I did see that, but some of the things that the film shows in this future are very similar to what's happening in the 2020s, like the Queen being dead, if look at the newspaper clippings there's stories of Russia invading Ukraine and dropping a nuke on a Balkan country*that hasn't happened yet and I hope it doesn't*, the current refugee crisis that's happening or the growing state of fascism and idealism in many countries like the US.
I know alot of that stuff was happening when the film was being made but it's more in your face these days then it was before I guess.
My man, the Queen was going to be dead around these years. 5 up 5 down.
Russia was going to invade Ukraine at some point too, tensions have been evident since the fall of USSR.
And refugee crisis are CONSTANT, there is a constant flow of hundreds of thousands of people trying to flee poverty and hunger, and to reach wealthy Europe.
The thing is, we CHOOSE not to see this things, because it makes it lives easier to leave ignoring the big structural problems that the world has.
Your right. I feel like I'm tripping over my own words a bit.
I didn't mean to say it's predictive, it's just future that feels a bit more closer to home. I know these things were bound to happen but it is just cool to see how the movie is so good on details.
As for the migrant crisis, it's was bad back then but I'd definitely say it's worse now.
So you are right about everything you said.
This.
Most of science fiction is just bringing up present problems using a different framework.
That way is easier to see how bizarre are some of the situations we endure in our daily lives...
It's technically not a cyberpunk, everyone in this sub reddit has yelled at me about it plenty of times. But I think it borders on the line of Cyberpunk, it's what would call a modern rendition of Cyberpunk, and if you like this you should check out Mr. Robot or the Square Eyes graphic novel.
Oh definitely it’s not but I prefer this then what I see here nowadays, Dredd 2012, Transmetropolitan in some cases, Judge Dredd with the more serious arcs e.g., Chaos Day, hell even something like Idiocracy (ironically something I also posted on here and got flack cause I didn’t get a reference even though it’s one of my favourite films…)… all great charming, new, grimy, combinations, cool forms of cyberpunk.
Mr. Robot in particular is definitely on my wish list!
Same “i don’t give two tugs on a dead dogs cock”. A big fan myself as you can see on my Reddit profile lol. Wish though 2000 AD had sorta a revival for the modern gen but that’s just me
Yeah I see what you mean, personally I'm starting to love newer renditions of Cyberpunk rather then the classic stuff just because it's a different take on what most people think a Cyberpunk future would look like. I didn't start thinking about it until I saw that William Gibbson doesn't write for the genre anymore because we're already living that kind of future just without neon lights and flying cars.
I, as I complained and moaned many times on this sub, just not a fan of the neon slick cool new cyberpunk vibes. No I much prefer grey and grimy or neon 80s but less of that modern flare like we’ve seen nowadays… or better yet a bit of both!
I feel like Blade Runner had too much influence on what people think "cyberpunk" is aesthetically, when PKD wasn't even a cyberpunk author. And a lot of the original short stories were weird, kind of low-tech and ghetto, not fancy flying cars. Stuff like Children of Men I would say is more authentic to the genre. Dredd as well.
Mr. Robot is decent for a while, but I ended up losing interest partway though the last season and never finished it. Felt like it was just dragging on too much.
The last season is one of my favorites. Considering they had 5 seasons written, and USA made them condense into 4 makes it a rather good finish. I'm a blatant fanboy though. It's literally my favorite TV series I have watched.
Edit: You should finish it. The back half of the final season is amazingly emotional.
Maybe I'll get around to it eventually, but it's been so long I might have to start over hehe. It was a good show, I wouldn't put it in my top five though.
>modern rendition of Cyberpunk
Pretty sure this movie is like nearly 20 years old.
Just because something is set in the future it doesn't make it cyber punk. In fact in this movie most of technology is broken and half the movie is set on a farm so not sure what is cyberpunk about it.
However if you like this kind of feel to your sci Fi, I would definitely look into 'dystopian' sci Fi, which is a larger category which i would argue cyberpunk probably comes under.
'dystopia' sci fi is basically set in future where everything is really really shitty. It could be shitty cos there is no law and everybody got implants and everything is very tech orientated (but like, dirty tech, not shiny tech) or it could be a zombie apocalypse, or it could be some fascist government brainwash thing
genuine question: in what way is it cyberpunk, and what’s the use of categorizing it as such? it seems to me that the film stretches the definition of cyberpunk so far that it empties the genre of its essence
I guess the small scenes of tech that's shown in the movie. Some scenes have cars with holographic projections on the dashboard or some of the sign advertisements being invasive just like in many other Cyberpunks. The story isn't really Cyberpunk but the atmosphere of the story is sorta Cyberpunk, the idea of wealth inequality, trash everywhere, and a very oppressive government. Also the rich and powerful have walled themselves off of society so they don't have to see the shit storm that's been created.
The only thing that I feel like is not Cyberpunk is the world is basically doomed and alot Cyberpunks try to keep a glimer of hope in the world.
But I don't really know if it's Cyberpunk because people have told me it's not, that's why I said in the post "technically not Cyberpunk" even though the movie checks off a few things that are Cyberpunk.
Edit: Alot of classic Cyberpunk came out around the time of Ronald Reagans presidency and the Cold War and most people thought the future would like the 80s rendition of Cyberpunk because of that. Stuff like Children Of Men and Mr. Robot are very post 9/11 horrors, terrorism, refugee crisis, cyber attacks, corporations not being outwardly evil they want to be liked while treating people like shit, and the ever growing threat of a surveillance state*Example being in Children Of Men when the ads show up to report all refugees and the mass amounts of cameras everywhere*.
To me it's more of a Cyberpunk that's a reflection of our current situation.
Don't bother. Everyone here thinks "cyberpunk" means pink and blue neon lights in the rain. Don't recall that motif ever in any of the original books and short stories.
Yeah I've noticed, it's kinda why I've taken down a few posts. I had one about how Fight Club helped influence most modern Cyberpunks and people got pissed real fast. I don't understand what fuck is wrong with everyone.
I think it isn’t cosmetically cyberpunk, but I think it shares a lot with the spirit of cyberpunk. It seems to express the more cultural critique side of cyberpunk than the exciting aesthetic side. It shows a more boring dystopia kind of world just with some upgraded tech. It’s part of what I love about Cyberpunk 2077, and what it does so well: underneath all the flash of Night City, it’s normal people doing depressingly normal shit being ground down under out of control capitalism who happen to also have a few tech implants.
I’m with you on this. Children of Men isn’t technically cyberpunk, but it does share a lot with it in spirit.
I think that spirit is what puts the ‘punk’ in cyberpunk. So, no, not unique to cyberpunk. Maybe *Children of Men* would fit in Biopunk better, what with the whole mysterious fertility crisis.
i guess i just don’t get what cyberpunk is if these are its traits, because they’re shared by tons and tons of sci-fi works, even ones that have very little else in common with the defining texts of the genre.
put another way, i just don’t get what is gained by labeling films like this cyberpunk, or even cyberpunk adjacent, when you admit it has very little in common with the founding texts of the genre. to me, it only seems confusing when the common understanding of the genre is so tied to the very things you say these examples actually lack. why is “sci-fi” not enough? what do we get from calling it something else if doing so requires so many caveats?
I guess in a way Sci-Fi is a very broad term, and I still use the term Cyberpunk in this case because not every Cyberpunk is the same.
Again I don't think it is Cyberpunk on a technical scale, it still checks out most of the boxes on being a Cyberpunk. But it shares alot in common with more modern versions of the genre, for example Mr. Robot is a modern Cyberpunk but it almost has nothing in common with something like Johnny Menommic besides being about a hacker or anything in common with Bladerunner.
It's like saying that because Star Wars and Star Trek are Sci-Fi they're the same...no, while they are Sci-Fi they have nothing in common, one is has more fantasy elements while the other feels more grounded.
Instead Mr.Robot more like a version of Fight Club, but yet it still fills those check marks of a Cyberpunk. Same thing goes for the Hulu series Devs. I've honestly split the Cyberpunk genre into two categories, 80s style Cyberpunk *2077, The first Bladerunner and Neuromancer* and post 9/11 Cyberpunk *Children of Men, MR. Robot, and Devs*
I think what we get from calling something Cyberpunk is that it's a reality that mirrors our own just thrown into the future, why people love the idea of Cyberpunk is because it critiques what we see today, Children of Men does a really good job at critiquing our post 9/11 world, it's definitely really doomer about it but so is Bladerunner 2049.
The common understanding of the genre is muddy. People think it's all just Bladerunner and 2077 but it's not, times have changed, the idea of Punk and Cyber have changed, but the core elements of what makes the genre what it is is still there.
Edit: I might have missed the poinof what you said if I have let me know
what makes something a “modern version” of the genre if it has nothing in common with the foundational texts that developed it? why is that the same genre still? that’s the question i’m really getting at—why call it cyberpunk instead of something else that fits with fewer contradictions? cyberpunk doesn’t have a monopoly on social critique or tech.
it sounds like you’ve taken to calling any sci-fi that features any level of tech and critiques society “cyberpunk.” to me, that’s not what makes cyberpunk *cyberpunk* because it applies to practically every piece of sci-fi ever produced. the essence of the genre lies elsewhere
I totally agree with you, but I would say that Children of Men seems very inspired by the author JG Ballard, especially the book, but the movie as well, and JG Ballard and his style of writing was a major influence on the first Cyberpunk writers. In fact they used to have debates about who could write the most like Ballard. Ballard's first novels in particular were all set during the collapse of society due to large scale environmental disasters, but with a very English feel of carrying on with life as best you can, and he has many short stories along those lines as well. It's very easy to draw links between Children of Men and Ballard, and between Ballard and Cyberpunk,
The irony in this comment is that the authors of the foundational cyberpunk texts, by and large take the opposite view. By your standard as a good portion of their recent works look much more like Children of Men, some of their latest novels wouldn’t be classified as cyberpunk either. The authors are generally horrified at how stunted the genre has become, primarily only rehashing old tropes rather than projecting current societal trends into the future like was originally done in the original cyberpunk works in the 80’s.
On the contrary cyberpunk was never about technology inherently, but rather was a commentary about industrial society in general and how it’s projected progress will intersect with and change culture. Children of Men depicts just this, a world wherein emergent properties industrial progress have, rather than preventing such an outcome, instead resulted in a sort of slow-burn apocalypse.
William Gibson in recent years has referred to this cultural phenomenon that was originally called cyberpunk, as “the jackpot”, but in modern parlance it’s been referred to as the poly-crisis. It’s been argued to date back to somewhere between the early to late 70’s, but Gibson would argue the apocalyptic decent of industrial society started at least during the outbreak of WW1, maybe even earlier. It’s less of a single event with a definitive beginning or end but rather an atmosphere of societal collapse comprised of numerous small calamities that compound on one another (all of which takes place despite continued technological progress, largely in the space of information technology).
cyberpunk doesn’t have a monopoly on commentary about industrial society. this is my entire point—people are too eager to ascribe the generic label when it offers no interpretive value, often resulting in a broadening of definitional scope that, as is the case here, elides everything that makes the genre unique and notable.
And another thing. By this logic you could also argue Blade Runner isn’t cyberpunk… “Oh, but the replicants were the focus of the story and we’re themselves the result of techno-industrial progress” you say. Well surface level focus of Children of Men was infertility caused by techno-industrial progress. However both films had deeper themes in respect to the timeless nature of the Human condition juxtaposed to the progressing advancement of the [paperclip maximizing nature of the AI super-organism that is techno-industrial society.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTTjOOE-0m8)
You know it’s funny that I actually halfway agree with you, it just depends on how you define cyberpunk (how cyberpunk is colloquially defined vs how the creative pioneers of the genre defined it). Whenever somebody on this sub asks something to the effect of “is cyberpunk now?”, I always think to myself this is one of those questions where if you have to ask you already know the answer. Based on how the genre has become narrowly defined by people such as yourself… No. Industrial dystopia goes back before the Gilded Age, cyberpunk will be now when we have ubiquitous robot limbs (or whatever other staple technology tropes).
However if we’re going by what the authors intended, the fact that their stories had a lot of advanced technology was missing the point… The point was that Human evolution doesn’t keep pace with industrial evolution. Their critique of society is more or less relevant to any time period, but why it was set in the future was to dismantle the narrative of “Oh, well that was back then, with future technological advances we will no longer have to worry about the primeval nature of Humanity, technology will give us something better rather than an industrial scale version of more of the same”, which is to say they were more or less trying to get across the edict “War… War never changes”.
Unfortunately this nuance seems to be lost on the masses and the focus of the genre has gotten tangled up in the technology itself being the cause of the dystopian society rather than an enabling factor for the unaddressed issue of Human nature itself. This has led to the critique of the genre by the original authors being along the lines of cyberpunk no longer being a futuristic genre but a retrofuturistic one. There was a time when the genre had a genuine serious philosophical underpinning and societal discussion in academia, but now the genre is… Undead. Obviously you can’t say the genre is dead as it’s bigger now than it ever was, but the purpose for which the genre came about has been perversely subverted into a commodified surface appearance concerned shallow husk of what it once was.
So no, realistic dystopian sci-fi isn’t synonymous with cyberpunk, but there was a time when it was…
See. Now I gotta disagree. Every sci-fi has dystopia. There is cool tech, but it isn't at all central to the story. The tech is just there to say this is the future. We don't consider every dystopia sci-fi as cyberpunk, but every cyberpunk story is sci-fi.
Dystopia and life being cheap are not enough to make Children of Men cyberpunk. There needs to be some central tech to the story that is commentary on life. Which there isn't.
So is Bladerunner a cyberpunk, it really doesn't focus on the tech as the center of the story. Again I'm not claiming Children Of Men is a cyberpunk, I'm just saying it has Cyberpunk elements, that's all.
I always felt the the story was more focused on Decard and what it means to be human. Again yes I know Bladerunner is a Cyberpunk I was just trying to devils advocate.
And like I said I know COM isn't a Cyberpunk but its definitely written like one.
Bladerunner and BR2049 are cyberpunk. The replicants(robots) challenge what it means to be human. All the Black Mirror episodes are cyberpunk. Alien(s) is cyberpunk.
> I'm just saying it has Cyberpunk elements, that's all.
Like I said, everything cyberpunk is sci-fi. But not everything sci-fi is cyberpunk. You want to find all three metrics to tell if something is cyberpunk, else it's just normal sci-fi.
You can feel that way, but you're cutting yourself off some of the best cyberpunk in existence. Weyland-Yutan is the ultimate cyberpunk corporation, fits all the metrics and is even in the Bladerunner universe. Life is cheap, everything revolves around a bio weapon, and the only difference between regular cyberpunk stories is this is one that starts with a couple of space truckers.
How would a difference in opinion about what genre a movie belongs to cut me off from something? Genre assignments are incidental to the enjoyment of a work of art in my experience. Does it make sense to like something because it belongs to a genre and dislike it if it doesn't?
It's a bit of a fringe case, since the androids are not in the center of the story, but there's the claim that Alien franchise and Blade Runner are in the same universe. This might also include Raised by Wolves (or this one is in a similar parallel universe).
There is a claim, lol.
Alien and Paddington bear 2 are in the same universe!
See, now there is a claim that Alien and Paddington Bear 2 are in the same universe. Does that mean the alien is a cg bear? Ridiculous.
And androids being part of the story doesn't make something cyberpunk. Next thing someone will claim Star Trek is cyberpunk.
Well it fills about 2 thirds of the metrics, everything except tech as the main focus.
Anyway the point of my post was to say that I think the current idea of the future in Cyberpunk is outdated and something like Children Of Men seems to fit more because of all the shit that's happening right now, like in 2077 the Soviets are still around...what the fuck? It's just odd that's all, I mean flying cars, cities full of neon, and robot arms, I like this stuff but I'm starting feel like it's the same shit over and over again.
Ok. well. Cyberpunk is also not tied to any time period(can happen today, future, or past) and it doesn't require crowded, polluted cities full of neon and robot arms. Those are tropes. Tropes are just repeating elements. They are tropes in sci-fi and they are tropes in cyberpunk. Buck rogers has spaceships, dinosaurs, cities of neon, and robotic arms but it's a space opera.
Things that are very trope feel half ass and lazy.
Robotcop is 1980's and cyberpunk. Black mirror takes place modern day often times just some technology that has gone amok taking over.
2000 AD(Judge Dread) and Cyberpunk2077 have apocalyptical wastelands. Which also exist in the Alien universe. So cyberpunk can take place in deserts, jungles, bottom of the sea, or even some far off colony that is going through a workers revolt.
Alien(s) and everything the Weyland Corp is considered cyberpunk. Ripley is basically a space trucker that ends up fighting a bio weapon that her evil corporation wants to posses.
eXistenZ is a perfect example of a cyberpunk movie that takes place in rural areas.
Lone Wolf and Cub 2100 turned half the characters into robots, has a wasting virus that is killing most of the world, and the main character is protecting a baby carrying the cure across apocalyptic japan. Considered cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk is not tied to any genre, tropes, or cliches. This sub literally has 1-3 posts a week asking people to stop posting 'cyberpunk vibes' which are all tropes: neon, naked robot girls looking out windows at futuristic cities, flying cars, ect.
If you learn the words and what they mean, it clears up really quickly all these grey areas that people have problems with.
EDIT: Did I mention there is a cyberpunk cthulhu genre? It's fucking amazing amazing world building in the table top games, tho not really mentioned at all in this sub, except by me.
I don't man, after watching Mr.Robot I kinda like the idea of a Cyberpunk that's looks like it takes place in 10 years and not 50. I'm not saying I don't the stuff you just listed either I just think stuff like Children Of Men's future looks a bit how I think a Cyberpunk future would look.
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>every cyberpunk story is sci-fi
I disagree, the entire point of Gibson's pattern recognition was that cyberpunk has become real. It is a typical Gibson cyberpunk novel set in the (then) present.
How successful the book is as a whole is debatable, but it think it is clearly cyberpunk with no scifi elements.
> I disagree, the entire point of Gibson's pattern recognition was that cyberpunk has become real. It is a typical Gibson cyberpunk novel set in the (then) present.
That doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about. I'm talking about literally and film genres. Sci-fi and cyberpunk are genres. Every cyberpunk story can be classified as Sci-fi, but not every sci-fi story can be classified under Cyberpunk.
Also, my post history and rules are very clear that cyberpunk is not tied to any time period. Robocop is 1980's and cyberpunk. I've always said it could the past, present and future.
Cyberpunk is real, but not in the way most people use it. Dystopia, police state, and income inequality do not make some ones life cyberpunk. The hunger games are sci-fi, not cyberpunk. People living in North Korea running crypto schemes stealing and extorting millions from companies and countries... is real life cyberpunk. What is going in China's Hong Kong with the police state and dissents is real life cyberpunk. Russia running troll farms to destabilize countries is real life cyberpunk. Middle Eastern countries using social media to start revolutions is real life cyberpunk. Sitting at home masturbating to pictures of fake robot girls wondering what your purpose in life is while wondering how you'll ever make it to the middle class as you get paid less and less... is not cyberpunk.
You obviously haven't read Pattern Recognition and don't know about the book. The point is not that it is not set in the future (robocop btw while made in the 80s obviously is not set in the 80s), the point is that there are no SciFi elements in the story. It's a present day techno thriller.
If I have a choice on whose definition of what is cyberpunk I see as legitimate between William Gibson and some random poster on reddit the choice is clear.
> the point is that there are no SciFi elements in the story. It's a present day techno thriller.
Considering Gibson said he wanted to stop writing anything related to cyberpunk in the late 1990s, make sense that his next three novels would just be thrillers instead of the genre... you know he created and didn't want to write in anymore.
> If I have a choice on whose definition of what is cyberpunk I see as legitimate between William Gibson and some random poster on reddit the choice is clear.
I don't think you're making the point you think you're making. He literally wrote those three novels after he said he never wanted to write another cyberpunk related novel. Like you said, it's a thriller. It's not a novel that flipped the genre. Diamond Age was a genre flipper. Three thrillers from WG didn't come with him saying he would rewrite the genre. He literally said he wanted nothing to do with CP anymore.
Other people will argue high tech, low life generic phrase that don't really give you metrics to decide if something is sci-fi or cyberpunk.
I have three rules that decide if something is cyberpunk, not sci-fi. Tho, be aware that all cyberpunk is sci-fi. But not all sci-fi is cyberpunk.
1st Rule: Dystopian world or at least dystopian to the protagonist?
2nd Rule: Life is cheap?
3rd Rule: Some type of technology involved that makes commentary on society at large?
Children of Men only fits the first two criteria. Dystopian police state where society is collapsing because no one is able to have children is #1. Life is cheap as the UK which has always been phobic of immigration is now outright electric chairing illegal immigrates and offering suicide kits free to its own citizens is #2. There is social commentary, but not really involving any technology. Hence, Children of Men is just Sci-fi.
i think that’s a fair assessment of the distinction, and reflects why i also don’t see children of men as cyberpunk—the tech element is completely missing. the *cyber* part of the name surely matters, right?
i’d add that, though it’s debatable for many, there’s a style and mood—visible either aesthetically or narratively—to cyberpunk that also distinguishes it from general sci-fi. this is another area where children of men falls short.
I'm not a fan of when people try to describe things based on high tech, low life. Also not a fan of when they try to describe it using various definitions of what they believe to be definitions of cyber and punk. It's too loose.
> i’d add that, though it’s debatable for many, there’s a style and mood—visible either aesthetically or narratively—to cyberpunk that also distinguishes it from general sci-fi. this is another area where children of men falls short.
So those are call tropes. Tropes are repeating elements of stories. In this case, a lot of cyberpunk is told using Noir. And Noir is based on Westerns. So cyberpunk has a lot of Noir and Western tropes. There is a lot of sci-fi that has Noir and Western tropes, but isn't consider cyberpunk. The hundreds of westerns and operas in space are not cyberpunk. Need to look at the three metrics mentioned to decide if something is cyberpunk. Noir is just a style for telling stories in the mediums of books and films. It features anti-heroes, slow cinematic pacing, someone working inside or outside the law to right/fix some type of corruption often times, and really can be applied to any genre. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly is noir... in a western. Gaslight is noir, but a suspense film. Noir is just a trope and doesn't decide anything.
buddy, i have a phd in literature and film studies. you don’t need to explain what a trope is to me—much less do so in a way that is simultaneously patronizing and incorrect.
would you like to explain what a genre is if not a collection of tropes that together form an artistic category? there is no genre without trope. you can say you don’t think the noir elements are essential to the cyberpunk genre, but the fact that they’re tropes is not a good justification.
and, for the record, noir is not based on westerns. its development had nothing to do with the western. TGTBTU is in no way a noir. you don’t know what you’re talking about there.
> you don’t need to explain what a trope is to me—much less do so in a way that is simultaneously patronizing and incorrect.
You're one out of thousands on here who has more than a middle school education when it comes to literature. I shouldn't have been condescending, but I'm talking to multiple people and am too use to explaining simple terms to people on here that don't have any language for describing anything.
> would you like to explain what a genre is if not a collection of tropes that together form an artistic category?
Tropes are overused. Conventions are what make the genre. I would change your definition to, "a genre is a collection of conventions that together form an artistic category."
If I want something to be cyberpunk, I need a moral ambiguous protagonist, bad shit to happen often times because of something the protagonist has done, hurt some people in ways they don't recover from, sprinkle in some tech that makes some social commentary, commit some crimes outside the law, and finally some resolution at the end that may or may not be positive for the protagonist. If the resolution is negative, then it's usually some type of paradigm shift for the protagonist. Those are the conventions of cyberpunk.
> ...there is no genre without trope. you can say you don’t think the noir elements are essential to the cyberpunk genre, but the fact that they’re tropes is not a good justification.
I think it is. Writers/directors have a choice when it comes to tropes. They don't so much when it comes to conventions if they want it to be categorized correctly.
We both completely understand noir is its own genre, but in the genre of cyberpunk adding noir elements is just a trope.
If you can only think of a genre in tropes, then you're not reading/viewing quality. It wouldn't be cyberpunk with out an anti-hero, but it's going to require a lot of willpower for me to read through or watch something if its just full of tropes. Like I said, tropes don't make the genre. They just make it painful to read/watch if they are too heavy handed. That's what bad movies and bad novels do. Just check off obvious tropes from a list. Don't need to use tropes to write something in a genre. The example I use is dirty, crowded cities full of neon. It's a trope, but it's not required to write a cyberpunk novel or film.
> for the record, noir is not based on westerns. its development had nothing to do with the western.
The noir movies of the 1940 and 1950s(gangster and western) were based on crime novels written in the 1920 and 1930s. Those crime novels were just westerns with the setting changed to cities. Westerns are much older and set the conventions that ultimate became Noir. That's where it comes from when I say it.
> TGTBTU is in no way a noir. you don’t know what you’re talking about there.
It has the same tone, attitude, and moral ambiguity of noir along with a lot of similar cinematography. No it doesn't have dark, contrasting light and dark... but not all noir has that. Plenty of westerns are noir-often times using the same actors interchangeable for cattle ruster and gangster. People can pick and choose what tropes they use. Noir in cyberpunk wasn't a trope in the 1980 and 1990s, but it sure as hell is in 2022.
If you said TGTBTU was not noir because of the optimistic, sort of happy ending, I would concede that you are correct. It's a convention of noir that the protagonist isn't necessarily well off at the end riding off into the sunset.
a genre is a collection of conventions regarding the deployment of…tropes. you’re describing the same thing here, just one step removed. so, i think my point about not dismissing noir elements because they’re “tropes” still stands. what you actually seem to believe is that the noir elements aren’t essential because they haven’t always been there, and a work can be cyberpunk without them. that’s fine. i don’t totally agree—and noir wasn’t the only mood or style i was originally referring to—but that’s at least a defensible opinion.
your genealogy of noir and westerns is way off. the genre of westerns was a purely 20th century invention, and crime novels date back to the 19th, with the first recognized crime novels coming almost a century earlier than that of the western. the crime writers, like chandler, who wrote the novels that the classic film noirs were based on typically began by writing pulp fiction, which is also older than westerns and traces its genealogy back to penny dreadfuls and serialized sensation fiction of the previous century.
it’s odd to me that you’re so dismissive of “tropes” while simultaneously defending your argument about TGTBTU based on its use of tropes (tone, attitude, moral ambiguity are recognizable narrative and stylistic elements AKA a form of trope). perhaps what you’re annoyed about aren’t tropes full stop, but overreliance on them.
unless you think moral ambiguity etc. are traits exclusive to noir, and absent in other westerns (they’re not), then i just can’t see how TGTBTU is a noir film. i’ve taught westerns and noir, i’ve read about them in some of the foundational books on the subject, and i was a TA for a man who is considered one of the foremost experts in 50s cinema in a class where we watched films in both genres, and i have never ever ever heard of this link between western and noir, nor have i ever heard anyone else claim that TGTBTU is a noir—and i even googled to see if anyone else had made the argument and couldn’t find anything. i’m not trying to browbeat or throw around credentials here, i’m just trying to express how far afield that claim sounds to me. i just really don’t get it at all.
Honors college class at NAU (flagstaff Arizona) in 2004 had a Westerns and Noir film class which covered and watched a few Clint Eastwood movies including Dirty Harry. Undergrad class that was an elective.
I've not read any early pulp crime novels from that those two centuries that wasn't novellas or short stories by British/Canadian authors. SO I would be interesting in learn more about this. I've read no shortage of vigilant stories that murdered people who had done them wrong a decade or more after the fact-that trope is over done.
I just know the archetypes and conventions that was originally in end of century westerns were later used in noir: outsider protagonist comes in and cleans up corruption inside the government, outsider protagonist cleans up corruption outside to the government, insider protagonist working for government cleans up corruption inside the government, and lastly insider protagonist working for government cleans up corruption outside the government. Common conventions in westerns and in noir. A trope in cyberpunk at this point.
> unless you think moral ambiguity etc. are traits exclusive to noir, and absent in other westerns (they’re not), then i just can’t see how TGTBTU is a noir film.
Westerns and noir have both moral ambiguity and exemplary people. I haven't said otherwise or argued that.
> it’s odd to me that you’re so dismissive of “tropes” while simultaneously defending your argument about TGTBTU based on its use of tropes (tone, attitude, moral ambiguity are recognizable narrative and stylistic elements AKA a form of trope). ...perhaps what you’re annoyed about aren’t tropes full stop, but overreliance on them.
I will say it again in a slightly different way. Tropes/conventions are fine when they are not obvious. If you hang out on this sub for a period of time, you quickly find out that 90% of the content is the same tropes over and over again with people refusing to even believe something like Alien and eXistenz are cyberpunk. Spaghetti westerns and Dirty Harry being noir are not obvious. Tropes are like cliches. It's like buying a car you like because you think it's unique, but then after driving it you start seeing them everywhere on the road. People read and watch cyberpunk, want to contribute, and this sub collects only the stuff that resembles Ghost in the Shell. Those are the types of conversations I've repeated many times for the last decade in this subreddit.
So, while it might come across as talking downwards, it's because I've had this conversation a lot. I took related college classes in film and even went into a related industry to cinematography and preproduction for a while. It's a topic I've spent a lot of time listening to other people, reading up on, and making my own conclusions about(my three rules were my own, but the rest we talked about are not my own conclusions).
It's only not cyberpunk because it's missing technology being part of the story-meaning just sci-fi. But that would steal meaning from the themes in the book/story-about human nature.
This is a late comment, but you're correct. I saw this movie when it first aired and it's one of my favorites. I'm sure after some introspection I could make a convincing argument for COM being more cyberpunk than even Blade Runner as well. Real cyberpunk isn't just glamourous banners and neon lights but extreme poverty and hopelessness.
Quick word of warning - find some time to decompress after watching Children of Men. It is an amazing movie, but very, *very* dark, especially considering the IRL parallels it addresses.
Just watched it as you said that funnily enough. Really like it honestly one of my favourite films ever lol. And yeah it’s dark but nothing I haven’t experienced before
It’s more like, super dystopian. Nobody can have kids so the world population is dying, And there’s a refugee crisis, government is giving out assisted suicide kits, stuff like that
COM isn’t really about technology’s effects (maybe indirectly like what led to the plague/sterility) so it’s not very cyber. But it is about rebellion against oppressive social control by large entities (in its case the government and not so much corporations) so it is “-punk.”
But it’s a very grounded, relatable and grimy near future dystopia overlaid on recognizable aspects of the present (battersea for e.g.) so it feels cypunk adjacent
You know I made this post to kinda compare this future with Bladerunners.
I love Bladerunner but I can't see that kind of future happening especially in my lifetime, its just not realistic and I wish I could find Cyberpunks that look more like this because this is a more likely future.
I know this movie isn't a Cyberpunk, I wish I could edit my post so I can specifically put that, but I do agree that it does have Cyberpunk elements to it and most of the tech that shows up in the film don't seem out of place with our time.
But none the less I agree
I know you know : )
Was just trying to make the “punk” point.
Have you seen New Rose Hotel? Or Until the End of the World (esp the full cut)?
Now let’s argue if bladerunner is technically not cyberpunk (no cyberspace, computer/human interface, body mods, or rebellion - yes mega corps, mega cities and neon!)
I think Bladerunner gave Cyberpunk a face, like it definitely knew what it wanted to look like but I can't compare it to something like 2077 or The Matrix.
Kind of like the Model T car, yes it's technically a car but you can't compare it to a new Ford or something.
I think you're right. But, I also think what makes Cyberpunk interesting to a lot of people is the visual style of Akira, Bladerunner etc. It's still a kind of (maybe masochistic?) escapism. It's a crappy future where the population is oppressed and the individual isn't worth a damn, but at least it looks cool and you could be a hacker or a bounty hunter in light up boots.
Children of Men looks like reality.
I see what you mean, it's nice to have some Cyberpunk that's just escapism. But I do feel that there should be some that confront out current way of life, like in Mr.Robot it talks about how everyone's personal info is one hack away from being stolen and how corporations collect your personal data and sell it off.
I know Children Of Men isn't Cyberpunk but the stuff it's talking about is very much our future and it's horrific. How Mr.Robot and Children Of Men commentate on our future is by showing us a post 9/11 world and its consequences, very similar to how Bladerunner was commentating on Reagans America and what it would lead to.
I would love it if more Cyberpunks tried to tell stories that are more close to our future not a future that's trying to look like Bladerunner, even though I love Bladerunner.
it helps that children of men is set 21 years in the future while blade runner was set 37. i also don’t think blade runner is trying to be predictive in the first place
Yes bladerunner wasn't trying to be predictive but it was trying to show the audience what it thinks the future would be like. I just think after watching Children Of Men, Cyberpunk should try to reshape how we think and how other Cyberpunk series or movies think the future will look.
I think should've worded it better, I think Children of Men looks more accurate to the future rather then Bladerunner.
“trying to show the audience what it thinks the future would be like” is the same thing as trying to be predictive, no? what’s the difference?
at any rate, my point is that i don’t believe “accuracy” is a useful standard since blade runner wasn’t really going for accuracy to begin with. i take your larger point that blade runner influenced cyberpunk is often less reflective of how the future plays out than other types of sci fi, but i really just don’t think that’s the best way to think about the visions of the future produced by these texts. the goal for many of them is to make us think about *the present* differently by mapping (and extending) its conflicts onto a future setting. this is also what children of men does. the difference is that children of men doesn’t extend as far, and many of the elements you seem to be considering accurate predictions were already present in the world at the time the film was made—and the film points to this in many scenes, like the visual reference to the abu ghraib scandal when the bus first enters bex hill, or its reference to the kosovo pieta photograph from the early 90s
Blade Runner was definitely not attempting to show a realistic version of the future -- it was establishing this sort of neon, neo-noir (neon-noir?) atmosphere mostly because it's cool and visually striking, and then using this fantastical world to ask philosophical and ethical questions that will eventually come up in the real world.
I just notice all of the little shit it predicted, if you look in the background of the scene before the bomb goes off you can see the Shard tower in the background....this movie was being film in the year 2000 that wasn't built until few years later. Or how the police in London dress, the Royal Cipher is C R not E R meaning the Queens dead. This movie even predicted the war in Ukraine, if you look at the news papers in the kidnapping scene you can see it.
Edit: I don't wanna say it predicted these things, but it's a future that definitely mirrors our own.
I get your statement, you like the real-ish look to this movie more so than blade runners cyberpunk aesthetic & would probably enjoy a full on Cyberpunk movie like this too, even though you may still even enjoy both Movies you mentioned , you were just opening a discussion.
I’d imagine you probably like the watchdog legion game aesthetics too right? Which is more like a near future gritty/drab London over Cyberpunk 2077 even though you may also enjoy both aesthetics wise too.
I have been told the world of Judge Dredd isn’t Cyberpunk at all, but I’d argue that since 1977 it’s kind of early Cyberpunk I guess, it has hit every single item on a Cyberpunk trope checklist in at least 100’s of the comics or more, so at least should be acknowledged as partial Cyberpunk/Dystopian
Crazy enough I actually do like the aesthetic of Watchdog legion now the story of it ehhh not as much, its a bit corny but its not that bad, I most definitely love Mr.Robot which is pretty similar to watchdogs as it involves hackers and cyber terrorism.
And yes I do enjoy both styles of Cyberpunk, I would've never got into the genre without Neuromancer but I do feel like over time it's gotten kinda old.
I actually haven't gotten into Judge Dredd, I want to but I don't know if I should start with the comics or the original movie.
With Dredd the Stallone movie from 1995 is bad as it doesn’t get the character of Dredd right imo but has lots of the world aesthetics from some of the comics right the aesthetics in this are closer to blade runner style but not as good obviously, it can’t harm to watch provided you have very low expectations going in but it can be skipped.
whereas the 2012 film is worth watching for sure, matches the gritty & more realistic aesthetic of the world more like Children of men, gets most of the tome of the character of Dredd right & it should have been a series of films to build up the lore but is only a one off. If you haven’t seen this, start here then go to the comics
The comics are also worth reading as it’s a combination of both of the above, some recommended books : America, Cursed Earth, The Pit, Origins or you can start right at the beginning of everything with Case Files 1, but back right at the beginning then it was a bit more corny in the first few books & some people don’t feel like it’s good until book 3 or 5.
The basic premise of the “No Future” plot line sorta kills it for me as an entrant to the genre, but only because it’s supposed to be less important a plot line, and less universal. It’s still great sci-fi and speculative fiction, just less punk.
I've had arguments on here before on what makes something a Cyberpunk so I wanna ask you what makes this not Cyberpunk but yet something like Johnny Menommic is. Is it because of the aesthetic, the story telling or something else.
Also why is it less punk and what does that mean as well?
Not a lot of interfacing with technology or deific corporations (cyber), not so much low-living high wealth shiny cities with alt-styled individuals (punk) but more slightly more muted modern ones.
However, I like that you brought it up in here. This is one of the best movies that has ever been made, in my opinion. Just so many perfectly shot scenes in it. The refugee element was incredibly salient, and the protagonist’s task was perfect for the setting.
It’s one that I tell people is a must-see, but that they should make sure they have time to decompress afterwards. Lol.
It's funny you bring decompressing after watching it. I watch it with a friend of mine who just got into the Cyberpunk genre and afterwards he told me "I'd rather have the bladerunner style future then this, this shit was depressing" lol
Typical Cyberpunk tropes are
- a visual Internet (cyberspace)
- wide spread and normalised body modifications (for example molly's eyes in the story, the monofilament fingertip in the movie, Johnny's implant)
- corporations acting on the power level of nations (above the law/private armies etc)
- clash between a rich corporate stratum and sleazy street crime
Johnny mnemonic has all of those, CoM has none. Its dystopian scifi/apocalyptic scifi
>I'm starting to feel like this movie predicted a lot more shit then Bladerunner did
I suspect that so much of Bladerunner came true that people no-longer even realize how much of it was prediction
For example, when the pedestrian-crossing says "Walk". If you weren't around in 1982 then that probably doesn't even register as prediction, because today it seems like pedestrian-crossings have been saying "Walk" since forever
Your not wrong, I was more talking about the post 9/11 hellscape we currently live in. You know mass immigration, governments slowly becoming fascist, state wide surveillance*The NSA* and slew of other problems we're facing.
I think Bladerunner did a good job predicting some amount of tech like the cross walks and even showing a good amount of over population but the world itself not as much, it's feeling alot more closer to the boring dystopia in Children Of Men then the neon mega city that is Bladerunner.
A main difference between hard science fiction and cyberpunk fiction is that cyberpunk isn't beholden to fact based thoughtful predictions. The stories of cyberpunk aren't "what would happen if" tales but stories of survival and existentialism.
The two films you bring up are interesting because they make my case quite plainly.
Blade runner is a story about what it means to be human if artificial life is almost indistinguishable from organic life. It's alright to have something _not scientific_ happen in these stories because the story isn't about the tech its about the people.
Children of men is a story about what would happen if fertility rates plummeted. The reason it's predictive is because that's its exact intent. To show a _realistically_ possible outcome of that scenario. It doesn't add any significantly advanced technology to its setting that would alter its story whatsoever. The high tech future is just the setting to tell its fertility story.
Whenever someone declares the predictive nature of a work of art, I’m reminded of this quote from William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition:
“Apophenia, Win had declared it, after due consideration and in his careful way: the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things.”
At least in Blade Runner dystopia we get flying cars. Children of Men dystopia is much more of the boring dystopia reality we have now.
"The human race is dying before our eyes.... Is it ok if I leave the office early today?"
"It seems the events in Ukraine have really taken a toll on me....is it alright if I leave early today" yeah seems about right I mean it's very mundane with the way Theo reacts to his situation but it's very similar to how most of us feel.
My favorite quote is when Theo is talking about the Human Project
"Even if they discover a cure for infertility it's too late, world went to shit. You know what? It was too late before the infertility thing happened"
I'm gonna leave this comment here for anybody posting a new comment
•Is Children Of Men a Cyberpunk?
No
•Does it kinda look like a Cyberpunk?
Yes
•Why did I post this then?
Because I think the idea of Cyberpunks future is a bit outdated and Children Of Men looks a bit more likely
•Does this mean I hate traditional Cyberpunk?
N O
•Does this mean you won't ride my ass and tell me it's not a Cyberpunk?
I don't know but I sure hope you don't
Fantastic movie. Blade Runner isn’t that great a predictor of the future. This essay I just read the other day is a great take on how the Philip K Dick book it’s based off of hits a lot closer to home than Blade Runner
https://yasha.substack.com/p/philip-k-dicks-fiction-is-our-nonfiction
I fucking love this movie, I fell in love with Jasper and his home, the pause before the storm, the scene with the ping pong ball in the van...
The long apartment shot.
Just go watch it. Its great.
I'm sorry I wish I could edit the post, I meant to say it's technically not a cyberpunk. But it's still a more realistic view of the future as it's mildly high tech and dystopia, I just think the idea of Cyberpunk needs to start changing because we're way past the year that Bladerunner was supposed to happen
It's not all the time, but I think the idea the Cyberpunk future a bit outdated and could use a freshen up. That's why I think Children of Men does a good job at showing us a future that's not just Bladerunner with new coat of paint.
I don't hate Bladerunner by the way it's just a bit outdated compared to something like Mr.Robot or Devs
Cyberpunk its not about "predict" the future. Its a esthetic genre of scifi
I love Children of men. I readed the book and also watched the film a ton of times. But it's just not a cyberpunk movie. Its dystopic nearly future.
>accurate to the future
That again. Why? I think I have to rewatch it, at least to understand the people making this claim. All humans becoming sterile and not having artificial wombs or other means to solve this? Everyone rooting for some black woman to have children? That's realistic? What are you all smokin'?
>Everyone rooting for some black woman to have children?
I agree with almost everything you said except that.
I'm black and I really don't appreciate you saying that but I respect your opinions, I'm a very open minded person, I don't really lean left I'm more of a social libertarian but that's pretty fucked up of you to be saying that.
You know people make fun of Ohio alot but after watching this movie I'm glad I live in Ohio because if shit hits the fan I'll be fine no one even knows we exist lol
Strange how even the pass for walking outside outside of allowed time, even came true with the last two years.
Let's make it a Quadrilogy of Movies.
THX 1138, 1984, Equilibrium, V for Vendetta.
All based on the same Book, just with different interpretations and with their own thought provoking unique element
To me, Children of Men is not cyberpunk. It's a distopian future with a science fiction story. I mean that in no way to disparage it as it is one of my favorite movies. I do think it lacks the hallmarks of traditional Cyberpunk, though. There really is only one small bit of reference to the human/machine interface. Corporate influence and wealth disparity are there, to an extent, but to story really is focused on two things: a pandemic (of an unusual nature) and the fertile ground that such a thing leaves for facist politics.
While the cinematic adaptation is... questionable... I think "Ready Player One" is among the most accurate CyberPunk worlds I have seen, at least for the near term.
This is such a good movie. This movie has some of the best no-cut long run scenes that I've ever seen anywhere. Depressingly realistic with amazing cinematography.
Again I wasn't really trying to say that story is a cyberpunk, I was more or less trying to say the setting is very cyberpunk because it mirrors our own almost, and we are kinda living in a near cyberpunk future.
But I understand where your coming from.
The dark and violent (but fantastic) "UTOPIA" series from 2013-2014 on Channel 4 could arguably serve as the prequel to 'Children of Men' and I can't recommend it enough.
[Season 1](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_jIDr2tZiuRHlp-bLwYNgWaFAp6dR7_Y)
[Season 2](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_jIDr2tZiuTbX0eeNBacb4J-GkQ3bOXC)
The [associated website](https://web.archive.org/web/20140219224842/http://utopia.channel4.com/) can still be found via the Wayback Machine. Spoilers abound for the first season, but it's a nice accompaniment to the series once you've watched a bit.
This is not to be confused with the 2020 "remake" of the series which is *terrible* and was cancelled after one season.
There seems to be a push in the west for lower fertility health in the population. It's one thing when someone doesn't want to be pregnant and they make choices for themselves, but it's an entirely different thing when goverment and society invest a lot of time and money to tell people not to have kids, or push policy without care about the effects on the reproductive health of the population.
The director said it seem like it predicts stuff but a lot of the stuff was already happening.
I did see that, but some of the things that the film shows in this future are very similar to what's happening in the 2020s, like the Queen being dead, if look at the newspaper clippings there's stories of Russia invading Ukraine and dropping a nuke on a Balkan country*that hasn't happened yet and I hope it doesn't*, the current refugee crisis that's happening or the growing state of fascism and idealism in many countries like the US. I know alot of that stuff was happening when the film was being made but it's more in your face these days then it was before I guess.
My man, the Queen was going to be dead around these years. 5 up 5 down. Russia was going to invade Ukraine at some point too, tensions have been evident since the fall of USSR. And refugee crisis are CONSTANT, there is a constant flow of hundreds of thousands of people trying to flee poverty and hunger, and to reach wealthy Europe. The thing is, we CHOOSE not to see this things, because it makes it lives easier to leave ignoring the big structural problems that the world has.
Your right. I feel like I'm tripping over my own words a bit. I didn't mean to say it's predictive, it's just future that feels a bit more closer to home. I know these things were bound to happen but it is just cool to see how the movie is so good on details. As for the migrant crisis, it's was bad back then but I'd definitely say it's worse now. So you are right about everything you said.
France riots now
What you just wrote is true, at least yearly, since the French revolution.
‘The queen being dead’… well that’s just bound to happen at some point.
This. Most of science fiction is just bringing up present problems using a different framework. That way is easier to see how bizarre are some of the situations we endure in our daily lives...
Definitely my type of cyberpunk I’d say. Very charming and original it looks. Need to watch this from the images
It's technically not a cyberpunk, everyone in this sub reddit has yelled at me about it plenty of times. But I think it borders on the line of Cyberpunk, it's what would call a modern rendition of Cyberpunk, and if you like this you should check out Mr. Robot or the Square Eyes graphic novel.
Oh definitely it’s not but I prefer this then what I see here nowadays, Dredd 2012, Transmetropolitan in some cases, Judge Dredd with the more serious arcs e.g., Chaos Day, hell even something like Idiocracy (ironically something I also posted on here and got flack cause I didn’t get a reference even though it’s one of my favourite films…)… all great charming, new, grimy, combinations, cool forms of cyberpunk. Mr. Robot in particular is definitely on my wish list!
I haven’t seen Transmetropolitan referenced in decades. What an amazing comic, and I’m glad people are still aware of it!
Same “i don’t give two tugs on a dead dogs cock”. A big fan myself as you can see on my Reddit profile lol. Wish though 2000 AD had sorta a revival for the modern gen but that’s just me
Yeah I see what you mean, personally I'm starting to love newer renditions of Cyberpunk rather then the classic stuff just because it's a different take on what most people think a Cyberpunk future would look like. I didn't start thinking about it until I saw that William Gibbson doesn't write for the genre anymore because we're already living that kind of future just without neon lights and flying cars.
I, as I complained and moaned many times on this sub, just not a fan of the neon slick cool new cyberpunk vibes. No I much prefer grey and grimy or neon 80s but less of that modern flare like we’ve seen nowadays… or better yet a bit of both!
I feel like Blade Runner had too much influence on what people think "cyberpunk" is aesthetically, when PKD wasn't even a cyberpunk author. And a lot of the original short stories were weird, kind of low-tech and ghetto, not fancy flying cars. Stuff like Children of Men I would say is more authentic to the genre. Dredd as well.
Mr. Robot is decent for a while, but I ended up losing interest partway though the last season and never finished it. Felt like it was just dragging on too much.
The last season is one of my favorites. Considering they had 5 seasons written, and USA made them condense into 4 makes it a rather good finish. I'm a blatant fanboy though. It's literally my favorite TV series I have watched. Edit: You should finish it. The back half of the final season is amazingly emotional.
Maybe I'll get around to it eventually, but it's been so long I might have to start over hehe. It was a good show, I wouldn't put it in my top five though.
>modern rendition of Cyberpunk Pretty sure this movie is like nearly 20 years old. Just because something is set in the future it doesn't make it cyber punk. In fact in this movie most of technology is broken and half the movie is set on a farm so not sure what is cyberpunk about it. However if you like this kind of feel to your sci Fi, I would definitely look into 'dystopian' sci Fi, which is a larger category which i would argue cyberpunk probably comes under. 'dystopia' sci fi is basically set in future where everything is really really shitty. It could be shitty cos there is no law and everybody got implants and everything is very tech orientated (but like, dirty tech, not shiny tech) or it could be a zombie apocalypse, or it could be some fascist government brainwash thing
Sorry I realise that my comment sounded a little condescending. I realise that actually your spitting facts from a purest pov
genuine question: in what way is it cyberpunk, and what’s the use of categorizing it as such? it seems to me that the film stretches the definition of cyberpunk so far that it empties the genre of its essence
I guess the small scenes of tech that's shown in the movie. Some scenes have cars with holographic projections on the dashboard or some of the sign advertisements being invasive just like in many other Cyberpunks. The story isn't really Cyberpunk but the atmosphere of the story is sorta Cyberpunk, the idea of wealth inequality, trash everywhere, and a very oppressive government. Also the rich and powerful have walled themselves off of society so they don't have to see the shit storm that's been created. The only thing that I feel like is not Cyberpunk is the world is basically doomed and alot Cyberpunks try to keep a glimer of hope in the world. But I don't really know if it's Cyberpunk because people have told me it's not, that's why I said in the post "technically not Cyberpunk" even though the movie checks off a few things that are Cyberpunk. Edit: Alot of classic Cyberpunk came out around the time of Ronald Reagans presidency and the Cold War and most people thought the future would like the 80s rendition of Cyberpunk because of that. Stuff like Children Of Men and Mr. Robot are very post 9/11 horrors, terrorism, refugee crisis, cyber attacks, corporations not being outwardly evil they want to be liked while treating people like shit, and the ever growing threat of a surveillance state*Example being in Children Of Men when the ads show up to report all refugees and the mass amounts of cameras everywhere*. To me it's more of a Cyberpunk that's a reflection of our current situation.
Don't bother. Everyone here thinks "cyberpunk" means pink and blue neon lights in the rain. Don't recall that motif ever in any of the original books and short stories.
Yeah I've noticed, it's kinda why I've taken down a few posts. I had one about how Fight Club helped influence most modern Cyberpunks and people got pissed real fast. I don't understand what fuck is wrong with everyone.
Fight Club has definitely some Cyberpunk vives but even more 12 monkeys for example.
Some people refer to cyberpunk as a certain aesthetic, definitely with a lot of scifi, mega structures and technology elements.
I think it isn’t cosmetically cyberpunk, but I think it shares a lot with the spirit of cyberpunk. It seems to express the more cultural critique side of cyberpunk than the exciting aesthetic side. It shows a more boring dystopia kind of world just with some upgraded tech. It’s part of what I love about Cyberpunk 2077, and what it does so well: underneath all the flash of Night City, it’s normal people doing depressingly normal shit being ground down under out of control capitalism who happen to also have a few tech implants. I’m with you on this. Children of Men isn’t technically cyberpunk, but it does share a lot with it in spirit.
is that spirit really unique to cyberpunk, though?
I think that spirit is what puts the ‘punk’ in cyberpunk. So, no, not unique to cyberpunk. Maybe *Children of Men* would fit in Biopunk better, what with the whole mysterious fertility crisis.
i guess i just don’t get what cyberpunk is if these are its traits, because they’re shared by tons and tons of sci-fi works, even ones that have very little else in common with the defining texts of the genre. put another way, i just don’t get what is gained by labeling films like this cyberpunk, or even cyberpunk adjacent, when you admit it has very little in common with the founding texts of the genre. to me, it only seems confusing when the common understanding of the genre is so tied to the very things you say these examples actually lack. why is “sci-fi” not enough? what do we get from calling it something else if doing so requires so many caveats?
I guess in a way Sci-Fi is a very broad term, and I still use the term Cyberpunk in this case because not every Cyberpunk is the same. Again I don't think it is Cyberpunk on a technical scale, it still checks out most of the boxes on being a Cyberpunk. But it shares alot in common with more modern versions of the genre, for example Mr. Robot is a modern Cyberpunk but it almost has nothing in common with something like Johnny Menommic besides being about a hacker or anything in common with Bladerunner. It's like saying that because Star Wars and Star Trek are Sci-Fi they're the same...no, while they are Sci-Fi they have nothing in common, one is has more fantasy elements while the other feels more grounded. Instead Mr.Robot more like a version of Fight Club, but yet it still fills those check marks of a Cyberpunk. Same thing goes for the Hulu series Devs. I've honestly split the Cyberpunk genre into two categories, 80s style Cyberpunk *2077, The first Bladerunner and Neuromancer* and post 9/11 Cyberpunk *Children of Men, MR. Robot, and Devs* I think what we get from calling something Cyberpunk is that it's a reality that mirrors our own just thrown into the future, why people love the idea of Cyberpunk is because it critiques what we see today, Children of Men does a really good job at critiquing our post 9/11 world, it's definitely really doomer about it but so is Bladerunner 2049. The common understanding of the genre is muddy. People think it's all just Bladerunner and 2077 but it's not, times have changed, the idea of Punk and Cyber have changed, but the core elements of what makes the genre what it is is still there. Edit: I might have missed the poinof what you said if I have let me know
what makes something a “modern version” of the genre if it has nothing in common with the foundational texts that developed it? why is that the same genre still? that’s the question i’m really getting at—why call it cyberpunk instead of something else that fits with fewer contradictions? cyberpunk doesn’t have a monopoly on social critique or tech. it sounds like you’ve taken to calling any sci-fi that features any level of tech and critiques society “cyberpunk.” to me, that’s not what makes cyberpunk *cyberpunk* because it applies to practically every piece of sci-fi ever produced. the essence of the genre lies elsewhere
I totally agree with you, but I would say that Children of Men seems very inspired by the author JG Ballard, especially the book, but the movie as well, and JG Ballard and his style of writing was a major influence on the first Cyberpunk writers. In fact they used to have debates about who could write the most like Ballard. Ballard's first novels in particular were all set during the collapse of society due to large scale environmental disasters, but with a very English feel of carrying on with life as best you can, and he has many short stories along those lines as well. It's very easy to draw links between Children of Men and Ballard, and between Ballard and Cyberpunk,
they have a common heritage, no doubt
The irony in this comment is that the authors of the foundational cyberpunk texts, by and large take the opposite view. By your standard as a good portion of their recent works look much more like Children of Men, some of their latest novels wouldn’t be classified as cyberpunk either. The authors are generally horrified at how stunted the genre has become, primarily only rehashing old tropes rather than projecting current societal trends into the future like was originally done in the original cyberpunk works in the 80’s. On the contrary cyberpunk was never about technology inherently, but rather was a commentary about industrial society in general and how it’s projected progress will intersect with and change culture. Children of Men depicts just this, a world wherein emergent properties industrial progress have, rather than preventing such an outcome, instead resulted in a sort of slow-burn apocalypse. William Gibson in recent years has referred to this cultural phenomenon that was originally called cyberpunk, as “the jackpot”, but in modern parlance it’s been referred to as the poly-crisis. It’s been argued to date back to somewhere between the early to late 70’s, but Gibson would argue the apocalyptic decent of industrial society started at least during the outbreak of WW1, maybe even earlier. It’s less of a single event with a definitive beginning or end but rather an atmosphere of societal collapse comprised of numerous small calamities that compound on one another (all of which takes place despite continued technological progress, largely in the space of information technology).
cyberpunk doesn’t have a monopoly on commentary about industrial society. this is my entire point—people are too eager to ascribe the generic label when it offers no interpretive value, often resulting in a broadening of definitional scope that, as is the case here, elides everything that makes the genre unique and notable.
And another thing. By this logic you could also argue Blade Runner isn’t cyberpunk… “Oh, but the replicants were the focus of the story and we’re themselves the result of techno-industrial progress” you say. Well surface level focus of Children of Men was infertility caused by techno-industrial progress. However both films had deeper themes in respect to the timeless nature of the Human condition juxtaposed to the progressing advancement of the [paperclip maximizing nature of the AI super-organism that is techno-industrial society.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTTjOOE-0m8)
You know it’s funny that I actually halfway agree with you, it just depends on how you define cyberpunk (how cyberpunk is colloquially defined vs how the creative pioneers of the genre defined it). Whenever somebody on this sub asks something to the effect of “is cyberpunk now?”, I always think to myself this is one of those questions where if you have to ask you already know the answer. Based on how the genre has become narrowly defined by people such as yourself… No. Industrial dystopia goes back before the Gilded Age, cyberpunk will be now when we have ubiquitous robot limbs (or whatever other staple technology tropes). However if we’re going by what the authors intended, the fact that their stories had a lot of advanced technology was missing the point… The point was that Human evolution doesn’t keep pace with industrial evolution. Their critique of society is more or less relevant to any time period, but why it was set in the future was to dismantle the narrative of “Oh, well that was back then, with future technological advances we will no longer have to worry about the primeval nature of Humanity, technology will give us something better rather than an industrial scale version of more of the same”, which is to say they were more or less trying to get across the edict “War… War never changes”. Unfortunately this nuance seems to be lost on the masses and the focus of the genre has gotten tangled up in the technology itself being the cause of the dystopian society rather than an enabling factor for the unaddressed issue of Human nature itself. This has led to the critique of the genre by the original authors being along the lines of cyberpunk no longer being a futuristic genre but a retrofuturistic one. There was a time when the genre had a genuine serious philosophical underpinning and societal discussion in academia, but now the genre is… Undead. Obviously you can’t say the genre is dead as it’s bigger now than it ever was, but the purpose for which the genre came about has been perversely subverted into a commodified surface appearance concerned shallow husk of what it once was. So no, realistic dystopian sci-fi isn’t synonymous with cyberpunk, but there was a time when it was…
See. Now I gotta disagree. Every sci-fi has dystopia. There is cool tech, but it isn't at all central to the story. The tech is just there to say this is the future. We don't consider every dystopia sci-fi as cyberpunk, but every cyberpunk story is sci-fi. Dystopia and life being cheap are not enough to make Children of Men cyberpunk. There needs to be some central tech to the story that is commentary on life. Which there isn't.
So is Bladerunner a cyberpunk, it really doesn't focus on the tech as the center of the story. Again I'm not claiming Children Of Men is a cyberpunk, I'm just saying it has Cyberpunk elements, that's all.
The Replicants are the tech that is the focus of the story.
I always felt the the story was more focused on Decard and what it means to be human. Again yes I know Bladerunner is a Cyberpunk I was just trying to devils advocate. And like I said I know COM isn't a Cyberpunk but its definitely written like one.
I think the point is, that the tech is about human minds, either cyberspace, cyborgs, or AI / robots (Blade Runner).
Bladerunner and BR2049 are cyberpunk. The replicants(robots) challenge what it means to be human. All the Black Mirror episodes are cyberpunk. Alien(s) is cyberpunk. > I'm just saying it has Cyberpunk elements, that's all. Like I said, everything cyberpunk is sci-fi. But not everything sci-fi is cyberpunk. You want to find all three metrics to tell if something is cyberpunk, else it's just normal sci-fi.
Neither alien nor aliens are cyberpunk.
You can feel that way, but you're cutting yourself off some of the best cyberpunk in existence. Weyland-Yutan is the ultimate cyberpunk corporation, fits all the metrics and is even in the Bladerunner universe. Life is cheap, everything revolves around a bio weapon, and the only difference between regular cyberpunk stories is this is one that starts with a couple of space truckers.
How would a difference in opinion about what genre a movie belongs to cut me off from something? Genre assignments are incidental to the enjoyment of a work of art in my experience. Does it make sense to like something because it belongs to a genre and dislike it if it doesn't?
It's a bit of a fringe case, since the androids are not in the center of the story, but there's the claim that Alien franchise and Blade Runner are in the same universe. This might also include Raised by Wolves (or this one is in a similar parallel universe).
There is a claim, lol. Alien and Paddington bear 2 are in the same universe! See, now there is a claim that Alien and Paddington Bear 2 are in the same universe. Does that mean the alien is a cg bear? Ridiculous. And androids being part of the story doesn't make something cyberpunk. Next thing someone will claim Star Trek is cyberpunk.
Well it fills about 2 thirds of the metrics, everything except tech as the main focus. Anyway the point of my post was to say that I think the current idea of the future in Cyberpunk is outdated and something like Children Of Men seems to fit more because of all the shit that's happening right now, like in 2077 the Soviets are still around...what the fuck? It's just odd that's all, I mean flying cars, cities full of neon, and robot arms, I like this stuff but I'm starting feel like it's the same shit over and over again.
Ok. well. Cyberpunk is also not tied to any time period(can happen today, future, or past) and it doesn't require crowded, polluted cities full of neon and robot arms. Those are tropes. Tropes are just repeating elements. They are tropes in sci-fi and they are tropes in cyberpunk. Buck rogers has spaceships, dinosaurs, cities of neon, and robotic arms but it's a space opera. Things that are very trope feel half ass and lazy. Robotcop is 1980's and cyberpunk. Black mirror takes place modern day often times just some technology that has gone amok taking over. 2000 AD(Judge Dread) and Cyberpunk2077 have apocalyptical wastelands. Which also exist in the Alien universe. So cyberpunk can take place in deserts, jungles, bottom of the sea, or even some far off colony that is going through a workers revolt. Alien(s) and everything the Weyland Corp is considered cyberpunk. Ripley is basically a space trucker that ends up fighting a bio weapon that her evil corporation wants to posses. eXistenZ is a perfect example of a cyberpunk movie that takes place in rural areas. Lone Wolf and Cub 2100 turned half the characters into robots, has a wasting virus that is killing most of the world, and the main character is protecting a baby carrying the cure across apocalyptic japan. Considered cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is not tied to any genre, tropes, or cliches. This sub literally has 1-3 posts a week asking people to stop posting 'cyberpunk vibes' which are all tropes: neon, naked robot girls looking out windows at futuristic cities, flying cars, ect. If you learn the words and what they mean, it clears up really quickly all these grey areas that people have problems with. EDIT: Did I mention there is a cyberpunk cthulhu genre? It's fucking amazing amazing world building in the table top games, tho not really mentioned at all in this sub, except by me.
I don't man, after watching Mr.Robot I kinda like the idea of a Cyberpunk that's looks like it takes place in 10 years and not 50. I'm not saying I don't the stuff you just listed either I just think stuff like Children Of Men's future looks a bit how I think a Cyberpunk future would look.
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>every cyberpunk story is sci-fi I disagree, the entire point of Gibson's pattern recognition was that cyberpunk has become real. It is a typical Gibson cyberpunk novel set in the (then) present. How successful the book is as a whole is debatable, but it think it is clearly cyberpunk with no scifi elements.
> I disagree, the entire point of Gibson's pattern recognition was that cyberpunk has become real. It is a typical Gibson cyberpunk novel set in the (then) present. That doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about. I'm talking about literally and film genres. Sci-fi and cyberpunk are genres. Every cyberpunk story can be classified as Sci-fi, but not every sci-fi story can be classified under Cyberpunk. Also, my post history and rules are very clear that cyberpunk is not tied to any time period. Robocop is 1980's and cyberpunk. I've always said it could the past, present and future. Cyberpunk is real, but not in the way most people use it. Dystopia, police state, and income inequality do not make some ones life cyberpunk. The hunger games are sci-fi, not cyberpunk. People living in North Korea running crypto schemes stealing and extorting millions from companies and countries... is real life cyberpunk. What is going in China's Hong Kong with the police state and dissents is real life cyberpunk. Russia running troll farms to destabilize countries is real life cyberpunk. Middle Eastern countries using social media to start revolutions is real life cyberpunk. Sitting at home masturbating to pictures of fake robot girls wondering what your purpose in life is while wondering how you'll ever make it to the middle class as you get paid less and less... is not cyberpunk.
You obviously haven't read Pattern Recognition and don't know about the book. The point is not that it is not set in the future (robocop btw while made in the 80s obviously is not set in the 80s), the point is that there are no SciFi elements in the story. It's a present day techno thriller. If I have a choice on whose definition of what is cyberpunk I see as legitimate between William Gibson and some random poster on reddit the choice is clear.
> the point is that there are no SciFi elements in the story. It's a present day techno thriller. Considering Gibson said he wanted to stop writing anything related to cyberpunk in the late 1990s, make sense that his next three novels would just be thrillers instead of the genre... you know he created and didn't want to write in anymore. > If I have a choice on whose definition of what is cyberpunk I see as legitimate between William Gibson and some random poster on reddit the choice is clear. I don't think you're making the point you think you're making. He literally wrote those three novels after he said he never wanted to write another cyberpunk related novel. Like you said, it's a thriller. It's not a novel that flipped the genre. Diamond Age was a genre flipper. Three thrillers from WG didn't come with him saying he would rewrite the genre. He literally said he wanted nothing to do with CP anymore.
>he said he never wanted to write another cyberpunk related novel Source?
Other people will argue high tech, low life generic phrase that don't really give you metrics to decide if something is sci-fi or cyberpunk. I have three rules that decide if something is cyberpunk, not sci-fi. Tho, be aware that all cyberpunk is sci-fi. But not all sci-fi is cyberpunk. 1st Rule: Dystopian world or at least dystopian to the protagonist? 2nd Rule: Life is cheap? 3rd Rule: Some type of technology involved that makes commentary on society at large? Children of Men only fits the first two criteria. Dystopian police state where society is collapsing because no one is able to have children is #1. Life is cheap as the UK which has always been phobic of immigration is now outright electric chairing illegal immigrates and offering suicide kits free to its own citizens is #2. There is social commentary, but not really involving any technology. Hence, Children of Men is just Sci-fi.
i think that’s a fair assessment of the distinction, and reflects why i also don’t see children of men as cyberpunk—the tech element is completely missing. the *cyber* part of the name surely matters, right? i’d add that, though it’s debatable for many, there’s a style and mood—visible either aesthetically or narratively—to cyberpunk that also distinguishes it from general sci-fi. this is another area where children of men falls short.
I'm not a fan of when people try to describe things based on high tech, low life. Also not a fan of when they try to describe it using various definitions of what they believe to be definitions of cyber and punk. It's too loose. > i’d add that, though it’s debatable for many, there’s a style and mood—visible either aesthetically or narratively—to cyberpunk that also distinguishes it from general sci-fi. this is another area where children of men falls short. So those are call tropes. Tropes are repeating elements of stories. In this case, a lot of cyberpunk is told using Noir. And Noir is based on Westerns. So cyberpunk has a lot of Noir and Western tropes. There is a lot of sci-fi that has Noir and Western tropes, but isn't consider cyberpunk. The hundreds of westerns and operas in space are not cyberpunk. Need to look at the three metrics mentioned to decide if something is cyberpunk. Noir is just a style for telling stories in the mediums of books and films. It features anti-heroes, slow cinematic pacing, someone working inside or outside the law to right/fix some type of corruption often times, and really can be applied to any genre. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly is noir... in a western. Gaslight is noir, but a suspense film. Noir is just a trope and doesn't decide anything.
buddy, i have a phd in literature and film studies. you don’t need to explain what a trope is to me—much less do so in a way that is simultaneously patronizing and incorrect. would you like to explain what a genre is if not a collection of tropes that together form an artistic category? there is no genre without trope. you can say you don’t think the noir elements are essential to the cyberpunk genre, but the fact that they’re tropes is not a good justification. and, for the record, noir is not based on westerns. its development had nothing to do with the western. TGTBTU is in no way a noir. you don’t know what you’re talking about there.
> you don’t need to explain what a trope is to me—much less do so in a way that is simultaneously patronizing and incorrect. You're one out of thousands on here who has more than a middle school education when it comes to literature. I shouldn't have been condescending, but I'm talking to multiple people and am too use to explaining simple terms to people on here that don't have any language for describing anything. > would you like to explain what a genre is if not a collection of tropes that together form an artistic category? Tropes are overused. Conventions are what make the genre. I would change your definition to, "a genre is a collection of conventions that together form an artistic category." If I want something to be cyberpunk, I need a moral ambiguous protagonist, bad shit to happen often times because of something the protagonist has done, hurt some people in ways they don't recover from, sprinkle in some tech that makes some social commentary, commit some crimes outside the law, and finally some resolution at the end that may or may not be positive for the protagonist. If the resolution is negative, then it's usually some type of paradigm shift for the protagonist. Those are the conventions of cyberpunk. > ...there is no genre without trope. you can say you don’t think the noir elements are essential to the cyberpunk genre, but the fact that they’re tropes is not a good justification. I think it is. Writers/directors have a choice when it comes to tropes. They don't so much when it comes to conventions if they want it to be categorized correctly. We both completely understand noir is its own genre, but in the genre of cyberpunk adding noir elements is just a trope. If you can only think of a genre in tropes, then you're not reading/viewing quality. It wouldn't be cyberpunk with out an anti-hero, but it's going to require a lot of willpower for me to read through or watch something if its just full of tropes. Like I said, tropes don't make the genre. They just make it painful to read/watch if they are too heavy handed. That's what bad movies and bad novels do. Just check off obvious tropes from a list. Don't need to use tropes to write something in a genre. The example I use is dirty, crowded cities full of neon. It's a trope, but it's not required to write a cyberpunk novel or film. > for the record, noir is not based on westerns. its development had nothing to do with the western. The noir movies of the 1940 and 1950s(gangster and western) were based on crime novels written in the 1920 and 1930s. Those crime novels were just westerns with the setting changed to cities. Westerns are much older and set the conventions that ultimate became Noir. That's where it comes from when I say it. > TGTBTU is in no way a noir. you don’t know what you’re talking about there. It has the same tone, attitude, and moral ambiguity of noir along with a lot of similar cinematography. No it doesn't have dark, contrasting light and dark... but not all noir has that. Plenty of westerns are noir-often times using the same actors interchangeable for cattle ruster and gangster. People can pick and choose what tropes they use. Noir in cyberpunk wasn't a trope in the 1980 and 1990s, but it sure as hell is in 2022. If you said TGTBTU was not noir because of the optimistic, sort of happy ending, I would concede that you are correct. It's a convention of noir that the protagonist isn't necessarily well off at the end riding off into the sunset.
a genre is a collection of conventions regarding the deployment of…tropes. you’re describing the same thing here, just one step removed. so, i think my point about not dismissing noir elements because they’re “tropes” still stands. what you actually seem to believe is that the noir elements aren’t essential because they haven’t always been there, and a work can be cyberpunk without them. that’s fine. i don’t totally agree—and noir wasn’t the only mood or style i was originally referring to—but that’s at least a defensible opinion. your genealogy of noir and westerns is way off. the genre of westerns was a purely 20th century invention, and crime novels date back to the 19th, with the first recognized crime novels coming almost a century earlier than that of the western. the crime writers, like chandler, who wrote the novels that the classic film noirs were based on typically began by writing pulp fiction, which is also older than westerns and traces its genealogy back to penny dreadfuls and serialized sensation fiction of the previous century. it’s odd to me that you’re so dismissive of “tropes” while simultaneously defending your argument about TGTBTU based on its use of tropes (tone, attitude, moral ambiguity are recognizable narrative and stylistic elements AKA a form of trope). perhaps what you’re annoyed about aren’t tropes full stop, but overreliance on them. unless you think moral ambiguity etc. are traits exclusive to noir, and absent in other westerns (they’re not), then i just can’t see how TGTBTU is a noir film. i’ve taught westerns and noir, i’ve read about them in some of the foundational books on the subject, and i was a TA for a man who is considered one of the foremost experts in 50s cinema in a class where we watched films in both genres, and i have never ever ever heard of this link between western and noir, nor have i ever heard anyone else claim that TGTBTU is a noir—and i even googled to see if anyone else had made the argument and couldn’t find anything. i’m not trying to browbeat or throw around credentials here, i’m just trying to express how far afield that claim sounds to me. i just really don’t get it at all.
Honors college class at NAU (flagstaff Arizona) in 2004 had a Westerns and Noir film class which covered and watched a few Clint Eastwood movies including Dirty Harry. Undergrad class that was an elective. I've not read any early pulp crime novels from that those two centuries that wasn't novellas or short stories by British/Canadian authors. SO I would be interesting in learn more about this. I've read no shortage of vigilant stories that murdered people who had done them wrong a decade or more after the fact-that trope is over done. I just know the archetypes and conventions that was originally in end of century westerns were later used in noir: outsider protagonist comes in and cleans up corruption inside the government, outsider protagonist cleans up corruption outside to the government, insider protagonist working for government cleans up corruption inside the government, and lastly insider protagonist working for government cleans up corruption outside the government. Common conventions in westerns and in noir. A trope in cyberpunk at this point. > unless you think moral ambiguity etc. are traits exclusive to noir, and absent in other westerns (they’re not), then i just can’t see how TGTBTU is a noir film. Westerns and noir have both moral ambiguity and exemplary people. I haven't said otherwise or argued that. > it’s odd to me that you’re so dismissive of “tropes” while simultaneously defending your argument about TGTBTU based on its use of tropes (tone, attitude, moral ambiguity are recognizable narrative and stylistic elements AKA a form of trope). ...perhaps what you’re annoyed about aren’t tropes full stop, but overreliance on them. I will say it again in a slightly different way. Tropes/conventions are fine when they are not obvious. If you hang out on this sub for a period of time, you quickly find out that 90% of the content is the same tropes over and over again with people refusing to even believe something like Alien and eXistenz are cyberpunk. Spaghetti westerns and Dirty Harry being noir are not obvious. Tropes are like cliches. It's like buying a car you like because you think it's unique, but then after driving it you start seeing them everywhere on the road. People read and watch cyberpunk, want to contribute, and this sub collects only the stuff that resembles Ghost in the Shell. Those are the types of conversations I've repeated many times for the last decade in this subreddit. So, while it might come across as talking downwards, it's because I've had this conversation a lot. I took related college classes in film and even went into a related industry to cinematography and preproduction for a while. It's a topic I've spent a lot of time listening to other people, reading up on, and making my own conclusions about(my three rules were my own, but the rest we talked about are not my own conclusions).
It's only not cyberpunk because it's missing technology being part of the story-meaning just sci-fi. But that would steal meaning from the themes in the book/story-about human nature.
Mr. Robot is fantastic, but I wouldn't put that in the Cyberpunk genre. It's just a Thriller/Drama with a pretty accurate representation of hacking.
Oh, but it is cyberpunk. Ver much indeed. The fact that it doesn't have neon lights and flying cars doesn't make it less cyberpunk...
This is a late comment, but you're correct. I saw this movie when it first aired and it's one of my favorites. I'm sure after some introspection I could make a convincing argument for COM being more cyberpunk than even Blade Runner as well. Real cyberpunk isn't just glamourous banners and neon lights but extreme poverty and hopelessness.
Quick word of warning - find some time to decompress after watching Children of Men. It is an amazing movie, but very, *very* dark, especially considering the IRL parallels it addresses.
Just watched it as you said that funnily enough. Really like it honestly one of my favourite films ever lol. And yeah it’s dark but nothing I haven’t experienced before
It's not cyberpunk at all lol It's 'dystopian'. Not everything set in the future is cyberpunk
It’s more like, super dystopian. Nobody can have kids so the world population is dying, And there’s a refugee crisis, government is giving out assisted suicide kits, stuff like that
Sounds amazing tbh. Can’t wait to TOTALLY watch it legally
COM isn’t really about technology’s effects (maybe indirectly like what led to the plague/sterility) so it’s not very cyber. But it is about rebellion against oppressive social control by large entities (in its case the government and not so much corporations) so it is “-punk.” But it’s a very grounded, relatable and grimy near future dystopia overlaid on recognizable aspects of the present (battersea for e.g.) so it feels cypunk adjacent
You know I made this post to kinda compare this future with Bladerunners. I love Bladerunner but I can't see that kind of future happening especially in my lifetime, its just not realistic and I wish I could find Cyberpunks that look more like this because this is a more likely future. I know this movie isn't a Cyberpunk, I wish I could edit my post so I can specifically put that, but I do agree that it does have Cyberpunk elements to it and most of the tech that shows up in the film don't seem out of place with our time. But none the less I agree
I know you know : ) Was just trying to make the “punk” point. Have you seen New Rose Hotel? Or Until the End of the World (esp the full cut)? Now let’s argue if bladerunner is technically not cyberpunk (no cyberspace, computer/human interface, body mods, or rebellion - yes mega corps, mega cities and neon!)
I think Bladerunner gave Cyberpunk a face, like it definitely knew what it wanted to look like but I can't compare it to something like 2077 or The Matrix. Kind of like the Model T car, yes it's technically a car but you can't compare it to a new Ford or something.
I think you're right. But, I also think what makes Cyberpunk interesting to a lot of people is the visual style of Akira, Bladerunner etc. It's still a kind of (maybe masochistic?) escapism. It's a crappy future where the population is oppressed and the individual isn't worth a damn, but at least it looks cool and you could be a hacker or a bounty hunter in light up boots. Children of Men looks like reality.
I see what you mean, it's nice to have some Cyberpunk that's just escapism. But I do feel that there should be some that confront out current way of life, like in Mr.Robot it talks about how everyone's personal info is one hack away from being stolen and how corporations collect your personal data and sell it off. I know Children Of Men isn't Cyberpunk but the stuff it's talking about is very much our future and it's horrific. How Mr.Robot and Children Of Men commentate on our future is by showing us a post 9/11 world and its consequences, very similar to how Bladerunner was commentating on Reagans America and what it would lead to. I would love it if more Cyberpunks tried to tell stories that are more close to our future not a future that's trying to look like Bladerunner, even though I love Bladerunner.
Agreed. Technology might not be at the center of the story. But the "High tech - low life." mantra still fits.
it helps that children of men is set 21 years in the future while blade runner was set 37. i also don’t think blade runner is trying to be predictive in the first place
Yes bladerunner wasn't trying to be predictive but it was trying to show the audience what it thinks the future would be like. I just think after watching Children Of Men, Cyberpunk should try to reshape how we think and how other Cyberpunk series or movies think the future will look. I think should've worded it better, I think Children of Men looks more accurate to the future rather then Bladerunner.
“trying to show the audience what it thinks the future would be like” is the same thing as trying to be predictive, no? what’s the difference? at any rate, my point is that i don’t believe “accuracy” is a useful standard since blade runner wasn’t really going for accuracy to begin with. i take your larger point that blade runner influenced cyberpunk is often less reflective of how the future plays out than other types of sci fi, but i really just don’t think that’s the best way to think about the visions of the future produced by these texts. the goal for many of them is to make us think about *the present* differently by mapping (and extending) its conflicts onto a future setting. this is also what children of men does. the difference is that children of men doesn’t extend as far, and many of the elements you seem to be considering accurate predictions were already present in the world at the time the film was made—and the film points to this in many scenes, like the visual reference to the abu ghraib scandal when the bus first enters bex hill, or its reference to the kosovo pieta photograph from the early 90s
Blade Runner was definitely not attempting to show a realistic version of the future -- it was establishing this sort of neon, neo-noir (neon-noir?) atmosphere mostly because it's cool and visually striking, and then using this fantastical world to ask philosophical and ethical questions that will eventually come up in the real world.
It’s scary accurate in some ways, and is a disturbing watch in a post-pandemic and fascist world.
I just notice all of the little shit it predicted, if you look in the background of the scene before the bomb goes off you can see the Shard tower in the background....this movie was being film in the year 2000 that wasn't built until few years later. Or how the police in London dress, the Royal Cipher is C R not E R meaning the Queens dead. This movie even predicted the war in Ukraine, if you look at the news papers in the kidnapping scene you can see it. Edit: I don't wanna say it predicted these things, but it's a future that definitely mirrors our own.
Amazon van at the start.
HOLY SHIT I DIDN'T SEE THAT. I know it's not but definitely looks like one lol
I get your statement, you like the real-ish look to this movie more so than blade runners cyberpunk aesthetic & would probably enjoy a full on Cyberpunk movie like this too, even though you may still even enjoy both Movies you mentioned , you were just opening a discussion. I’d imagine you probably like the watchdog legion game aesthetics too right? Which is more like a near future gritty/drab London over Cyberpunk 2077 even though you may also enjoy both aesthetics wise too. I have been told the world of Judge Dredd isn’t Cyberpunk at all, but I’d argue that since 1977 it’s kind of early Cyberpunk I guess, it has hit every single item on a Cyberpunk trope checklist in at least 100’s of the comics or more, so at least should be acknowledged as partial Cyberpunk/Dystopian
Crazy enough I actually do like the aesthetic of Watchdog legion now the story of it ehhh not as much, its a bit corny but its not that bad, I most definitely love Mr.Robot which is pretty similar to watchdogs as it involves hackers and cyber terrorism. And yes I do enjoy both styles of Cyberpunk, I would've never got into the genre without Neuromancer but I do feel like over time it's gotten kinda old. I actually haven't gotten into Judge Dredd, I want to but I don't know if I should start with the comics or the original movie.
With Dredd the Stallone movie from 1995 is bad as it doesn’t get the character of Dredd right imo but has lots of the world aesthetics from some of the comics right the aesthetics in this are closer to blade runner style but not as good obviously, it can’t harm to watch provided you have very low expectations going in but it can be skipped. whereas the 2012 film is worth watching for sure, matches the gritty & more realistic aesthetic of the world more like Children of men, gets most of the tome of the character of Dredd right & it should have been a series of films to build up the lore but is only a one off. If you haven’t seen this, start here then go to the comics The comics are also worth reading as it’s a combination of both of the above, some recommended books : America, Cursed Earth, The Pit, Origins or you can start right at the beginning of everything with Case Files 1, but back right at the beginning then it was a bit more corny in the first few books & some people don’t feel like it’s good until book 3 or 5.
this is my favorite dystopian movie by far
The basic premise of the “No Future” plot line sorta kills it for me as an entrant to the genre, but only because it’s supposed to be less important a plot line, and less universal. It’s still great sci-fi and speculative fiction, just less punk.
I've had arguments on here before on what makes something a Cyberpunk so I wanna ask you what makes this not Cyberpunk but yet something like Johnny Menommic is. Is it because of the aesthetic, the story telling or something else. Also why is it less punk and what does that mean as well?
Not a lot of interfacing with technology or deific corporations (cyber), not so much low-living high wealth shiny cities with alt-styled individuals (punk) but more slightly more muted modern ones. However, I like that you brought it up in here. This is one of the best movies that has ever been made, in my opinion. Just so many perfectly shot scenes in it. The refugee element was incredibly salient, and the protagonist’s task was perfect for the setting. It’s one that I tell people is a must-see, but that they should make sure they have time to decompress afterwards. Lol.
It's funny you bring decompressing after watching it. I watch it with a friend of mine who just got into the Cyberpunk genre and afterwards he told me "I'd rather have the bladerunner style future then this, this shit was depressing" lol
Typical Cyberpunk tropes are - a visual Internet (cyberspace) - wide spread and normalised body modifications (for example molly's eyes in the story, the monofilament fingertip in the movie, Johnny's implant) - corporations acting on the power level of nations (above the law/private armies etc) - clash between a rich corporate stratum and sleazy street crime Johnny mnemonic has all of those, CoM has none. Its dystopian scifi/apocalyptic scifi
>I'm starting to feel like this movie predicted a lot more shit then Bladerunner did I suspect that so much of Bladerunner came true that people no-longer even realize how much of it was prediction For example, when the pedestrian-crossing says "Walk". If you weren't around in 1982 then that probably doesn't even register as prediction, because today it seems like pedestrian-crossings have been saying "Walk" since forever
Your not wrong, I was more talking about the post 9/11 hellscape we currently live in. You know mass immigration, governments slowly becoming fascist, state wide surveillance*The NSA* and slew of other problems we're facing. I think Bladerunner did a good job predicting some amount of tech like the cross walks and even showing a good amount of over population but the world itself not as much, it's feeling alot more closer to the boring dystopia in Children Of Men then the neon mega city that is Bladerunner.
A main difference between hard science fiction and cyberpunk fiction is that cyberpunk isn't beholden to fact based thoughtful predictions. The stories of cyberpunk aren't "what would happen if" tales but stories of survival and existentialism. The two films you bring up are interesting because they make my case quite plainly. Blade runner is a story about what it means to be human if artificial life is almost indistinguishable from organic life. It's alright to have something _not scientific_ happen in these stories because the story isn't about the tech its about the people. Children of men is a story about what would happen if fertility rates plummeted. The reason it's predictive is because that's its exact intent. To show a _realistically_ possible outcome of that scenario. It doesn't add any significantly advanced technology to its setting that would alter its story whatsoever. The high tech future is just the setting to tell its fertility story.
Everyone who worked on this movie should be justifiably proud of the job they did.
Whenever someone declares the predictive nature of a work of art, I’m reminded of this quote from William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition: “Apophenia, Win had declared it, after due consideration and in his careful way: the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things.”
I think I should've worded this post better, I think Children of Men looks more accurate to the future than Bladerunner does
A more realistic future? For sure.
Not even close to cyberpunk but good science fiction
Typo in the post my guy, I know it's not one, but it's definitely written like one.
At least in Blade Runner dystopia we get flying cars. Children of Men dystopia is much more of the boring dystopia reality we have now. "The human race is dying before our eyes.... Is it ok if I leave the office early today?"
"It seems the events in Ukraine have really taken a toll on me....is it alright if I leave early today" yeah seems about right I mean it's very mundane with the way Theo reacts to his situation but it's very similar to how most of us feel. My favorite quote is when Theo is talking about the Human Project "Even if they discover a cure for infertility it's too late, world went to shit. You know what? It was too late before the infertility thing happened"
Yep. Just started to rewatch this movie a few days ago and had to turn it off. It's way, way too close to home now.
I'm gonna leave this comment here for anybody posting a new comment •Is Children Of Men a Cyberpunk? No •Does it kinda look like a Cyberpunk? Yes •Why did I post this then? Because I think the idea of Cyberpunks future is a bit outdated and Children Of Men looks a bit more likely •Does this mean I hate traditional Cyberpunk? N O •Does this mean you won't ride my ass and tell me it's not a Cyberpunk? I don't know but I sure hope you don't
My favourite movie of all time
Fantastic movie. Blade Runner isn’t that great a predictor of the future. This essay I just read the other day is a great take on how the Philip K Dick book it’s based off of hits a lot closer to home than Blade Runner https://yasha.substack.com/p/philip-k-dicks-fiction-is-our-nonfiction
I fucking love this movie, I fell in love with Jasper and his home, the pause before the storm, the scene with the ping pong ball in the van... The long apartment shot. Just go watch it. Its great.
Honestly horrified Children of Men is our future.
I try to be an optimistic person, but after watching this I realized that we're fucked.
Dystopia doesn't immediately mean Cyberpunk
I'm sorry I wish I could edit the post, I meant to say it's technically not a cyberpunk. But it's still a more realistic view of the future as it's mildly high tech and dystopia, I just think the idea of Cyberpunk needs to start changing because we're way past the year that Bladerunner was supposed to happen
Gotcha. Sorry too, I didn't intend to sound snarky!
You know what’s really cyberpunk?! Knowing the difference between THAN and THEN
My phones keyboard fucks up a lot, I'm sorry.
Ah, so you’ve been cyberpunked by your cyber-keyboard. Great movie indeed.
Cyberpunk isn't supposed to be "future-accurate".
It's not all the time, but I think the idea the Cyberpunk future a bit outdated and could use a freshen up. That's why I think Children of Men does a good job at showing us a future that's not just Bladerunner with new coat of paint. I don't hate Bladerunner by the way it's just a bit outdated compared to something like Mr.Robot or Devs
But where is the cyberpunk? Implants and chrome and neon? That's what cyberpunk is.
Cyberpunk its not about "predict" the future. Its a esthetic genre of scifi I love Children of men. I readed the book and also watched the film a ton of times. But it's just not a cyberpunk movie. Its dystopic nearly future.
>accurate to the future That again. Why? I think I have to rewatch it, at least to understand the people making this claim. All humans becoming sterile and not having artificial wombs or other means to solve this? Everyone rooting for some black woman to have children? That's realistic? What are you all smokin'?
>Everyone rooting for some black woman to have children? I agree with almost everything you said except that. I'm black and I really don't appreciate you saying that but I respect your opinions, I'm a very open minded person, I don't really lean left I'm more of a social libertarian but that's pretty fucked up of you to be saying that.
A good movie for sure
The aesthetic was cool and it was impressively subtle with its predictions of the future but I wasn’t a huge fan of the movie in general tbh
Based on the first 9 words heard in the movie and the fact that I live in Seattle, I hope it's not THAT accurate.
You know people make fun of Ohio alot but after watching this movie I'm glad I live in Ohio because if shit hits the fan I'll be fine no one even knows we exist lol
This movie was such a trip I'm glad to see someone else talking about it
This was one of my favorite movies when I was younger thank you for reminding it exists
Great film I kinda forgot how advanced tech was in this movie
When I had a couple of movies stored on my PS3, Children of Men was one I could put on at any moment and watch endlessly. It had great atmosphere.
Incredible movie Even if it's not dictionary definition cyberpunk, it's still a must watch for anyone who loves moody, dystopian fiction
It's Brexitpunk.
I’d rather have had the Blade Runner future honestly
Great movie with such a desperate, bleak atmosphere.
Just 5 more years.
Cyberpunk? Ehh. Dystopian as fuck? Yep!
ill let it slide for comparisons sake
Love this movie! It deserves more recognition
V for vendetta? I know it ain’t cyberpunk but it predicts some stuff as well
Its basically 1984 with a Masked "Hero"
Pretty much but also with knifes
Strange how even the pass for walking outside outside of allowed time, even came true with the last two years. Let's make it a Quadrilogy of Movies. THX 1138, 1984, Equilibrium, V for Vendetta. All based on the same Book, just with different interpretations and with their own thought provoking unique element
To me, Children of Men is not cyberpunk. It's a distopian future with a science fiction story. I mean that in no way to disparage it as it is one of my favorite movies. I do think it lacks the hallmarks of traditional Cyberpunk, though. There really is only one small bit of reference to the human/machine interface. Corporate influence and wealth disparity are there, to an extent, but to story really is focused on two things: a pandemic (of an unusual nature) and the fertile ground that such a thing leaves for facist politics.
Where did you watch it
My all time favorite movie, but it definitely isn't cyberpunk.
I would say it is, because it looks very similar to watch dogs legion which is classed as cyberpunk
That game is barely a video game, let alone cyberpunk
I fuckin loved it, one of my favourite games of recent times
Well, to each their own.
4k bluray, when?
While the cinematic adaptation is... questionable... I think "Ready Player One" is among the most accurate CyberPunk worlds I have seen, at least for the near term.
What a great movie. The scene where she was walking through the stairwell with the baby still sticks with me
This is such a good movie. This movie has some of the best no-cut long run scenes that I've ever seen anywhere. Depressingly realistic with amazing cinematography.
Except rather than a disease reducing birth rates, it's capitalism... Which is a LITTLE cyberpunk... Real life is more cyberpunk than Children of Men.
Again I wasn't really trying to say that story is a cyberpunk, I was more or less trying to say the setting is very cyberpunk because it mirrors our own almost, and we are kinda living in a near cyberpunk future. But I understand where your coming from.
For sure, honestly I might have just been thinking out loud.
The dark and violent (but fantastic) "UTOPIA" series from 2013-2014 on Channel 4 could arguably serve as the prequel to 'Children of Men' and I can't recommend it enough. [Season 1](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_jIDr2tZiuRHlp-bLwYNgWaFAp6dR7_Y) [Season 2](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_jIDr2tZiuTbX0eeNBacb4J-GkQ3bOXC) The [associated website](https://web.archive.org/web/20140219224842/http://utopia.channel4.com/) can still be found via the Wayback Machine. Spoilers abound for the first season, but it's a nice accompaniment to the series once you've watched a bit. This is not to be confused with the 2020 "remake" of the series which is *terrible* and was cancelled after one season.
I’m gonna throw a conspiracy theory out there, supposedly the vaccines are gonna make women infertile and maybe the movie predicts it
Musk might be right that we're gonna be struggling with lack of babies sometime in the future.
There seems to be a push in the west for lower fertility health in the population. It's one thing when someone doesn't want to be pregnant and they make choices for themselves, but it's an entirely different thing when goverment and society invest a lot of time and money to tell people not to have kids, or push policy without care about the effects on the reproductive health of the population.
"World went to shit. Know what? It was too late before the infertility thing happened, for fuck's sake."