It almost goes without saying: cyberpunk is a genre that often explores heavy topics – violence, societal collapse, lawlessness, oppression, and more. Thus, many of the films described below may be unsuitable for certain ages or sensibilities. Remember to check the age rating and IMDb parental guide before viewing!
Tron (1982)
With Tron: Ares out in theaters, now is the perfect time to revisit the 1982 original about a programmer trapped inside a virtual world. Released almost concurrently with Blade Runner, the two films suffered a similar fate: critics praised the groundbreaking special effects, but found the story elements disappointing. And in each case, they were eventually reappraised by critics and audiences for pioneering the genre.
As one of the first films to feature extensive use of CGI, Tron marked a new chapter in filmmaking, but its visuals are still stunning even today – perhaps because despite its age, no other movie has yet come close to replicating its wholly unique aesthetic.
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Credit: Nat (@nattgw) via Unsplash
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Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989)
Is it sci-fi? An eco-horror? An abstract tone poem? Or all of the above? Chaotically edited and famously difficult to make – by the end of filming, only the director and the main star hadn't quit – Tetsuo: The Iron Man is certainly a one-of-a-kind spectacle.
The story follows a Japanese salaryman who gets in a hit-and-run accident and soon finds his body slowly turning into metal – and it only gets weirder from there. Compared over the years to the works of Lynch, Cronenberg, and Raimi, Tetsuo breathed new life into the Japanese horror industry and spun off several sequels.
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Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
For some reason, cyberpunk’s founding father William Gibson has never had much luck with cinematic adaptations of his much-lauded works (perhaps Apple TV’s upcoming Neuromancer series will buck the trend). The Keanu Reeves-starring Johnny Mnemonic is no exception: the film, which centers on a courier who smuggles corporate data in his brain, was troubled throughout every step of production – from casting to editing – resulting in a studio-dictated cut that was denounced by the director.
Nevertheless, the movie has since gained plenty of fans among cyberpunk aficionados. And in recent years, a new black-and-white cut has been released to much acclaim, with a tone that’s supposedly much closer to what was originally intended.
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A cyberpunk-ish vista of Moscow. Credit: Aleksandr Popov (@5tep5) via Unsplash
The Soviet cyberpunk that could have been
Speaking of William Gibson, we cannot help but mention Citadel of Death – the Soviet-American sci-fi film that would have starred the Soviet rock star Viktor Tsoi, Bruce Willis, and Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. The ambitious project was supposed to depict “ritualistic gang-warfare” in a futuristic Leningrad – but things came to an abrupt stop with Tsoi’s untimely death in a car accident.
The script was eventually adapted into a novel titled Let’s Put the Future Behind Us by Gibson’s co-writer Jack Womack; an in-depth oral history of Citadel can be found here (in Russian); in addition, residents and guests of St. Petersburg can see artifacts of the production “in the flesh” at the Tsoi. Legend exhibition in Sevkabel Port.
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Strange Days (1995)
A potent mixture of cyberpunk and film noir, Strange Days follows a black-market memory dealer who becomes entangled in a political conspiracy in a “pre-apocalyptic” Los Angeles of 1999. Starring an early-career Ralph Fiennes at his greasiest, it’s a delectably grimy, seedy, and grainy mystery that is all the more relevant in the era of VR entertainment.
A graffiti of Ralph Fiennes' protagonist in Strange Days (1995), seen in Barcelona, 2019. Credit: @markheybo / flickr / CC BY 2.0
When it comes to cyberpunk cinema, there is probably no bigger injustice than the box office failure of Strange Days. Director Kathryn Bigelow was inspired by social upheavals of the 1990s and the Y2K scare to create this heady yet high-octane narrative based on a more light-hearted outline developed in the 1980s by her ex-husband (and Terminator mastermind) James Cameron.
For more movie night ideas, check out our guide to eco-horror, our list of movies that pushed technology forward, and the 5 mind-bending shows for Severance fans.
