The lead-up to CD Projekt Red’s neon-lit opus, “Cyberpunk 2077,” started with a trailer released nearly eight years ago. Now, upon its long-gestating release, the hype has reached an all-time high. The video game – based on a tabletop role-playing game – promises the quintessential hallmarks of every cyberpunk story, namely: police militarization, mysterious megacorporations, anti-capitalist movements, body augmentation, ubiquitous advertising, urban grunge, overcrowded cities, lawlessness, netrunning and more neon lights than you can fit on a floating airship billboard.
The cyberpunk genre can be traced back to the science-fiction work of authors like Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, though perhaps the most well-known example of the genre comes from director Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” itself an adaptation of Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” For many, the film established the language of cyberpunk. Told through the lens of a noir detective story, “Blade Runner” follows Rick Deckard as played by Harrison Ford, an LAPD officer tasked with “retiring” six mechanical humanoids dubbed “replicants.” The film has inspired decades of conversations on existentialism, morality and more. With “Cyberpunk 2077’s” focus on human augmentation and ultra-violence, expect many of those same conversations to kick back into high gear as people navigate the reportedly lengthy playthroughs.
In honor of “Cyberpunk’s” long-awaited release, here are 14 movies (and two TV shows) to watch if you can’t get enough of the genre.
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Alita: Battle Angel
Image Credit: Courtesy of Twentieth Century Cyberpunk storytelling can sometimes be … not subtle. Case in point: Robert Rodriguez’s 2019 action film “Alita: Battle Angel.” In “Iron City,” the rich live on a floating platform and their trash falls onto the poverty-stricken masses who live beneath them. Alita, as played by Rosa Salazar, is an android with big eyes and a mysterious past making her way through the world and the ranks of the fictional sport “motorball.”
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Altered Carbon
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix The Netflix series focuses on Takeshi Kovacs and is set in a world where humans can transfer their consciousness. Naturally, Kovacs is played by multiple actors. Joel Kinnaman is, in the language of the series, a “sleeve” for the character in the first season and is followed by Anthony Mackie in the second.
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Blade Runner 2049
Image Credit: ©Warner Bros/courtesy Everett Collection / Everett Collection Denis Villeneuve’s sequel to “Blade Runner” takes the Los Angeles 2019 setting of the original and extrapolates a world three decades later. Much like the first, “2049” follows a “blade runner” hunting down replicants, though this time, the filmmakers make it clear that the main character, played by Ryan Gosling, is himself a replicant. Cinematographer Roger Deakins won his first Oscar for the film, and after watching standout sequences in an abandoned Las Vegas, it’s no wonder why.
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Dredd
Image Credit: ©Lions Gate/Courtesy Everett Collection “Dredd,” an adaptation of the “Judge Dredd” comics, is a grime-filled and crime-ridden dystopic vision of the future set in “Mega-City One.” Karl Urban stars as the titular character who, through constantly-gritted teeth, never removes his helmet.
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Elysium
Image Credit: ©Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection Floating in Earth’s orbit is Elysium – a paradise for the elite where technology has advanced to cure every illness and repair any injury. There exists one problem: that technology has not made its way down to the surface. Director Neill Blomkamp’s film stars Matt Damon in an exoskeleton on a quest to bring the life-saving tech down to the people who need it most.
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Ex Machina
Image Credit: Courtesy Everett Collection While the film lacks the look of traditional cyberpunk fare, “Ex Machina” is concerned with the ideas at the heart of the genre. Alicia Vikander gives a star-making performance as Ava, an artificial intelligence put through a rigorous Turing test to see if she’s more than a collection of sensors.
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Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Image Credit: Screenshot YouTube “Ghost in the Shell” follows a cyborg known as Major Motoko Kusanagi tracking down an elite hacker whose consciousness jumps from “shell” to “shell” to evade capture. The Wachowskis have cited Mamoru Oshii’s anime as an inspiration behind their blockbuster “Matrix” series.
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The Matrix trilogy
Image Credit: Warner Bros/Village Roadshow Pic The sprawling tale of Neo’s quest to bring freedom to humanity following its subjugation by intelligent machines is spread across three films, with a fourth due out next year. “The Matrix” features slick setpieces inspired by Hong Kong action films and elaborate gunfights, all while exploring the augmented human condition.
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Minority Report
Image Credit: ©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection Tom Cruise plays a “precrime” cop who apprehends people before they commit crimes in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 action film. Thanks to “precogs” who can see the future, a whole new division of the police force is developed to stop crime prior to it actually taking place.
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RoboCop
Image Credit: ©Orion Pictures Corp/Courtesy Everett Collection Director Paul Verhoeven’s satirical dystopian look at authoritarianism, American policing, capitalism and more takes a cyberpunk turn after an officer played by Peter Weller is killed and brought back to life by Omni Consumer Products as the cybernetically enhanced “Robocop.”
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Tron, Tron: Legacy
Image Credit: Everett Collection If cyan and orange made a movie, it would be “Tron” and its sequel “Tron: Legacy.” Both films center characters who get digitized into cyberspace and interface with the digital world through physical interaction. If that’s not enough “Tron” for you, consider diving into the immersive animated series “Tron: Uprising” on Disney Plus.
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Upgrade
Image Credit: Courtesy of OTL Releasing Leigh Whannell’s “Upgrade” follows in the footsteps of “RoboCop,” zeroing in on a character who is mechanically enhanced after sustaining life-threatening injuries. Featuring brutal fight scenes and a physically demanding performance by Logan Marshall-Green, the film is the perfect chaser to the ultra-violence on display in “Cyberpunk 2077’s” trailers.