The fact that the two most inflential sci fi movies of all time are both cyberpunk tells you all you need to know. Even the fact they decided to make a modern CP2077, and how hyped it was, shows how much cultural force the genre still has. Neuromancer and Snow Crash are two of the best selling SF books of all time. Facebook literally named their new company Meta so they could push the 'metaverse' which was coined in Snow Crash... The list is endless honestly. Saying it's not as popular as Marvel means basically nothing. Superheroes are like modern day capitalist myths at this point. The whole purpose of those movies is to sell.
tomc1985|3 years ago
Also I'm pretty sure Star Wars and Star Trek were as big, if not bigger.
Yes, The Matrix had a huge impact -- I was there for it. But that was as much about the revolution in VFX and cool shots than it was about having a cyberpunk setting. Besides, all of the followups (save for the Animatrix) have been duds.
CP2077 came to be because CDPR likes to take unknown franchises and elevate them to greatness; this is true for both The Witcher polish novels and the Cyberpunk TTRPG. While I think the demand for cyberpunk is certainly there, as evidenced by the folks' enthusiastic support for CP2077, I would not consider cyberpunk to be the dominant force in sci-fi. (The lukewarm reception for both the modern Blade Runner remake and the new Matrix confirm this opinion for me) I would suggest you consider your thoughts in a wider context.
> two most inflential sci fi movies of all time
Can you qualify this statement a bit more? I don't really agree here. The Matrix doesn't even appear in this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films and the numbers here aren't worthy of the kind of praise you're heaping on it: https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/franchise/Matrix#tab=summ...
It wasn't even the highest grossing film the year it came out, as it was eclipsed by Star Wars: Episode 1.
LewisMumford|3 years ago
It's obviously going to be somewhat subjective, but if take film critics or scholars words to have any weight since they are constantly comparing these things, The Matrix and Blade Runner are almost always at the top of 'Most Influential Sci-fi Movies of All Time' lists. e.g.
Empire: 1. BR 4. Matrix https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/best-sci-fi-mov...
Screenrant: 1. Matrix 4. BR https://screenrant.com/most-influential-sci-fi-movies-of-all...
Vogue: Not ranked but both are in the top 10 https://www.vogue.com/article/most-influential-sci-fi-films
Cultural ifluence doesn't equal financial success. (There are tons of best seller books out there that sell far more than classics ever have, but are forgotten about almost immediately after). The impact both films have had on popular culture is gigantic. Think of all the movies, TV shows, and cartoons that parodied or copied their styles. There's tons of scholarship out there on it too, but still it's always going to be somewhat subjective.
But yeah I somewhat agree that cyberpunk style was starting to die out in the early 2000s, I just think it had a revival recently due to the fact that certain elements of cyberpunk really came to fruition in recent years. https://bluelabyrinths.com/2018/12/05/cyberpunk-1-0-visions-...