Must See Cyber Punk Films

Cyberpunk is a genre of science fiction that dominated bookstore shelves in the eighties and nineties. Popularized by authors such as William Gibson and Neal Stephenson, the works often centered around overreaching corporate dominance and technocracy foiled by tech-savvy protagonists immersed in a (then unheard of) virtualized world. Although the genre was largely relegated to novels and short stories, there have been films that deal with cyber punk subjects in the world of film.

VIDEODROME 

1983. Director: David Cronenberg. Starring: James Woods, Sonja Smits 

Videodrome is the definitive precursor to cyberpunk in film. The plot is centered around Max Renn, the CEO of a low budget porn television station. Bored with "regular" sexual topics, he searches for something new and taboo. When a colleague exposes him to a channel out of Asia that broadcasts stripped down snuff films, Max decides to pirate and air the broadcast on his station. Little does he know that the streaming snuff film is more than brutal fantasy, it is an existential warp into a hellish world of madness.

Avalon

2001. Director: Mamoru Oshii. Starring: Malgorzata Foremniak 

Avalon is a cyber punk thriller created by Mamoru Oshii, who is mostly known for his association with the anime/manga franchise Ghost in the Shell. The film was a co-production between Japan and Poland.

The plot deals with Ash, a Polish gamer who is involved in an illegal and highly dangerous game called Avalon. The setting of the film is a retroactive future that in many ways resembles the 1930s, but with virtual-reality capable computers. The extreme poverty of the drab physical world is intensified by the sepia tones used in filming. The culmination of the aforementioned gives the film a very noir feel. The film is sparse with language and uses intermittent blasts of violence to jolt the viewer. Perhaps the best aspect of the film is its tense, claustrophobic feel that slowly builds toward the distortion of perception.

ExistenZ

1999. Director: David Cronenberg. Starring: Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh

 ExistenZ is another Cronenberg flick that deals with the distortion of reality, and like Avalon, is centered around a deadly virtual game. The movie features many allusions to the great science fiction author Philip K. Dick (the namesake of this blog for those paying attention). 

The game in this film is administered through biological implants, which once more shows Cronenberg's love of "body horror" imagery. In addition, it has his usual trademark use of reality-questioning themes.  Definitely worth a viewing. 

A Few Science Fiction Clichés to Avoid

Although I am an avid fan of science fiction, there are certain overused tropes within the genre that cause me to cringe. Here is a list of a couple things that I can’t stand seeing any longer.

Bipedal or humanoid aliens 

While I will not deny the possibility of other lifeforms in the vast expanse of space, I often grow tired of alien lifeforms that are near-identical to human beings. The usefulness of this allegorical construct is obvious — a unified alien race often represents certain exaggerated aspects of human behavior. Alien races often serve as thinly veiled examples of the best or worst aspects of the human character.
Standard plots that exemplify these characteristics are as follows:

• Aliens are too evil to recognize the value of humans, and wage war against them or attempt to enslave them. The evil aliens cannot see us humans as the flawed but ultimately enlightened beings we truly are. This ironically enough, is usually resolved through full scale war and eradication of the alien beings.
• The human race is too evil to recognize the value of aliens, and wages war against them or attempts to enslave them. This often results in a plot resolution delivered by the human protagonist who can see the aliens for what they truly are.

I have always wondered why it is that aliens are so often presented as humanoid in appearance. If there were another planet, capable of sustaining life, which apparently there is, what are the chances that the creatures on that planet would evolve in a way that correlates with human features? There is an extreme diversity of sentient creatures on this planet adapted to regionally diverse ecosystems.
The chances that another planet would offer similar evolutionary and ecological conditions to create a being perfectly correlating to homosapiens seems slim. It is more likely that other planets would produce  biospheres wholly disparate from that of earth. As a result, planetary organisms on other worlds would be unrecognizable to anything seen on earth. Perhaps sentient aliens would be so different as to make intercommunication impossible.
Militarized Space Vessels or Stations
This is more a standard in television shows. There is a dashing captain who directs his diverse crew of humans and bipedal aliens through an exploratory journey in space.

The plot arcs generally revolve around:

• The command of an overruling space confederation, whose member fleets resemble 20th century naval crews. Their task is to explore or police the galaxy, making the vast reaches inhabitable for “civil” beings.
• A back-story involving a formerly great space empire pitted against hostile beings who are culturally barbaric. The plot arcs revolve around an attempt to restore the empire to its former glory.
• The strained diplomacy between allied good guys and fascistic or warlike beings who lack human compassion.

While some of these concepts have been beautifully expounded on in novels such as Dune, in general space militarism has been done to death. Perhaps a more interesting concept would be a more exact look into the mechanics of space travel.  What are the economic and engineering specifics of space travel? What are the goals of the military? Why are they performing altruistic actions and at whose expense?