It has low-lifes living in the future, but there really isn’t much high-tech and governments are still in control (not corporations). So do you consider Escape From New York to be cyberpunk?
Apparently the movie was an influence for William Gibson:
Escape from New York never made it big, but it’s been redone a billion times as a rock video. I saw that movie, by the way, when I was starting “Burning Chrome” and it had a real influence on Neuromancer.
But that doesn’t immediately make it cyberpunk. After all, Gibson was also influenced by hard-boiled detective novels and that doesn’t make those cyberpunk.
I could see the argument for this either way so I’m curious what your thoughts are.
It’s streaming on Roku Channel and Freevee (Amazon Prime) if you haven’t seen it before.
Lots of good takes here, my two pennies: The one thing that’s always held me back from labeling it “cyberpunk” is actually the lack of corporate control. It’s definitely a sci-fi dystopia with a lot of visual and thematic elements that align well with the biggest examples of Cyberpunk, but instead of corporations being the power in charge, it seems (from the information I recall in the two films) that it’s just the government itself has become overbearingly authoritarian.
But I’m not going to argue all that hard with anyone that disagrees. It’s definitely hanging out at the same parties.