Let’s do another one of these… Do you think Tron is cyberpunk?

The majority of the movie takes place inside a computer and the bad guy is near the head of an evil corporation, but is that enough? The characters in the movie range from scientist to a computer programmer who owns his own arcade. Not exactly low-lifes. And the only thing that could be considered high-tech is a prototype laser in a laboratory currently under research. Otherwise, it’s a perfectly ordinary modern-day setting. There’s no breakdown in society, there’s no massive wealth gap on display (unless you count someone not getting recognition for a video game he wrote).

So are the visuals of a world inside a computer enough to call it cyberpunk?

You can watch Tron on Disney+ if you haven’t seen it before: https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/tron/4MFq1JeXEe1z

(On a side note, I’m tempted to make a weekly “is this cyberpunk?” post just to help grow the community and drive discussion)

  • freamon@endlesstalk.org
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    1 year ago

    Instinctively I’d say no. It needs to be more than just visuals. It’s completely unfair of course, but I feel like if you can watch it on Disney+, then it’s automatically not Cyberpunk.