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Cyberpunk Matrix Movies and Films

The Influence of Philip K. Dick on Film

February 22, 2020 Alexander V Woods 4 Comments

The Grandfather of Cyberpunk

If William Gibson is the father of Cyberpunk, then Philip K Dick is undoubtedly its Grandfather. Although Gibson might not want it characterized as such.

Philip K Dick was a prolific science fiction writer who was born during the great depression in 1928 and died in March 1982 from a stroke. He wrote 44 novels in his lifetime and 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines like Science Fiction Quarterly. He constantly struggled with finances, had five wives, and at the end of his life attempted suicide multiple times. He struggled with drug addiction, an overwhelming sense of paranoia that became worse later on in life, and paranormal religious experiences that both shaped and confirmed his science fiction writing. If you had to identify a central theme to Dick’s writing, it was the uncertainty of reality.

His influence on Cyberpunk, Dystopian, and Alternate-Reality Movies

I keep on having my mind blown by how influential Philip K Dick was, and still is, on film. I thought he was simply the writer behind the novel that inspired Blade Runner, and maybe a couple other things like Total Recall, but that was it.

Nope. I was wrong.

Philip K Dick has in fact had a huge influence on the movies that have been released. You’ve probably seen many a PKD-inspired movie and didn’t even know it!

Don’t believe me? Allow me to give you a primer on everything he has done with the following list of nine novels or short stories that inspired major film productions.

Nine PKD-Inspired Films

The beginning of my tumble down the proverbial rabbit hole was with What the Dead Men Say, a short story that PKD used as inspiration for his novel Ubik. This is the only short story to inspire a novel in our list.

PKD’s work has led to a whopping thirteen films inspired by his work (s). The first one on our list is undoubtedly one you are already familiar with.

1. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Blade Runner

We start off our list with nothing less than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which of course led to one of the leading works that founded the Cyberpunk genre, Blade Runner. In the book, the world has experienced a global crisis where animal life has died to such an extent that people own pets as symbols of wealth, since they are incredibly expensive. Those who can’t afford bona-fide animals (which are listed in catalogs with current prices much like stocks nowadays) have to settle for electric animals that mimic real animals. Of course the movie blade runner has none of this, but there is also a significant plot of androids being hunted and questioning their place in the world.

2. We Can Remember it For You Wholesale and Total Recall

The second adaptation on our list is We can remember it for you wholesale, which was a short story adapted into a more famous movie called Total Recall played by Arnold Schwarzenegger that came out in 1990, and then later remade in 2012 with Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bill Nighy, and John Cho. While the original Total Recall takes place partially on Mars, and has surprising things like mutants, the remake settles on basic action and a world with an elevator that goes through the core to connect a poor and rich world. All three stories play with the meaning of memory and how it can shape what you think is your identity and reality, but in different ways.

3. The Minority Report and Minority Report

Third on our list is the short story The Minority Report, which inspired Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report with Tom Cruise, a tale about free will and controlling the future. While PKD’s short story is obviously more straightforward, it focuses less on action and more on political intrigue and pitting free will versus determinism. While Spielberg’s Minority Report is similar, the theme of political plotting is almost non-existent, replaced instead by a fast-paced game of cat and mouse as main character John Anderton (Cruise) tries to escape his old division of pre-crime to solve the mystery of the murder he is supposed to commit but hasn’t yet. There is a strong focus here on broken families again, which is a theme that seems somewhat common in Spielberg’s work.

4. A Scanner Darkly (same name)

The novel A Scanner Darkly resulted in the brilliantly-imagined, drug-addled roteroscope film called A Scanner Darkly, with Keanu Reeves (The Matrix, Johnny Mnemonic), Robert Downey Jr., Woodly Harrelson, and Winona Ryder. I have not read the novel yet, but it is said to be semi-autobiographical, and is set in Orange County, California, in the then-future of 1994 (it was published in 1977). Apparently the director Richard Linklater worked closely with the PKD estate to adapt the movie faithfully from the novel, since it was one of PKD’s favorite and most personal ones.

5. Adjustment Team and The Adjustment Bureau

Next on our list is the short story Adjustment Team, later adapted into The Adjustment Bureau with Matt Damon (Elysium) and Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow). Originally an insurance salesman in the short story, the screenplay writer George Nolfi wanted a character that would have consequences to his life choices past himself, and thus settled on Damon playing an up-and-coming politician. The story revolves around the idea that fate is actually a certain group of everyday people that decide your fate for you, modifying your reality in subtle ways in order to fit their own party agenda.

6. The Golden Man and Next

Next we have, well, Next, which was adapted from PKD’s short story The Golden Man about someone who could predict the future. The short story was in a science fiction novelette set in a post-apocalyptic future where mutants exist as a smaller demographic of normal humans. As a result they are hunted, but when the government catches the main character Cris, it finds it difficult to kill him due to his powers of precognition. Meanwhile, Next starred Nicholas Cage, Julianne Moore, and Jessica Biel. Cris Johnson can see the immediate future in Las Vegas but as a result is the target of a terrorist group, and then becomes wanted by the FBI to fight that same terrorist group.

7. Paycheck (same name)

and Paycheck, with Ben Affleck, Paul Giamatti, Uma Thurman, and Aaron Eckhart.

Paycheck was another science fiction novelette where the main character, Jennings, completes a secret 2-year contract and then has his memory wiped in return for being paid a lot of money. Upon waking up after his memory wipe, however, he finds that he had asked to be paid with a bag of trinkets instead of the money. He then gets arrested by the police, but the bag of trinkets helps him escape, because during his tenure he had been able to see the future so the bag of trinkets are a carefully-chose set to allow him to escape the police. The film adaptation is actually surprisingly similar to the novelette.

This last one was especially interesting because it was directed by John Woo, who was one of the Wachowski’s favorite directors. They liked his films so much that for the Matrix sequel video game, The Path of Neo, the player plays Neo in an exact replica of the Teahouse shootout scene from Woo’s Hardboiled. The other interesting thing I noted about Paycheck is that the trailer for Paycheck features the same song that was written for a scene in Matrix Reloaded, called Zion by Fluke (the rave scene in Zion). Matrix Reloaded came out in May of 2003, but Paycheck came out in December of the same year.

8. Second Variety and Screamers

Second Variety is next on our list, a short story about a future war in the trenches between American and Russian forces. Autonomous robots with rotary blades called Claws live in the sand and attack anyone designated as a target, before they start developing the second variety, which are androids that look like humans. The movie Screamers follows the same premise, except for the added aspect that the android can only be properly identified as such when it screams.

9. Impostor (same name)

There was also a film adaptation of the short story Impostor, with the film using the same name, starring Gary Sinise, Madeleine Stowe, and Vincent D’Onofrio. Impostor was a story about a man who thinks he is human, until his colleagues intercept him and insist he is actually an android impostor, that his real human self was killed and replaced with his android counterpart in order to carry out a terrorist act sometime in the future without knowing it. The movie very much follows the same story and stays faithful to the short story.

An Excellent Source of Inspiration for Hollywood

So how many of these movies have you seen? How about the books and short stories? Have you read them all?

If you’ve seen all the movies and read all the works, then you can truly consider yourself a die-hard PKD fan, and you probably question your reality. So make sure to get a can of Ubik in a store near you!

Movies

Review: Ghost in the Shell (2017)

February 1, 2020 Alexander V Woods 1 Comment

The Premise

Ghost in the shell is directed by Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) and based On Masamune Shirow’s anime by the same name. It stars Scarlett Johansson as the main character of The Major (Motoko Kusanagi), along with Takeshi Kitano (Chief Aramaki), Michael Pitt (Kuze), Pilou Asbaek (Batou), Chin Han (Togusa), and Juliette Binoche (Doctor Ouelet). Set in the future in Japan, The Major is part of an anti-terrorist bureau called Section 9 that is tasked with investigating a Cyber-terrorist called Kuze, while discovering her own origins at the same time. The Major is also a Cyborg Super-soldier, more machine than human, and grapples with her own human-machine identity.

Starting us off

The movie starts with a beautiful introduction, providing the credits as Major’s synthetic body, her shell, is being created. This is very similar to the introductory scene in the 1995 anime, but in my opinion, Clint Mansell’s soundtrack is a lot nicer. Although a lot of people love the music of the original anime introduction, to me, the chanting voices always were rather jarring. Mansell’s light semi-electronic notes wafting slowly throughout the sequence provides an almost mystical, alluring atmosphere.

The movie suffers again from needless exposition by explaining what Hanka Robotics is and what kind of world this is. Perhaps this was done to make the movie more palatable to a wider range of audiences, but they really would have made the movie better without it.

Visually Stunning–How a Cyberpunk City Should Be

The first real scene, after Major’s awakening, is the first sign of how gorgeous this film will be. This scene feels like a proper tribute to what a cyberpunk megapolis should be, made in a modern style without an excess of digital effects. To be honest, ever since I saw this movie in theaters, the image that comes to mind of a Cyberpunk city is always this city, this world.

Yep. Cyberpunk.

Taking it all in

Upon re-watching this movie, there’s a certain beauty in simple scenes that aren’t immediately apparent. Like Batou feeding the stray dogs, including the basset hounds that are a trademark of the original Ghost in the Shell anime. Or the scene right before when he gets the bones for the dogs, where we see what street markets look like, with all the basic meat vendors casually sporting enhancements including entire android arms like it’s nothing.

The last time I saw so many casually augmented people in an urban city was in Alita: Battle Angel, and it’s incredible to see all the diversity. I literally have to pause the scenes to take in everything I’m seeing.

Part-Tactical Spec-Ops, Part Reflection on Humanity

Another excellent part of the movie is the tactical nature of the film, in addition to the self-reflecting nature of the film. We often see Section 9 moving as a unit, working and planning together. Aerial shots of them closing on locations make this that much more fun and palpable.

Motoko (Major) is trying to figure out what makes her human, or machine, or whatever she is in between. You can see this as she studies a human prostitute with wonder, and as she looks at geisha bots with scorn, wondering how she is any different. She seems to consider herself unworthy of human value in the same way that her fellow humans are–because she is just a machine, and perhaps also just a weapon, what she thinks and feels has no importance. At least, at first she seems to think this. She then begins to question it, the more she tries to find this Kuze character who seems somehow familiar, while trying to stop his terrorist actions of hacks and manipulation and killing.

There is a particularly potent scene that displays this as she comes face to face with Kuze. For the first time, we see what’s underneath her skin–her metal shell. It’s easy to see how she grapples with who she is, made even more so once she goes back to the person that had always been the closest to her mother–Doctor Ouelet. When she learns the truth of her past, the audience can feel and see how truly alone she feels. That her once-enemy, who granted is morally bankrupt, is the closest she has to what resembles a brother.

This then leads to another great scene–the harbor scene, where major looks for answers in the underwater depths, surrounded by darkness and perpetual blissful silence. We also get some more great shots of the city in the distance.

Batou

I’ve always loved Batou, but Pilou Asbaek’s performance here as the resigned, kind, understanding team partner really shines. I love his slow, almost drunkenly deliberate movements, as he’s trying to understand what his friend is going through. The audience once again is treated to a beautiful dark cityscape behind the two on the little fishing boat.

In general this is simply a beautiful film. There are scenes reminiscent of the Kowloon walled city in Hong Kong, like when she goes to visit a particular woman of interest. The giant superstructures are so iconic in Cyberpunk films, with beautiful circular shots looking up. Pausing in these scenes almost gave me the impression that I was watching Inception. The Tron-like Motorcycles, the neon-lit highways, all are very iconically Cyberpunk.

In my opinion, the ending was very satisfying, although a little different from the Anime version. This is one of those movies where you really need a second viewing, or a third. But even after multiple viewings, it’s still a beautiful, enjoyable movie with a great soundtrack and solid plot.

Final Verdict: 9/10

Due to its beautiful cinematography, interesting characters, exciting action and tactical sequences, and excellent score, I give this movie a final score of 9/10. I would have liked to go a little deeper with the characters, to have them explore the human/cyborg element a little more than they did (and I know this is possible because it is done better in the anime). But other than this minor element, this film is excellent, and I highly recommend it.

Movies

Bloodshot: The upcoming 2020 Cyberpunk Film no one’s talking about

January 25, 2020 Alexander V Woods

Less Cyberpunk Content than 2019

2020 has plenty of Cyberpunk content set to come out: Of course, the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 in ~~April~~ September, and then its smaller brother Ghostrunner in August. But those are both video games. What movies are there to look forward to?

Unfortunately, other than the widely-anticipated Season 2 of Altered Carbon, there aren’t a lot of cyberpunk films set to come out this year. One of them you may not have heard of is Bloodshot.

Bloodshot: the Cyberpunk film of March 2020

Due out March 13th in the US and end of February/first week of March in Europe (for the complete list of release dates, since they’re surprisingly country-specific, click here), Bloodshot will hopefully get us our cyberpunk fix for that month, provided you haven’t finished watching Altered Carbon’s Season 2 already.

Comic Book Origins

This is actually a film adaptation of a comic book character of the same name coming from Valiant Comics, a smaller and lesser-known comics publisher similar to DC comics or Marvel. But while DC and Marvel have traditionally focused more on good superheros, Valiant tried to carve out a slice of the market for itself by focusing more on anti-heros, like Bloodshot.

The result that we get is what looks like a slick action-focused flick starring Vin Diesel as Marine Raymond “Ray” Garrison who is reborn by a team of scientists with nanotechnology after his wife is suddenly assassinated. The nanites allow him to become somewhat of a superhuman, with enhanced strength, senses, and healing factor. Originally amnesiac after the operation, his memories start to come back to him as he trains with fellow super-soldiers, until he breaks out to find the man that killed his wife. However, not everything is at it seems.

Check out the first trailer below and see for yourself.

Expectations

Bloodshot is the latest movie set to come out in 2020 that I would deem Cyberpunk enough to warrant the label, although it’s definitely heavier on the action side. We’ll see how much low-life and high-tech elements it actually has. For now it appears rather similar to Terminator, but without the androids and with a dash of Total Recall and Wolverine. It at least has a character with android arms a la Doctor Octopus or reminiscent of Max from Elysium.

Cast

In addition to Vin Diesel in the titular role, it looks like what I imagine to be the main villain will be played by Guy Pearce (Iron Man 3). Jared Leto had been considered for the role, which would have been another Cyberpunk film for him to star in, but ultimately the role went to Diesel. Also cast have been Sam Heughan (Outlander) and Eida Gonzalez

The Role of Bloodshot in Valiant Comics

If you’re curious to learn more about the backstory of Bloodshot and his important role in the lesser-known publisher Valiant Comics, check out this excellent breakdown from Comics Explained below.

I for one am definitely excited for this to come out, especially since I’m a big Vin Diesel fan. But the fact that it just got a PG-13 rating is tempering my expectations a little.

Make sure to check out Bloodshot before it leaves the theaters, and make it something to look forward to.

Movies

Review: Babylon A.D.

January 18, 2020 Alexander V Woods

Babylon A.D. is Cyberpunk enough.

Babylon A.D. probably doesn’t pass the test of being “Cyberpunk” for some, due to its sparse high-tech elements, but its low-life quota more than makes up for it and along with its interesting dystopian world, it merits a mention here. So here goes.

This movie really isn’t that bad.

That’s what I’m going to start with for this movie. I had seen it as an option to watch on Netflix, but a quick perusal of its reviews online scared me away. The cover photo was also B-movie bland and there were no scenes to get me excited about the film. Once I finally watched the trailer, I also felt lukewarm about trying out the movie.

But sometimes, there’s an itch to watch a new, high-quality cyberpunk movie that simply needs to be scratched.

I like Vin Diesel, but when I saw Michelle Yeoh was in it (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) I was convinced that I needed to see this movie.

Yeoh kicks plenty of ass with her fists in this film. But she’s still willing to pick up a trusty handgun from time to time.

With my expectations already set abysmally low, this movie was actually able to surprise me in a very good way. The movie jumps right in without needless exposition that plagues so many other movies (I’m looking at you, Ready Player One) and the viewer is able to see a dystopian world somewhere in eastern Europe where everything is run-down, food is extremely scarce, and guns are as commonplace as cigarette butts on the streets. There’s an early scene with a handgun that lights up, but other than that, we don’t see much high-tech until much later in the movie, and even then it’s still very sparse.

That doesn’t hurt the movie, though. Vin Diesel is great at being the emotionally-hardened killing machine that the likes of Bruce Willis and Jason Statham have similarly made successful in their straightforward action flicks.

Pictured above: Vin Diesel completely out of fucks to give.

Babylon A.D. feels like an action flick set in a dystopian future. If seen in that light, it’s a lot of fun. There are shootouts, explosions, hand-to-hand combat, and even random military elements like combat gear and even a giant military helicopter that is retrofitted for transportation purposes. The pacing is solid except for some moments that dragged, and I was frequently surprised by sudden events happening throughout the film.

The Story

Vin Diesel plays mercenary Toorop who is hired by a Russian mobster, played by Gerard Depardieu (The Man in the Iron Mask) to bring a young woman named Aurora (Melanie Thierry) from Europe to New York City. Once given a UN passport, he must bring Aurora and her guardian Sister Rebeka (Yeoh) from their convent in Kyrgyztan to New York by traveling through Russia to Vladivostok and across the Pacific to Alaska.

The trio fights, bribes, and smuggles their way toward their destination, as the viewers slowly learn more about Aurora’s mysterious past. Through the difficult journey they become somewhat of a family, until the movie comes to a head about an hour in once they arrive in New York.

Then something happens, which makes little sense to me, and which honestly lost me for the end of the movie. Up until that point, I had been enjoying the movie immensely. I guess you just have to bear with them until their conclusion, which unfortunately lost the emotional gravitas it was probably striving for.

However, there was one small consolation prize: this guy.

“You see, there is only one constant. One Universal. And that is…that I LOVE French wine.”–What I imagined him saying in this moment.

That’s right, folks! Lambert Wilson is in this movie too! Unfortunately he has only a small role, but seeing him play yet another smug man of power with his sublime French accent made me not only like this movie even more, but realize just how much I loved his performance as The Merovingian in the Matrix franchise.

Final Verdict: 7.5/10

You should definitely see this movie, especially if you have a Netflix account. It would have been an 8 if the movie hadn’t gotten in the way of itself during the last 30 minutes (it was so close to being great!) but it also would have been worse if not for the performances of Yeoh, Wilson, and Diesel. It certainly doesn’t warrant the 6% on Rotten Tomatoes (seriously??). Nonetheless, with good acting from most of the actors, fun action, decent pacing, and an interesting idea (for the most part), this movie is worth a viewing for any proper fan of Cyberpunk and Dystopia in particular.

Interviews, Movies, News, Television, Video Games

2019: A Year in Review for Cyberpunk

January 1, 2020 Alexander V Woods

A Time to Look Back

We are lucky that the end of the year brings us two weeks of holidays, for Christmas and New Year’s, where we can sit down and take a minute to reflect on what the year has brought us. My last Year in Review, for 2018, described how I learned about and became obsessed with the genre of Cyberpunk. While different from 2018 in that I now know what the term means, 2019 has been a year of incredible growth for me personally and for the genre of Cyberpunk in general. On the first few days of 2019 I wrote the following:

I wonder what 2019 will bring, but one thing I know for sure is that my love for everything Cyberpunk will continue. I will carry on consuming and writing about cyberpunk media, starting off with this new year with watching the newly released Bandersnatch episode of Black Mirror, and then hopefully from watching Replicas and then Battle Angel: Alita. I’m also excited to read the newest addition to my cyberpunk library, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, as well as learning more about Philip K Dick–his life, his writing, and his philosophy.

Bandersnatch ended up being a creative new way to watch a series, but the ideas that came with it proved insufficient to warrant writing a review yet.

Replicas ended up being good, but it took me a lot longer to watch it than I expected. Alita: Battle Angel was amazing, as expected, but Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was so boring in the first 30 pages or so that I couldn’t even finish it. So that was a little disappointing.

So Many Great Surprises!

Nonetheless, I was happily surprised by a myriad of interesting new Cyberpunk releases that 2019 brought, many of which were things I could have never in my wildest dreams predicted (like Keanu being in Cyberpunk 2077 or Matrix 4 being announced!)

So now, dear reader, let’s take a look at each month and what cyberpunk news or media production was released.

January 2019: Replicas

The year started off lightly with the indie production of Replicas, released on January 11th in the US and featuring Cyberpunk legend Keanu Reeves, who plays a neuroscientist who tries to bring his family back to life via digitizing their consciousness into clone bodies. The movie was pretty good! More of a solving-a-series-of-problems thriller a la Da Vinci Code than action or horror film. I definitely recommend seeing it though, if you haven’t already. You can check out my more in-depth review of it here. The film got very little press coverage or mention, and I think was mostly ignored by the general public due to funding. The cyberpunk genre still hadn’t grown into its own at this point.

February 2019: Alita: Battle Angel

February 2019 came with the long-awaited GUNNM anime adaptation called Alita: Battle Angel. This movie did pretty well at the box office, and put the Cyberpunk genre back in the spotlight for the general public with its high production value and marketing. Released on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, the movie did an amazing job displaying both Motorball and Parkour in its film, while giving an overall palatable romance between the cyborg Alita and human Hugo.

March, 2019: Love, Death & Robots

As the picture above describes, this was a NSFW (Not Suitable For Work) animated Anthology series of short stories all related loosely to the themes of Love, Death, and Robots. While some stories showed just science-fiction, and others showed just fantasy (like vampires and werewolves), there were a total of six clearly Cyberpunk episodes in this Anthology. They were Sonnie’s Edge, The Witness, Suits, Beyond the Aquila Rift, Zima Blue, and Blind Spot. For my favorites and a more in-depth review of each episode, you can check it out here. This Anthology was very interesting because it made clear, in my mind at least, the different kinds of Cyberpunk sub-genres that exist: Action, Horror, and Mystery/Drama.

April: Organ-Harvesting and the horrors of the Uyghurs

After seeing a report of this on CNN and then later on the news, I shared the horrors of what sound like basically concentration camps for ethnic Uyghurs who are being targeted by the Chinese government. Very dystopian indeed. This story, sadly, is still developing.

May: Pokemon: Detective Pikachu

Despite probably not officially Cyberpunk, I shared my views on how Pokemon Detective Pikachu had some decidedly Cyberpunk themes in it. It was also an all-around fun movie to watch, especially with Ryan Reynolds voicing Pikachu.

June: Cyberpunk 2077 Trailer with the legendary reveal of Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand

This is the moment where internet fandom went into overdrive. At E3 fans first heard Keanu Reeve’s voice, then saw his digital likeness come on screen during Cyberpunk 2077’s newest official cinematic trailer for their video game due to be released in April of next year. Few will forget the moment when Keanu himself then comes onto the stage to announce the game’s release date, and that fateful fan who yelled “you’re breathtaking!” to which Keanu responds “no, YOU’re breathtaking! You’re ALL breathtaking!” This, along with John Wick 3, officially hailed the beginning of what some are calling the Keanussance. August’s big announcement didn’t help in this regard.

July: …I’ve got nothing.

August: Matrix 4 announced

This was perhaps the one biggest announcement that I couldn’t have even ever imagined happening in my lifetime. Matrix 4 was officially announced, with many of the actors from the original trilogy returning, including Carrie Anne-Moss and Keanu Reeves himself. Since the original announcement I have been following any further updates as we have been getting them, such as concept artists, hopes and predictions, and October and December updates.

September: New Gameplay Trailer for Cyberpunk 2077

September brought us a new video of the gameplay we could expect in Cyberpunk 2077, including a deep dive into the locations, classes, and factions we could expect from the videogame. Which class will you be?

October: Terminator: Dark Fate

Retconning the sequels after T-2 and intended to be a reboot of the franchise, James Cameron returned to produce this sequel, creating a movie that was pretty good in my opinion but lacked any significant wow-factor. It performed alright in the box office, but not well enough to jumpstart the franchise again. Will this be the last Terminator film we will ever see? Time will tell.

November: Tesla’s Cybertruck

The much-teased Cybertruck was finally introduced by Elon Musk, in a manner that was probably meant to be a big trending epic reveal but ended up being a bit of an embarrassment for Elon as the supposedly bulletproof and shatterproof windows of the Cybertruck broke (twice!) during the live demonstration in the unveiling. Oops! “We’ll fix it in post” Elon tried to nonchalantly say, but the damage was (literally) already done. Nonetheless, it still turned heads and didn’t stop multiple preorders from being submitted, promising that this truck will be the newest hot item to hit the roads. Whether the trend will last, no one knows, but it was worth noting how mainstream Cyberpunk has become considering how similar the visuals and fonts were for the Cybertruck and the Cyberpunk 2077 video game. Elon is clearly a fan.

December: Expanding the community: Interviewing and collaborating with NeoSkies

The most recent development from the last couple of months is more of a personal development which has been discovering and interacting with other Cyberpunk fans who enjoy the genre and like creating content as much as I do. One such fan has been NeoSkies. It’s been great to follow NeoSkies’ content production online with Instagram, Twitter, etc. and to engage in her surveys and discussions with the Cyberpunk Community around the world. We’re not alone! It was also similarly great for me to have the opportunity to interview NeoSkies on her process and inspiration, as well.

Looking to the Future

So what does the future hold for Cyberpunk? Something very exciting indeed. Just look at all the great content, announcements and surprises we got from 2019! So while it’s impossible to say what surprise announcements or content we will get, what we can do is predict things that are already in the pipeline and have been announced.

Altered Carbon: Season 2 should arrive to Netflix in February 2020, which will start off our year right
Cyberpunk 2077 will be released in April, which should really kick the Cyberpunk genre into front and center of pop culture, especially considering it’s in the name of the game itself.
Matrix 4 isn’t expected until 2021, but 2020 will bring with it more and more production and casting updates, as well as hopefully story clues, so the production of Matrix 4 will be very fun to watch. Production should begin in February as well.
While not exactly Cyberpunk, Denis Villeneuve did an excellent job with Cyberpunk 2049, so his adaption of the science-fiction classic DUNE will be very exciting to see. There may be some cyberpunk elements present, but it should be a mostly science fiction tale.

So what new Cyberpunk media are you looking forward to seeing/reading/playing in 2020? Let us know in the comments below!

Movies

Matrix 4: December 2019 Latest Updates

December 22, 2019 Alexander V Woods 2 Comments

It’s been a slow drip of news for Matrix 4 updates, so I wait until the end of the month to give you all the most important, juicy details altogether. Here’s what’s new with what we now know with Matrix 4:

Casting Updates

Neil Patrick Harris

Neil Patrick Harris has been cast, and his role is still unknown. You may recognize him as Barney from How I Met Your Mother. He’s also been in movies such as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, Gone Girl, and a Series of Unfortunate Events. This is one of the most surprising choices to cast, and it will be interesting to see what role he will be in.

Jessica Henwick

Jessica Henwick has been cast, and her role is still unknown as well. You may recognize her as Nymeria Sand from Game of Thrones, or as Colleen Wing in The Iron Fist. She can definitely kick ass, so she’s an exciting martial arts casting choice.

Jonathan Groff

Jonathan Groff is another surprising cast choice. He’s probably best known as voicing Kristoff and his reindeer Sven from Frozen and Frozen 2. He’s also a main character on the series Mind Hunter from Netflix, where he plays an FBI agent, so he can definitely play some serious stuff.

Toby Onmuwere

Toby Onmuwere has been cast, and once again, his role is as of yet a mystery. This casting actually wasn’t much of a surprised to me, since he’s a main character in the Wachowski’s series Sense 8. Not only is Sense 8 seasons 1 and 2 some of the latest work that the Wachowskis have made, it has also been written by David Mitchell and Alexander Hemon, who both helped contribute to writing the script for Matrix 4. I’m expecting to hear more casting choices from people who contributed to Sense 8, especially Doona Bae for instance, who is in Sense 8 too and was a major character in the Cyberpunk scenes of Cloud Atlas, which was also by David Mitchell.

Other News

Keanu Reeves has a girlfriend!

Keanu and GF

That’s right, internet, Keanu Reeves is unfortunately off the market! Considering it’s the age of the Keanussance, it was big news when this story broke on November 6 that Keanu was walking down the red carpet holding hands with Alexandra Grant.

After meeting and getting together with Jennifer Syme in 1998, the couple experienced their first tragedy when she had a stillbirth after 8 months of pregnancy. It devastated the couple, who separated, and then not even two years later, Syme was killed in a tragic car crash.

So now after being single for about 15 years, fans were very happy to learn that he found happiness again! Also for someone as cultured and interesting as Alexandra Grant, who is a multilingual visual artist who is also a feminist and has published two books with Reeves, “Ode to Happiness” and “Shadows”.

Keanu Reeves and Carrie Anne-Moss are working out again to prepare for their roles

“That was such a shocker,” Moss said to ET when she learned she would be returning to the Matrix franchise. “I’m still processing it that I’m going to do that again.” About playing Trinity, she added that it’s not about “trying to replicate something. You’re trying to expand it.”

“It’s definitely 20 years later and I have to remember to take my time because I get pretty into it,” she says with a laugh. “I have to be so incredibly strong to do it.” She remembers this because when she was filming the Matrix trilogy, she actually broke her leg doing it.

“That happened,” Moss said matter-of-factly about getting hurt. “Every day I was making those movies was incredible. Even when it was hard, even when we were dealing with tough stuff.”

Although it will be tough, grueling stuff, Moss reports she’s ready for the challenge. “I’m just so happy to be in it and being part of it,” she said, adding that what she remembers most about her time working on the franchise is how much she loved doing it. “To me, that’s the only part I have control over is my experience on the project — not necessarily how it’s received or how it does.”

Moss concludes by saying, “I’m taking it one day at a time for sure.”

Meanwhile, Keanu Reeves is back at Taran Tactical to train for both The Matrix and John Wick movies. So perhaps we can expect…

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Guns. Lots of Guns.

Last, but not least: Matrix 4 finally has a release date!

Matrix 4 has finally been given a release date, so mark your calendars: It’s May 21st, 2021. For now this is conflicting with John Wick 3 release date (which still doesn’t even have a script yet) but it’s expected John Wick will be bumped to a later date. Nonetheless, that didn’t stop mega-fans from dubbing the day as Keanu Reeves day.

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Movies

Black Mirror’s Metalhead Review–Could This Be Our Dystopian Future?

December 15, 2019 Alexander V Woods 2 Comments

Not for the faint of heart

Metalhead is an incredibly bleak episode, one of many in the Black Mirror Series. It’s set in a dystopian future where sentient robots, called dogs, hunt humans. The entire episode is set in black and white, and the musical score is as chilling as any proper horror short story. The episode follows three members of a survival group who are out foraging for supplies, looking for a specific box on the top shelf of a specific warehouse out in the wasteland. Hastily-abandoned cars litter the side of the road among empty, destitue landscapes, suggesting something went seriously wrong in this world.

A Killer Robot Dog With No Face

The characters encounter one of these “dogs” early on, and this is where the true horror sets in. This dog is completely expressionless, adding a cold and calculating element to its purpose to apparently search and destroy any human it comes across. Part of what makes this killer robot so chilling is perhaps because the technology it employs does not seem that far-fetched compared to what is possible today.

Slow-Motion Horror

Another masterfully done element of this short horror piece is the slow-motion effects that are employed whenever something truly shocking and terrible happens. It reminds me of anytime something awful is in progress of happening, so bad it requires a shift in worldview or complete change in perspective afterwards, and so while it happens it seems as if time slows down. If you’ve ever watched something truly valuable like a new cellphone fall towards the hard concrete without a case, or some priceless bauble tumble into a drain, perhaps you can relate. And so too is the viewer taken along for the ride of the horror that these humans encounter.

Similar to other horror films (I would think, because it’s a genre I try to avoid) the camera often takes the place of what the dog sees, how it scans the land and how it pursues its prey. This at least reminded me of the AI visions from the perspective of the Terminator.

Alternating Between First-Person and Third-Person Shots

Surprisingly, the camera never takes a complete first person perspective of the humans in the episode, but with the masterfully cut angles it might well have with its close-up shots of the tools that the surviving humans encounter in their breathless run from the dogs.

As terrifying as this episode is (including the decidedly unhappy ending), one might find solace in thinking that this dog, this technology, isn’t possible.

Why This Matters: Chilling Parallels with Boston Dynamics

Well, that same terror might return if the viewer knows about the work of Boston Dynamics. See any similarities here?

Boston Dynamics has already made several breakthroughs in the mobility of their robots, and I for one think it’s just a matter of time that these robots, similar to the drone technology we already have, will become more widespread and available, especially with the military.

It’s not a far leap to guess that weaponizing the quadruped robots they already have would be useful to ‘save lives’ for the military, and once that’s achieved, it’s only a matter of time before those weaponized robots are hunting enemy humans (as this Youtube Channel Corridor effectively imagines). Combine that with the drones that are already dropping bombs on people, and you have a truly dystopian future.

The acting in this episode is masterfully done, as are the shots and the scenes. I would have liked to see the episode in color, as the black and white scale was unnecessary, but I suppose it does add an artistic and even more somber touch to an already depressingly terrorizing episode.

Final Verdict: 9/10

You have to take the episode for what it is: A chilling, and thrilling, standalone episode. I always find that it’s the episodes that you keep on thinking about long after you’ve seen it that are the most influential, and this episode is definitely one of them. Because of the acting, the black and white stylistic choice, the action, the horror, and the direction of different angles, this is an excellent thrilling robot horror episode.

Movies

Review: Terminator Dark Fate

November 9, 2019 Alexander V Woods 3 Comments

Terminator: Dark Fate, while being the 6th film in the Terminator franchise, is set after T2 and meant as both a soft reboot and a sequel to the Terminator saga. With the failures that were Genisys and Salvation, Terminator: Dark Fate chose to go back to the basics, with James Cameron assisting in producing and writing the story, and Tim Miller (Deadpool) directing. Also returning are Arnold Schwarzenegger (a Terminator) and Linda Hamilton (Sarah Connor), both of which provide a superb performance. Newcomers are Mackenzie Davis as Grace, an augmented human soldier from the future, Gabriel Luna as a Rev-9, the newest and most deadly Terminator series we’ve seen yet, and Natalia Reyes as Daniela “Dani” Ramos, a young woman who is the Rev-9’s new target.

A Familiar Story

Dani is working at a car factory plant in Mexico when Grace, an augmented human soldier from the future, arrives to save her from Rev-9, the latest Terminator from a new terrible future. In their attempt to flee from the Rev-9 they encounter Sarah Connor, and then later another older Terminator, who all work together to protect Dani from the deadly and seemingly unstoppable Rev-9.

Review

Dark Fate was an exciting, thrilling way to spend 2 hours. It is definitely better than Genisys and Salvation, and a solid addition to the saga, but because of its need to reboot the series, it seems that the director and writer here didn’t want to take any chances by trying things outside the box. There was nothing particularly new in this movie, which can be both a good and a bad thing.

The Action

Visually, it was very well done. There’s a fast-paced car chase scene that reminded me of the highway chase scene in The Matrix Reloaded. There’s also a thrilling plane chase scene which was done in a creative way, and also reminded me of the plane scene from Fast and Furious 7. There were also a few nods to the previous films, in terms of parallel scenes, and it’s always nice to see the gang back together obviously.

A New Subtle Dynamic

What I wasn’t expecting was how much I enjoyed watching three different kinds of women that were all bad-ass in their own way. Sarah Connor is a grizzled, bitter, hard-as-nails human with enough emotional trauma in her past to make her cold non-nonsense character make perfect sense. Grace is a highly-capable super-soldier whose sole focus is her mission, and by extension her compassion towards protecting her charge, Dani, from harm. The short flashbacks of Grace’s character did a great job filling in her motivations as well. Finally, the whole film is tied together by the completely human responses that Dani delivers while learning she is being targeted by a robot death machine and needing to adapt on the fly to everything happening around her. She makes some mistakes and is shocked and frozen in place at times, which is exactly what she needs to do to ground the film in a realistic human reaction to an unrealistic situation. She also does a much better job of it than Sarah Connor did in T2.

I look forward to seeing more films with highly-capable action heroines that can actually perform the action well. Halle Berry’s performance in John Wick 3, for instance, left me a little wanting. Dark Fate did not.

In fact, for most of the film, there are hardly any men at all. The only men we do see are actually robots, and therefore aren’t really men at all. There are no male guardians telling these women what to do, and no male saviors of the world, which has always been the cliche in the majority of action films we’ve seen before. This made for a very interesting dynamic.

More interesting characters

The characters in Dark Fate were a lot better developed this time around compared to Genisys and Salvation, and as a result it made me care more about what happened to them. I also liked the sense of despair that gripped the characters, and the viewers, as nothing seemed to stop the main terminator antagonist. All three female protagonists are struck by tragedy in one way or another at some point in their story, which makes them deeper characters. For Dani, it’s something that happens early on in the film, so her pain is raw and fresh. For Sarah, it’s a tragic event explained at the beginning of the film, which is revisited later on. For Grace, it’s the traumatic experiences that came with the end of the world in her dystopian future, which she relates to the others and gives her greater depth. However, her backstory was a bit shallower to the other two, and I would have liked to have seen more of her story developed, but it may have been cut for timing reasons.

A New Terminator

Despite expecting everything to be the same, one thing that really surprised me in this film was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator. In the film this Terminator has lost any connection with Skynet, and therefore has no more mission objectives. So what happens to a T-100 without orders, but with the same processing and adaptability capabilities that it had before? This film answers this question. In retrospect it makes sense and I guess I should have seen it coming, but although I recognized the moment when the Terminator would present himself, up until that point I had no idea when or where he would come up in the story, and that was great. Also, what happens to the Terminator by the end of the movie felt like a very elegant way to wrap up Schwarzenegger’s involvement in the series, allowing for different models and different faces in the future, if ever a sequel is made. There were other clues to Schwarzenegger perhaps ending his involvement in the series, such as him choosing not to pick up his iconic black sunglasses after considering them for a second, and telling a family he was with that “I won’t be back,” modifying his classic tagline. For Terminator fans, these subtle moments spoke volumes.

Setting

This film takes place in Mexico, at the border, and in Texas, which allowed the film to offer soft nods to current cultural clashes such as immigration and gun control. There’s an exciting car chase and highway scene at the beginning, and then another scene in the air with a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy and a Humvee, as well as a heart-pounding scene underwater at/in a Dam. While most of these scenes are different from previous Terminator films, some, in particular the final scene of the film, felt very familiar to the previous films, which was great.

Final Verdict

Although I left the theater feeling like, while enjoyable, this film offered little new (it stays formulaic in its plot of vulnerable human who is the salvation to mankind is protected and on the run from an unstoppable robot killing machine) upon reflection there were a lot of things that I really enjoyed in this film. The female heroines, both the T-100 and the Rev-9, Sarah’s performance and backstory, the action, the set locations (mostly Mexico, which is something different for the series, but also in the air and underwater), it all combined for an exciting and enjoyable film.

My final rating for this film is 8/10. It’s not a very complex plot and doesn’t offer much new, but the performances, action, and special effects were all great, making this a very enjoyable film to watch and a welcome addition to the Cyberpunk genre (even though this film had a limited amount of high-tech, low-life elements in it).

It’s a shame that this excellent film under performed in the box office. I would guess that it’s performance has nothing to do with the quality of the film, and more to due perhaps with audience fatigue with the series, coupled with bad associations with the previous films and perhaps a general decrease in the numbers of people going to the movies. This unfortunately means that a sequel will probably be shelved for the indefinite future.

Movies

Matrix 4: What we know so far

October 13, 2019 Alexander V Woods 1 Comment

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It’s been a slow drip of news, and what we’ve learned has been sparse indeed. I’ve been holding back on reporting each news piece as I learn it, deciding instead to wait until there’s enough little bits of information to warrant an update. Well, we’ve reached that threshold, so here’s everything we’ve learned so far about the production of Matrix 4.

1. The name of the Warner Brothers project is Ice Cream.

A tasty project name, to be sure. I guess it sounded better than tasty wheat.

2. Keanu Reeves has read the script and says it’s “ambitious”

On September 24th, Reeves was on the red carpet with his sister Karina Miller attending the premiere of the new movie she produced, Semper Fi. While in attendance, Entertainment Tonight got the chance to speak with Reeves, who admitted that he had read the script. “It’s very ambitious…as it should be!” teased Reeves. Considering how hard it would be to top the original trilogy, including coming up with new concepts and ideas, the fact that Reeves had this to say is exciting to say the least.

3. Carrie Anne-Moss has also read the script and says it is “amazing”

While attending the New York Comic Con last Thursday to promote her role in Season 2 of CBS All Access’ “Tell Me A Story”, Carrie-Anne Moss told a small group of reporters that she’s keeping most of her thoughts about the new Matrix movie close to her heart, but that she has read the script and said “It’s amazing. I’m excited. I’m super excited. Believe me, I’d love to do nothing but talk about it, but, at the same time, there’s a time for that, and I want it to be — I want to give it all the respect and room that it needs.”

Well that’s two promising responses from the only two leads who are confirmed to be returning. Good enough for me!

4. There may also be a young Neo and young Morpheus, in addition to an older Neo and Trinity played by Keanu and Carrie-Anne.

Variety reporter Justin Kroll, the same one who initially broke the story that Matrix 4 was beginning production, revealed on an episode of “My Mom’s Basement” podcast that the Warner Bros. are in the process of searching for a younger actor to portray Neo. This comes along with the previously reported rumor that they were also looking to cast a young Morpheus, which may explain why Laurence Fishburne hasn’t been confirmed as returning yet.

5. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has been cast.

Once again, Variety was the first to report that Yahya Abdul-Mateen II landed a lead role in Matrix 4. Apparently he met with Lana Wachowski over the week and in recent days,

There’s no word who Yahya will be playing, but it’s a pretty easy guess that he may be playing a young Morpheus after all. You may have recently seen Yahya as playing Aquaman’s nemesis the Black Manta in the latest DCEU live action film. He also played Lupita Nyong’o’s father in “Us” by Jordan Peele, and also had a starring role in the episode “Striking Vipers” alongside Anthony Mackie from season 5 of Black Mirror.

I felt his intensity was welcome in his portrayal of Black Mantis in Aquaman, but I haven’t seen him in anything else so I’m reserving judgement. I, for one, trust Lana’s casting choices though.

6. There may be 2 Matrix projects in production at the same time.

Say what???

Saving the best for last, this news comes from the twitter feed from Zak Penn, a writer who was said to be working on a Matrix project where supposedly Michael B. Jordan was being considered for the role. This is what he had to say:

people keep asking, so let me clarify there are two different #Matrix projects at wb. i wrote one set earlier in the timeline of the matrix universe. Lana Wachowski is directing a sequel that i did not work on, but cant wait to see. Neither of them are reboots. #notareboot

So…there are…two matrix projects in production at the same time? This raises more questions than it answers. Is Michael B. Jordan attached to Zak Penn’s project, then? And why aren’t the Wachowskis working on both of them? And what is the project about, could it be a prequel if it’s set earlier in the timeline?

That’s all I know about Matrix 4 updates, but I’ll remain plugged into the system trying to stay updated on any further developments as your operator. What do you think of all these updates? Let me know in the comments below.

Movies, Music

Review: Sturgill Simpson’s Sound and Fury

October 8, 2019 Alexander V Woods

sound and fury 2

Sound and Fury is what would happen if you added some Tokyo City LSD to Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Jack, and then made it into an hour-long country rock music video.

This is one of the most refreshing, and unusual, tales of a dystopian story with cyberpunk elements that I’ve seen in recent memory. It reminds me a bit of Love, Death and Robots, except the art and story is a lot more connected.

Here’s why Sound and Fury is not your average Anime tale.

Sturgill Simpson is a country singer. Who loves Japan. And decided to go all out in creating the coolest-ever Japanese Dystopian Future tale to go along with his new country rock album Sound and Fury.

To be fair, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this done. Daft Punk famously created “Interstella 5555” as an anime visual realization of their album Discovery. But Daft Punk is a lot more closely aligned to the typical Cyberpunk style. If you don’t believe me, just watch the latest Tron film.

A combination of different sounds and songs.

Sturgill Simpson’s “Sound and Fury” isn’t all Fury, and has many different sounds. Some are slow, for instance. His vocals are excellent, and the rock is great too, but it’s a very different kind of rock compared to the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077’s Samurai-style Punk Rock.

Listening to it on Spotify

Simpson’s album is up on Spotify, so before watching the entire film (which is now available for streaming on Netflix) I saw first a teaser trailer which consisted of a scene from the film, then a proper trailer, and then I listened to the album on Spotify before watching the film.

I would have never imagined the illustrious, imaginative visuals that go along with Simpson’s music. Much like I would have never imagined Interstella 5555, there is very little in way of connection between the actual music and the visuals. But they provide for one hell of a ride.

Unfortunately, the teaser trailer that got me so excited to watch the film probably oversold it, as in my opinion it’s one of the best, if not the best, scene from the entire film.

So what’s it about?

The film follows the story of a Japanese monastery and family within that are attacked ruthlessly by 2 foreigners, who seem to represent corporate greed or cruelty perhaps. The rest of the tale is mostly one of revenge. There are a couple side stories, such as one of a slave uprising in this dystopian future, and one of what appeared to be a homeless person seeking shelter before a bombardment on the city. All stories seem loosely connected, and I am still trying to piece it all together to be honest.

But my favorite tale, the one shown in the trailer, is the main story of course. The main character, a cyberpunk samurai, leads an attack against the corporate villains, with two katana blades forged from the blood and spirits of the blacksmiths who made them.

A Refreshing Surprise

And just as the climax of battle is about to be reached, with an all out battle between the hero and the two villains, what does the anime deliver? If you guessed an impromptu dance routine featuring literally everyone, including foreshadowing what’s to come before the battle even happened, then you’d be…surprisingly…accurate.

Needless to say, this was very confusing to me. After the dance routine more side stories are told, and then THE CREDITS, only after which the battle and its conclusion is finally shown. So don’t worry, the final battle WILL come, you just have to sit through the credits or fast forward to see it. I guess they really wanted you to appreciate the work that went into making this film. Its production value is outstanding.

Catchy tunes that will stick with you

What’s interesting is what happened to me after I saw the film. The music…REALLY stays with you. Things kick into gear with the driving percussion from Remember to Breathe, continuing along into Sing Along, which you might remember as the visual trailer for the film. Next the tracks speed up with a Good Look, also known as When Everyone Breaks Out Into That Crazy Dance Routine. The album then alternates between slowing down a speeding up, tempered beats and slow crooning served next to jarring electronic chords and discordant sounds in a wild feverish mix of electronic-infused country rock gone mad.

Final Verdict: Definitely worth watching and listening to.

So what are you waiting for? Check out the official trailer below:

And then see the music video for Sing Along:

And finally, check out the entire film on Netflix, streaming now. You know you want to.