstie alley…
(set in the near future-shock of 1991!)
I am surprised no one mentioned Decoder (1984). Starring W.S.Burroughs, Gen P. Orridge and Christiane F. of bahnhof zoo. One of there best underground movies ever made.
New Rose Hotel. Featuring Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken! Story by William Gibson! I may be mistaken, but I think he even wrote the screenplay, like in Johnny Mnemonic. But sadly not a very good movie. Its painfully slow. The original short story clearly did not have enough content for a movie. However, if you were to cut it down, there is a really good Cyberpunk movie hidden there. Maybe someday it gets the fancut it deserves…
I just watched that recently! Yeah, very weird movie. The vast majority of it takes place in a hotel room and all the major events occur off-screen. Such a strange movie. And with that cast, you’d think they could’ve made it more interesting.
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:
- walking around the internet
- sapient robots
- two pistols
- cynicism
- Seattle
- mega-corporations
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?” 🤔
i don’t know if it counts as proper cyberpunk but it floated to tie top of my mind when i read the post.
in fall 2014 i was visiting a friend in stockholm, and through some weird mix of circumstances we found ourselves in the apartment of a friend of a friend of theirs, at three in the afternoon, like eight of us in a three-person sofa bed and watching Algorithm. the guy who lived there really wanted to show it to us since he thought it was so cool, gritty and realistic. i remember that he had a photograph on his wall of him shaking hands with the king. i think he worked for google. anyway…
it is one of the worst movies i’ve seen. and it’s not funny bad. it’s an angsty drama about a computer hacker hiding from the authorities, so it’s mostly about how good he is with computers. all in this muted gray-green color, it’s mostly shot day-for-night, and it’s just soooo boring.
the only detail i vividly remember is a scene where the protagonist swaps to a new burner phone. he does this by taking the SIM card out, throwing the old phone in a bin, and putting the SIM into the new phone. i still think about that scene.
Cyberpunk has never been what draws me to science fiction, but I’d say the most obscure is probably existence (if that counts?). It came out in 1999 and was overshadowed by the matrix. I
eXistenZ definitely counts! Cronenberg being weird in a way that only Cronenberg can.
The sushi factory was filmed in my back yard. (Well not technically my back yard, but close enough.)
Nobody mentioned it, so it’s either really obscure or way too obvious, but: Nirvana (1997).
A game developer finds out that the main character in his next title has become sentient and must save him from endless suffering by deleting all copies of the game shortly before it launches. I saw it many years ago, and really liked it. It hasn’t aged perfectly, but all the important cyberpunk bits are there.
Definitely obscure. It’s hard to find online anywhere. I’ve only been able to find it on the internet archive. It’s got a weird plot but amazing cyberpunk visuals.
I wanted to like Mute but I really didn’t like Paul Rudd’s character in it. Overall, I think it had some good visuals but something about that movie just didn’t work for me.
Did you like the movie? What was your favorite part?
I did enjoy the visuals and was okay with the protagonist, but lots of the story and most other characters were not really working out for me. I can’t really put my finger on it why that is. But the soundtrack? Oh.My.God! Clint Mansell absolutely nailed it - like he always does! I’ve been following his career since his first soundtrack: Pi from 1998. Maybe I should mention here that I’m an ex musician myself.
My favourite Cyberpunk movie is Upgrade from 2018.
Upgrade was definitely good - should be on everyone here’s watch list.
Oooo listed! Moon was amazing!
Fun fact: Clint Mansell created the OST for both movies. Enjoy!
Nirvana by Gabriele Salvadores. But if you want to watch it, get the Italian version with the eng subtitles, I’m told the English voiceover is utter crap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_(1997_film)?wprov=sfla1
Does Avalon (2001) count?
Absolutely! That one’s super obscure to me. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it yet I don’t remember anything from it.
Probably tekwar. I don’t think I’ve ever seen mention of it.
William Shatner’s TekWar! It all looks awful, I don’t know how they made so much of it.
Said the robot pimp disdainfully.
Based upon the books by William Shatner, a.k.a. the original Captain Kirk? It was a thing for a few years in the '90s, but yeah - pretty much dropped off the radar entirely afterwards.
Oh yeah I also came across something called Terminus (1987) which sounds kinda cyberpunk, but haven’t watched it yet. See it free on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dBxa992y1g
In the year 2037, an international sport has been established, wherein a driver of a truck must cross the country and arrive at a designated terminus, while confronting obstacles and enemies along the way. The lead truck, named “Monster”, has been designed by a boy genius (Gabriel Damon) and is to be piloted through the course by a woman named Gus (Karen Allen). Eventually, the truck’s AI fails and Gus ends up in uncharted territories…
One of the comments said it’s missing 15 minutes. Wonder why?
Hardware. Saw this with a friend in the theater, we thought it was terrible. I’ve revisited it since, and while I won’t say it’s great I think it’s worth a watch.
I agree, I think it’s worth a watch. It’s the only real “cyberpunk horror” movie I can think of. I mean, there are plenty of body horror cyberpunk movies (especially in Japanese cyberpunk) but Hardware is the only one I know that really follows a “slasher” horror movie format.
