So I just got done watching Strange Days, a cyberpunk film from 1995, and it was excellent. It really tells a great story while dealing with questions of race. Although it really seems odd that the movie is placed in 1999, but it seems legit once you get into it, and by the end it is very moving. But I won't spoil it here, no what I want to talk about is the downfall of certain films, games, and books, that fall under the genre heading of cyberpunk. What I mean is how did we go from movies like Blade Runner ('81), 12 Monkeys ('95), and Strange Days ('95) to the likes of Hardwired ('09) and Repo Men ('10), or even Surrogates ('09) (if you wanna stretch it a little)? Or games like Deus Ex ('00) to Deus Ex: HR ('12)? Now I am as much a fan of the cyberpunk aesthetic as any semi-computer literate nerd can be, but I am also an English major, and have read Neuromancer, so I want more from my blockbuster entertainment that pretty lights. But that is all they seem to be these days--the new Deus Ex looks very good, and so does Cyberpunk 2077, but they are shoe-horned with the most didactic piss-poor philosophy that hardly lifts a finger. It's like they picked topics everyone can agree with and then drove home how awesome it is to be human--great but I'm already sold on being human.
But perhaps the problem has more to do with nostalgia, which can water-down the fantasy. If you really look closely at the old cyberpunk (usually the pre-2001 stuff), it really wasn't about the philosophy, or techno-transhumanisem. They were just great stories, that techno-philosophy stuff was a backdrop that poked its way in at the end when you connected the mystery together. And it never gave away any answers, no many of these sub-plots always ended with more questions. Like the ending of Deus Ex: it was rather nice how you got to alter things your way, but no one way seemed true, or without fault. But Deus Ex was unusual too, considering "you changed the world", most cyberpunk was just more noir, more small scale. Even sometimes just petty crime in high-tech, like Gibson's Short Story "Burning Chrome".
It also seems like we lost the noir-inspired stuff, I mean the "feel" of it anyways. This is especially seen in the new Deus Ex, vs. the old. Noir is gritty, it's dark, it's stylish but with a minimalist approach. The new Deus Ex feels over-the-top, almost epic, and everything is so damn shiny. We're supposed to feel impressed by the tech I guess, but that kind of look was not noir. Noir was never that zealously trashy, it was subtle.
But the biggest problem--is what I call the dumbpunk elements. Cyberpunk used to be a vibrant genre, granted their was always the garbage cyberpunk, but the good stuff was just so damn good it really stood out. These days cyberpunk is a trope, a cliche, and a certain style and look to follow religiously. We lost the variation and diversity cyberpunk used to have. Back in the days it may have been tempting to make everything look and go like Blade Runner, but still, somehow, the diversity and vibrant nature kept going. New issues, new perspectives, new outlooks. The material was fresh, and the ideas were cropping up everywhere, from Ghost In The Shell to The Matrix, which was directly inspired. These days, cyberpunk can barely tell a good story, rather than challenge its audience in a "punk" fashion. I often wonder that if this just becomes a bland futuristic aesthetic checklist, with recycled and revomited corporately brainstormed ideas, shouldn't we at least drop the word "punk".
Once again I love the genre as much as anyone, but the good ones these days are too few and far between. Here's me hopping, but Cyberpunk 2077 is looking like garbage at this point. The story they are floating is tired and predictable, personally. Perhaps we're just already living in a cyberpunk world now for it to be shocking anymore.
But perhaps the problem has more to do with nostalgia, which can water-down the fantasy. If you really look closely at the old cyberpunk (usually the pre-2001 stuff), it really wasn't about the philosophy, or techno-transhumanisem. They were just great stories, that techno-philosophy stuff was a backdrop that poked its way in at the end when you connected the mystery together. And it never gave away any answers, no many of these sub-plots always ended with more questions. Like the ending of Deus Ex: it was rather nice how you got to alter things your way, but no one way seemed true, or without fault. But Deus Ex was unusual too, considering "you changed the world", most cyberpunk was just more noir, more small scale. Even sometimes just petty crime in high-tech, like Gibson's Short Story "Burning Chrome".
It also seems like we lost the noir-inspired stuff, I mean the "feel" of it anyways. This is especially seen in the new Deus Ex, vs. the old. Noir is gritty, it's dark, it's stylish but with a minimalist approach. The new Deus Ex feels over-the-top, almost epic, and everything is so damn shiny. We're supposed to feel impressed by the tech I guess, but that kind of look was not noir. Noir was never that zealously trashy, it was subtle.
But the biggest problem--is what I call the dumbpunk elements. Cyberpunk used to be a vibrant genre, granted their was always the garbage cyberpunk, but the good stuff was just so damn good it really stood out. These days cyberpunk is a trope, a cliche, and a certain style and look to follow religiously. We lost the variation and diversity cyberpunk used to have. Back in the days it may have been tempting to make everything look and go like Blade Runner, but still, somehow, the diversity and vibrant nature kept going. New issues, new perspectives, new outlooks. The material was fresh, and the ideas were cropping up everywhere, from Ghost In The Shell to The Matrix, which was directly inspired. These days, cyberpunk can barely tell a good story, rather than challenge its audience in a "punk" fashion. I often wonder that if this just becomes a bland futuristic aesthetic checklist, with recycled and revomited corporately brainstormed ideas, shouldn't we at least drop the word "punk".
Once again I love the genre as much as anyone, but the good ones these days are too few and far between. Here's me hopping, but Cyberpunk 2077 is looking like garbage at this point. The story they are floating is tired and predictable, personally. Perhaps we're just already living in a cyberpunk world now for it to be shocking anymore.
