What does Tomorrowland have to do with Cyberpunk? A lot, in fact.

What is Cyberpunk, anyways?

High Tech. Low Life. Such is the TL:DR definition of what Cyberpunk is. While many may argue and debate on what exactly Cyberpunk is (for more of such fun, contentious discussions, check out my “Is This Cyberpunk?” series), most would agree that a major theme in a proper Cyberpunk film is an element of a dystopian society that the medium is set in.

Ghost in the Shell. Blade Runner. Alita: Battle Angel. The Matrix. All of these classics have dystopian societies or worlds in one way or another, some more than others.

So if Cyberpunk is dystopian, what would the opposite be, and would having a clear example of the opposite of Cyberpunk help us in our journey of figuring out what Cyberpunk means once and for all?

While dystopia describes the low life aspect, futuristic technology describes the high tech aspect.

So what does Cyberpunk have to do with Tomorrowland?

And this is what brings me to a little film produced by Disney called Tomorrowland.

Tomorrowland was a 2015 film directed and co-written by Brad Bird,  inspired by the futuristic-themed Tomorrowland found in Disneyland, as well as the progressive cultural movements of the Space Age. EPCOT in Disneyworld, along with Walt Disney’s conceptual visions of a planned future community, were also a major inspiration for the film.

The result was a high production value, visually beautiful film that is a lot deeper after a closer look, but also a film that was woefully underappreciated in the box office and garnered what I found to be very critical reviews.

Coming Back to Why Cyberpunk is Important

Here at Cyberpunk Matrix I am of the belief that Cyberpunk is a genre that we need in the present, to make sense of new exciting but dangerous technology being developed now and how it could be misused without the proper moral considerations in the future, especially on a societal level.

While Cyberpunk is always reminding how technology could be misused, there is a lot of good that technology could bring if it is actually used correctly.

Tomorrowland is one of the clearest examples of what technology could build for us as a society, if applied correctly. Tomorrowland is an aspiration that paints a beautiful picture of what could be. That’s important to keep in mind when it’s easy to be constantly in fear, especially nowadays, of what bad could be as well. And this duality, of utopia and dystopia, of warning and vision, is important to take notice of.

Tomorrowland: Optimism vs. Pessimism

Also if you look at Tomorrowland, it isn’t all a fancy happy utopia where everything is good. You might think it would be that, and certainly the video presents it as such with the main character Casey touching the Tomorrowland Pin and getting a vision of another utopian future society. But once she meets Frank Walker, the disillusioned, sarcastic ex-inventor, she gets a cold dose of reality that the audience (at least, the adults in the audience) is all too familiar with. His cynicism even goes so far as to affect her, as well, despite her original optimism (something she points out in the beginning of the film).

What is interesting is the story itself, and the message it delivers underneath.

Warning: spoilers.

Unfortunately, to properly unpack the importance of Tomorrowland as viewed through the lens of Cyberpunk, I’m going to have to reveal some major spoilers. As spoiling as you can get, really. So if you haven’t watched this film, and want to, please do before you read the rest of this. This is your last chance to turn back. You’ve been warned!

Tomorrowland and Armageddon: Self-Fulfilling Prophesies Depending on Perspective

Casey is crushed when she learns that their current predicted future is not the utopian world she saw through the pin, but rather that the world will end soon through nuclear holocaust.

But what is the cause of this doomsday end? A self-fulfilling prophecy.

The film explains that they not only discovered a new particle called tachyons, but that once they were able to harness this particle to observe near past and future, they were able to glimpse their doomed future. But the simple act of observing their future created a negativity loop that in effect created a self-fulfilling prophecy. By having a collective world believe that the world would end soon, it changed their actions due to their negative mindsets, and what they feared thus was becoming reality.

We can see some effect that observing particles has on what the particle does itself with experiments already conducted in physics in science, such as with Schrodinger or Wheeler. So while obviously tachyons as represented in the film is fiction, Is the general idea of affecting our future by observing it really so far fetched?

With this reasoning in mind, their solution to the problem then does not seem so far-fetched either. By creating a compelling enough vision of the future, and sharing it with enough people, they were effectively able to create a new future for themselves by injecting positivity of thought, which in turn affects their actual actions.

The Importance of Positivity, Negativity, Warnings and Dreams

Walt Disney had a dream: What the world could be like. It’s why he created EPCOT: The Experimental People Community of Tomorrow. He goes into length explaining his vision of what it would be like before he passed away in this video below. It’s also great to see the source material this film is derived from.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GOYu05GknY

Despite what many may say about Disney and its monopolistic, conglomerate interests, I think Walt had something here. What’s to keep the dystopian dark futures at bay, when we have so many of them warning us how our world could one day become if we’re not ruined? That’s why Cyberpunk is so important, to give us those clear examples of how we don’t want our future to turn up as (although obviously some aspects, like neon lights, flying cars and cyber-enhancements, would be pretty cool).

Cyberpunk and Tomorrowland: A Yin and Yang of Light and Dark

But what’s the counterpoint to Cyberpunk, to those dystopian dark futures? I believe that we need a light to complement the dark, a yin and yang, if we are to truly navigate our future effectively, And Walt Disney tried to create that optimistic, positive vision of the future. That’s also why I think Tomorrowland is so brilliant. If you go beyond the glossy special effects and feel-good kid-focused story that Disney loves to sell us, we see the values that are implicitly important to us–or at least should be.

Values of being positive, and not letting our cynicism get the best of us, like it did with Frank when he had a device that showed him the apocalypse at 100% probability. How could he not lose hope in a situation like that? Until someone came along and changed that probability, changed that dark vision of the future by showing him, and as many people as possible eventually, what the future could look like.

Keeping our Compass True to Navigate a Dark Future

It’s also why that last scene in the end is so great. The pins represent hope. They represent a bright future, positivity, and inspiration for good. That idea can come from anywhere in the world–investors for good technology, technology that helps mankind instead of hurting it, could come from any source in any country.

So in conclusion, what I’m saying here is that we need Disney’s positivity. We need light, and hope, to balance out the dark and depressing warning signs that Cyberpunk provides us. Because only by having a balance of both signs can we keep our compass true for the best possible future for all of humanity.

Big Hero 6: A Cyberpunk Entry? Let’s Find Out

Note: This is part of my ongoing series Is This Cyberpunk? where I look at different media in the Cyberpunk grey area, to help come to that ever-elusive definition of what Cyberpunk really is. In today’s post, I will consider if Big Hero 6 counts as a Cyberpunk movie, or not.

What is Big Hero 6 Anyways?

Big Hero 6 is a 3D computer animated Disney film that came out in 2014. It’s loosely based on the Marvel comic book series of the same name and tells the story of Hiro Hamada, a young prodigy in robotics who creates a technology that becomes stolen by a masked villain. With the help of the medical robot Baymax, Hiro founds a team of superheros to help fight the masked villain and reclaim his stolen tech.

Baymax, the Robot of Big Hero 6

Very early on we meet Baymax, a lovable inflatable medical robot that dispenses both physical and emotional assessments and treatments on any human within distance. He also learns and adapts pretty quickly to his environment, including how to fist bump.

“I will add ‘fist-bump’ to my care-giving matrix” –Baymax

He’s clearly a very advanced android.

The Other Characters

A very important character you meet early on is Hiro’s older brother, Tadashi. At the beginning of the movie we find Hiro lost, unmotivated, and participating in illegal robot  battles in his free time. In order to set him back on the right track, Tadashi introduces brings Hiro to his University’s lab, where he shows Hiro Baymax.

This is the first important acquaintance that Hiro makes early on in the movie. Tadashi will also significantly impact Hiro’s motivations throughout the rest of the movie. But when Tadashi brings Hiro to his lab, he also introduces him to the rest of his friends: Go Go, Wasabi, Honey Lemon, and Fred. These four will later become the rest of the Big Hero 6 team members.

The Story

Hiro becomes motivated to develop a new technology and present it in a conference meant to impress the judges enough to make them offer him an invitation into their prestigious university. During the conference, however, there is an incident that sets into motion the plot for the rest of the film. Hiro’s tech is lost, or so he thinks, before he finds it again years later in the hands of a mysterious figure wearing a kabuto mask. In order to solve the mystery of who this masked man is and reclaim his tech, Hiro teams up with the four friends and Baymax to form the Big Hero 6 team.

An Interesting Setting: San Fransokyo

One of the first things that really springs out to any proper Cyberpunk fan is the very Cyberpunk-like aesthetic in this film, in particular in this film’s setting. The movie takes place in a fictional city called San Fransokyo, a rather obvious mix between San Francisco and Tokyo. It would appear to be modern-day San Francisco, but if the city had been taken over by Japanese inhabitants. This city kept the Golden Gate Bridge, but added Japanese architectural flourishes to it.

It turns out that there’s a reason for why San Fransokyo seems like a mix of the two cities. According to the city’s Fandom wikipedia page, San Francisco experienced a major earthquake in 1906 caused by the collapse of an energy amplifier created by the artist Lenore Shimamoto. The reconstruction of the city led to its rebirth, as Japanese immigrants combined the San Francisco and Tokyo-style architecture in order to mitigate the effects of any future massive earthquakes.

Cyberpunk Visuals

As a result of the massive metropolis that is San Francisco, combined with the neon lights at night time and a more tech-focused slant of the city, this movie seems to have taken very clear inspirations from Blade Runner. Take a look:

San Fransokyo at Night

Unlike many Cyberpunk films, however, they show both the night and daytime. San Fransokyo in the daytime looks like this:

San Fransokyo during the day

Throughout the city are floating blimp-kite things with fans. They look like Energy kites that provide wind power to whatever the kite is tethered too. That’s just a guess, however, as the movie never explains what they are. In an incredible stroke of good luck (for me, at least) the viewer is treated to a closer look at the city from the air as halfway through the movie, Hiro creates a suit of armor for Baymax that includes a jet pack. Hiro then rides Baymax up in the sky, eventually landing on one of these energy kite blimp things to enjoy a beautiful sunset. It looks like a lot of fun.

Baymax and Hiro atop an energy blimp thing.

But it’s not just the city itself that looks Cyberpunk as hell. Hiro himself could be counted as a little Cyber Punk, as he starts off the movie in illegal Black Market Robot battles that strongly reminded me of that short film Sonnie’s Edge from Love, Death & Robots.

Robot Battle In the Ring

This was really interesting, fun, enjoyable, and different from what I was expecting. It was the Punk aspect that I had been looking for. But the movie goes well beyond just Punk. There’s a lot of high-tech nods that were really fun to see featured in subtle ways throughout the film. For instance, Hiro uses a virtual keyboard, and then later on designs Baymax’s armor in the air like Tony Stark modeling his Iron Man armor.

Designing Virtually

In the same frame, he alternates between an Apple standard physical keyboard, and a virtual keyboard projected onto his table using a little blue projector. The blue colors and green virtual screen also felt very Cyberpunk.

Projected Keyboards

Then, in what clearly felt like a nod to the Matrix Trilogy, Hiro programs Baymax to fight using Kung-Fu movies! He uses a program to capture the movements shown in the action scene, then maps them out into moves that Baymax can mimic. Baymax literally has his own “I know Kung-Fu” moment!

Baymax knows Kung-Fu

If that’s not Cyberpunk then I don’t know what is. The final thing I noticed in the film was Hiro’s use of 3D printers, technology we already have today, in order to create Baymax’s armor.

Final Verdict and Review: A fun family movie, it’s a Superhero Movie first, but definitely Cyberpunk second.

So yes, it’s cyberpunk, but it’s more of a Superhero movie with a Cyberpunk style. It just barely passes the sniff test to count as Cyberpunk, but it passes the hurdle nonetheless. With good pacing and a plot that’s not too predictable, Big Hero 6 shines in the development of its main character but loses a bit with the amount of characters it has (all 4 sidekicks are quite forgettable). With a solid soundtrack, incredible visuals, and a good amount of humor and fun, this is the perfect Cyberpunk animated Disney movie.

The Final Word?

So that’s how I feel about the movie. But what do you think? Have you seen it? Do you agree with my verdict? Why/why not? Feel free to have the final word in the comments below.

The Wolverine: A Cyberpunk Entry? Let’s Find Out

Note: This is part of my ongoing series Is This Cyberpunk? where I look at different media in the Cyberpunk grey area, to help come to that ever-elusive definition of what Cyberpunk really is. In today’s post, I will consider if The Wolverine counts as a Cyberpunk movie, or not.

He’s certainly dark and broody enough…

Logan / Wolverine (the character)

The Wolverine is one of many Marvel X-Men movies, and one of several movies that focus specifically on Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman. Although Wolverine has claws and super-healing, he was enhanced using advanced technology to give him an adamantium skeleton augmenting his body.

The Wolverine (the movie)

The Wolverine was a movie that came out in 2013 from 20th Century Fox and is both the sixth film in the X-Men film series and a sequel to the trilogy of stand-alone films focused on Logan / Wolverine’s character. It’s also a direct sequel to the 2006 X-Men film The Last Stand. Of all the X-Men and Wolverine movies, I took a particular notice of this movie because of its setting in Japan. The story follows Logan as he flies to Tokyo to meet an old acquaintance, which leads to him getting embroiled in a family power struggle involving ninjas, samurai, and a loss of his super-healing powers. 

A Familiar Adage

One of the interesting things that struck me when watching this was an early line in the movie: “Yashida is old fashioned: one eye on the past, and the other on the future”. This reflects a lot of the Yakuza-style Cyberpunk that we’ve seen, including in such works as Altered Carbon, Neuromancer, and Snowcrash. Traditions and honor can last generations, while technology continues to develop and innovate at the same time.

Some High-Tech

We get our first glimpse at high-tech with the cutting-edge sick bed that the company executive, Yashida, is using. Wolverine then glances at screens as Yashida takes some tea from his aide, and the viewers can see tiny robots repairing what appear to be X-rays of Yashida’s failing organs. “Yashida industries can do anything” Yashida proclaims, as he offers Logan the bait: an end to his eternity, to his both blessing and curse of super-healing.

A Familiar Face

As the movie progresses, I suddenly recognized a familiar face I hadn’t recognized before: Will Yun Lee! Also known as one of several Takeshi Kovacs from Altered Carbon! And dressed in black as a modern ninja of sorts, he looks awesome!

Cyberpunk Elements

Sunglasses, leather jackets, tattoos, Yakuza, ninjas, and Taiko drums leading a parkour-style chase through Tokyo all make for compelling Cyberpunk action scenes and visuals.

There is even a fast-paced fight on top of a Shinkansen (bullet-train)!

47 minutes in, Logan decides to hide Mariko in a pod hotel that looks very cyberpunk indeed.

It turns out to be a love hotel! Between the three options of a nurse’s room, a dungeon, and a mission to mars: they choose the latter.

The rooms ends up having even more cyberpunk lighting, and reminds me of the many Cyberpunk stories that do indeed feature the red planet. Examples include several stories from Philip K Dick, the original Total Recall film, and finally the Broken Angels novel and Altered Carbon Season 2. I wonder if it was at all inspired by these works or simply a coincidence!

The Cyberpunk-like movie shots are really piling up at this point. There are two dark rain-set scenes already, with somewhat neon lights–just like the iconic “tears in the rain” scene reminds us of from Blade Runner.

Logan keeps on having hallucinations of Jean Grey. She visits him in the Love hotel as well, as an apparition in the rain illuminated by neon lights outside his window. It’s beautiful.

Cultural Commentary as a Sub-Theme

The Wolverine is also a beautiful movie at times because it’s both a subtle and not-so-subtle commentary on the differences in tradition between Japan and the United States, which is similar to many movies where one of the characters travel to a foreign land with different customs and has to acclimate himself or herself to the new culture and customs. Moments where Logan has to be told to bow, or to not stick his chopsticks in his bowl, are more obvious than other moments where a subtle sense of tradition and proper order permeates everything the Japanese do.

Some Bio-Gore

The movie then settles down, before turning to a bit of bio-gore as Logan has to heal himself in an undeniably gruesome way. I won’t spoil that part with any pictures.

Concept Art

Mecha-Samurai

The giant electro-mechanical Samurai robot is somewhat reminiscent of the Terminator. It’s a giant, fearful thing, both Japanese and Cyberpunk in vibe.

Non-Cyberpunk Elements

Mutants with various abilities, like being able to see the moment of someone’s death or having viper-like abilities, add a dose of fantasy that is decidedly not Cyberpunk. Also, on the whole the film is not very futuristic or high-tech at all. There is also no mention of a dystopian world, it’s rather centered on the present day. This is probably one of its biggest detractors from being a considered a Cyberpunk film.

Final Verdict and Review: Great Movie, Many Cyberpunk Visuals, but not Cyberpunk

This is not a Cyberpunk movie. The high-tech elements are too few and far between, there is very little punk about this, and there is no hacking or virtual or online internet elements at all. Despite one giant corporation appearing in the film, the conflict is completely self-contained within the company itself–it has no social commentary or dystopian society–and is thus ultimately just another Wolverine adventure.

The Final Word?

So that’s how I feel about the movie. But what do you think? Have you seen it? Do you agree with my verdict? Why/why not? Feel free to have the final word in the comments below.