It has low-lifes living in the future, but there really isn’t much high-tech and governments are still in control (not corporations). So do you consider Escape From New York to be cyberpunk?

Apparently the movie was an influence for William Gibson:

Escape from New York never made it big, but it’s been redone a billion times as a rock video. I saw that movie, by the way, when I was starting “Burning Chrome” and it had a real influence on Neuromancer.

But that doesn’t immediately make it cyberpunk. After all, Gibson was also influenced by hard-boiled detective novels and that doesn’t make those cyberpunk.

I could see the argument for this either way so I’m curious what your thoughts are.

It’s streaming on Roku Channel and Freevee (Amazon Prime) if you haven’t seen it before.

  • @GCanuckEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    Since I’m invested… what apocalypse happened? Genuine question. It has been a while since I watched it, but the apocalypse happens at the end of Escape from LA, not before New York.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•1 year ago

      No apocalypse, it was just that crime had gone up significantly. From the opening scene:

      Narrator : In 1988, the crime rate in the United States rises four hundred percent. The once great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A fifty-foot containment wall is erected along the New Jersey shoreline, across the Harlem River, and down along the Brooklyn shoreline. It completely surrounds Manhattan Island. All bridges and waterways are mined. The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the island. There are no guards inside the prison, only prisoners and the worlds they have made. The rules are simple: once you go in, you don’t come out.

      • @GCanuckEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        Fair point. I still maintain it’s a cyberpunk genre. After all, increased crime is a pretty big deal in cyberpunk as well.

        We might have to agree to disagree on this one. :)

    • ZephyrXeroEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      Maybe I’m thinking more about Escape from LA then, but it seemed like the city was already in shambles at the beginning of EFNY