“Marketing research says that’s the movie that our tween demographic is most likely to be familiar with!”

This is one of the ones I always wanted to get around to watching, but never did.

I immediately went to Crunchyroll to add it to my watch list.

Then I came back, dejected, and saw you already pointed it out. Salt in the wound.

To be completely honest, many of these films took me a second viewing to really appreciate. Blade Runner 2049 is not a good sequel to the original, imo, but if you let it stand on it’s own a bit, it’s got some real interesting ideas at play, and of course, all of Denis’ movies are just visually beautiful. Similarly with his Dune, I’m a huge fan of the Lynch version, so it’s hard not to let that color my perception, but if you let it, it’s a visually stunning movie with amazing world design and it just nails the vibes I got reading the book.

Tarantino, too, I would have mostly shared your opinion two years ago. The first time I watched Basterds, Django, and Eight, I was pretty unimpressed, but I think I was letting my love of his earlier works color my opinions too much. Then, I got a copy of “Taratino: A Retrospective” for xmas, and that got me to go back through his entire filmography: I’d watch a movie, then read up on it in the book afterward. Even absence the additional stories and details from the book, I found all of those films really hit much better for me the second time around: no, they’re not doing that same effortlessly cool “Tarantino” style from the earlier works, but it’s clear that the man was interested in building on his own writing tropes and slowly branching them into different stories, and I really loved watching that evolution.

Fury Road: Fair enough, though at this point, Mel was probably a bit too old for the types of stunts they wanted to put Tom Hardy through.

Peele, I’ll just have to disagree, but mostly because I don’t see them as horror movies, but dark comedies. They’re not scary, not really, but boy did I laugh my ass off watching them. Nope, especially, manages to tell a funny, dramatic story with real stakes, imagination, and literally inventing a new way to do night filming that’s probably going to be mimicked by the entire industry going forward.

Jump Street: you’re not wrong about Jonah Hill, but in this case, the surprise is how funny Channing Tatum can be, and how expertly Lord and Miller bounce the two of them off each other. The standard Hill schtick just works in this screwball set of movies, and plays a perfect complement to Tatum. Oh, and that clip is amazing.

The Apes trilogy is criminally overlooked, again, probably because of “CGI Monkeys” and cultural memory of the old films, but they’re really amazingly good. Well, the first is just regular good, but the second two are great. A lot of it comes down to just how great Serkis is at working within the CGI character space: he plays the lead ape, Ceasar, but also does a lot of the motion capture for the rest of the apes, and nails it in movement and manerisms. All in all, the movies are able to create an epic about the decline of one civilization and the rise of a replacement, not because “apes good humans bad”, but because at every point, every character makes choices displaying their innate “humanity”, and have to deal with the consequences of those choices, good or bad.

Anyway, Dredd was awesome, Karl Urban is my husbando, and his DOOM movie is the best video game movie of all time. Thanks for coming to my TEDx talk!

That, and it was slightly more justifiable when these companies were first setting up and operating networks for the services and matchmaking. Economies of scale should have nullified that by now, though.

The other big one I don’t see people mentioning, but that I remember clearly, was that if you wanted to use Netflix on 360, you had to pay for Live. I think that, above anything else in my friend group, was the move that normalized paying for online services on a console.

It’s just a really solid action movie with some creative fight choreography, and honestly, that’s enough. It doesn’t need to be more; that whole school of “do one thing, and do it well”.

That’s a pretty good list you’ve got, my friend; at least those I’ve seen from it. Allow me to make some suggestions from the last 11 years:

• All three of Jordan Peele’s movies: Get Out (2017), Us (2019), but especially Nope (2022).
• Denis Villaneuve’s work, specifically Siciario (2015), Arrival (2016, one of the best sci-fi book to screen adaptations I’ve ever seen), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and Dune pt1 (2021).
• Edgar Wright had both Baby Driver (2017) and Last Night in Soho (2021).
• Rian Johnson did both Knives Out (2019) and Glass Onion (2022).
• George Miller gave us Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), and the practical effects alone are worth a viewing.
• Shane Black’s The Nice Guys (2016) was amazing.
• Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You (2018) had me grinning from ear to ear all the way through.
• Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018) is not only the best looking animated movie of all time, but one of the best superhero movies ever made.
• And while we’re on the subject of Lord and Miller projects, both 21 Jump Street (2012) and 22 Jump Street (2014) just squeeze in. Honestly, anything these two touch seems to be gold.
• Both of the Matt Reeves directed Apes movies, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) are in the window, though honestly the whole trilogy is fantastic and Andy Serkis needs a fucking CGI Ape Oscar already.

That’s off the top of my head, at least.

Even Tarantino has dropped the ball IMO.

Man, how you gonna do Django Unchained (2012), The Hateful Eight (2015), and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) dirty like that? Django is pure revenge fantasy good times, Eight is beautiful and tense with some amazing character acting, and Hollywood just revels in being part of a mythological time and place in movie history.

Heh, fair 'nuff. I’m pretty agnostic most of the time, unless a particular show has a known “better” version. For example, IMO, Cowboy Bebop (of course), Trigun, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners are all fantastic English dubs, but as counter examples I can’t stand the English dubs of Naruto or FLCL, off the top of my head.

At first, we grumbled but did it because we knew that running the services had a cost. Then it got normalized. “Eh, it’s the price of one game a year, and I get to play whatever online and get three ‘free’ games a month, so it’s a good deal.”

Now, it’s not a good deal anymore, at least for me. Hit the “Cancel” button on my sub not 5 minutes ago.

I grew up on consoles, spent my teens on PC, and my adult life I’ve always kept both around, because I love games, regardless of where they are, but yeah. Most of my multiplayer was already on PC, this just solidifies my PS5 as a media/single player game appliance.

But which is better for this show (in your opinion)?

Added to my watchlist, which is getting very long, lol.

Veeeeeeery interesting! I haven’t kept up on Warframe, but this looks to me like a big nod to Dark Sector, the studio’s first attempt at a “Warframe” style game that ended up getting scoped down into a weird single-player game. But, most of the design language and ideas of Warframe came from Dark Sector first. I wonder if this is them finally making some explicit in-universe connections to the two games, as opposed to spiritual nods and references?

Oh, and anyone who hasn’t seen it, NoClip’s documentary series on Warframe is a great watch, even if you have no interest in the game itself: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-THgg8QnvU7Weo1mCM9H2AXljC7UrDm8

That’s right, they cancelled The Peripheral but we’re getting more Upload.

Pretty sure Upload filmed quite some time ago, it was probably better calculus to just finish editing and SFX work and release it, vs Peripheral being to early in production and delayed indefinitely by the strikes.

I mean, I’d rather have both, but I can see the potential logic.

Per Wikipedia:

According to reports at the time of the production and interviews with some members of the cast and crew, the original version of the movie had a disastrous test screening, so producer Ronald Shusett was brought in to re-shoot around 40% of the movie and add more character scenes and humor. Emilio Estevez also mentioned how director Geoff Murphy let them down by focusing too much on action in his original cut of the film. Geoff Murphy claims that there was interference from production company Morgan Creek and that he asked for his possessory credit to be removed.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freejack#Production

I always liked it as a kid, but yeah, it’s clearly a movie that had a lot of trouble and the results speak for themselves. It’s a neat idea, at least.

My thoughts exactly. What am I supposed to do now, read the books?

(I may, tv’s just so much easier than finding time to read, lol)

You know, I’m pretty sure that I watched this movie, forgot all about it, watched it a second time, turned to my wife halfway through and asked, “Have we seen this before?”, and we eventually decided we had, but finished watching it again anyway.

And right now, I can’t tell you a GD thing about it other than Clive Owen was in it.

Huh. I was watching that one when it aired, and I didn’t even notice, due to the mostly episodic nature of it. Not surprised, given Fox’s history (Browncoats will never forgive and never forget), but somehow it snuck by me.

Way more upset it didn’t get renewed. I’m a bit of an Urban fanboy and was really enjoying the show.

…guess I’ll go watch Doom again.

I have nothing to add buy my upvote. It’s not the traditional cyberpunk aesthetic, but it’s absolutely cyberpunk themes.

I largely agree with this. It’s a shame that S2 ended on a cliffhanger where they were finally getting into the sci-fi questions.

Light Spoilers, though they may make the show more interesting if you’re on the fence:

That’s all from memory, so I may have mucked up a detail or two, but by the end I was really interested to see where it was all going. The show could be really smart when it wanted to, which is why it’s a shame that it mostly wants to meander through a slow-paced will-they-won’t-they for two seasons instead of getting into the meat of things. Maybe they felt they had to make it more “accessible” and sneak the cyberpunk in?

I dunno.

It was greenlit for a third season, and recent news reports indicate it was still coming (all prior to the current strikes), so maybe we’ll get a conclusion? I’ll certainly watch it when it drops.

People have been arguing about the definition of “Cyberpunk” pretty much from the moment the term was coined. I think, for the vast majority of people, it seems they focus on the aesthetic more than anything else: neon lights, megatowers, rain, tech, crime, etc.

Personally, I like to see some hints of the “punk” half of the phrase shining through. Rebels and misfits, either by choice or by circumstance, using technology to fight oppressive systems enabled by technology. Neuromancer remains the measuring stick that I’ve always used, but I’m not going to turn my nose up on a good story if it’s only “cyberpunk adjacent”.

High tech, low life, as Bruce Sterling put it (apocryphally). And, that works well enough most of the time.

So, given the above, as an example, no, I wouldn’t call The Fifth Element cyberpunk. It has lots of aesthetic similarities, but very little “punk”: the heroes are working with the governments to preserve the status quo after all, but I still love it, as it’s a damn great film.

Legit, the only character I could beat the last boss with back in the day. She’s too short for the boss to hit when you’re point blank, so you get these awesome matches with the final boss constantly backing away from a tiny chicken.

Not 20 years old, but if you’re willing to look at 10, I’ll always shout out the often-overlooked Remember Me by DONTNOD, back before they did Life is Strange.

It’s a 3rd person action-adventure game set in a cyberpunk future where everyone has a cybernetic implant called the SenSen in their brain to allow all their memories to be uploaded into cloud, so they can revisit them whenever they want. Of course, this technology is the property of one corporation, Memorize, but I’m sure they wouldn’t do anything evil with the ability to read and store every memory of every person connected to the system, right? You play as Nilin, a former memory hacker with some bad amnesia, who is broken out of prison by unknown benefactors with their own agenda. Navigate the streets and slums of 2084 Paris, avoiding hit squads and breaking into memories to piece together your own fractured past.

Definitely a solid B-tier game, it didn’t blow anyone’s mind on release, but it’s decently fun to play, has an interesting story, and the atmosphere of the cyberpunk city is just perfect. Plus, it gets pretty damn cheap come sale times. I can’t recommend it enough for anyone with a love of cyberpunk and mid-tier games with heart making up for the lack of budget.