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Steampunk? |
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 Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 4:29 pm |
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I don't see Steampunk as all that close to cyberpunk, but who knows, maybe I'm wrong. So I have a couple of questions:
1. What are the Steampunk movies you all think are at the top of the heap?
2. What are the key thematic elements of the subgenre?
Also, would you consider Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow Steampunk?
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 5:40 pm |
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I don't know an awful lot about this stuff, but from what I heard it is all about playing with alternate timestreams, as in "what if Napoleon attacked Russia with huge steam-powered mecha" and so on. Which means it's mostly a visual thing, with no profound themes such as can be found in cyberpunk (influence of technology on society, the essence of humanity in contrast with artificla consciousness and all that)- and I can't see a way how it could be otherwise. Apparently there were other "punks" even including something called a... "stonepunk". Which is not to say that it features stoned blokes with mohawks, but something more like The Flintstones apparently...
But, since all this is based on an article I've read (which might have been biased) I'm not saying I can't be wrong. But from what I've heard all the other "punks" are just a temporary sci-fi/fantasy fad.
I haven't seen Sky Captain as I didn't really like the trailers (and thought the idea was a bit silly) but if you ask me I personally thought that Casshern was a bit steampunk in visual terms.
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 9:06 pm |
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Actually, there's a few which actually do have the philosophical depth to them. Steamboy, for example, is a cyberpunk movie in all but setting. Replace steam with an alternate energy source(say, fusion energy, for example) and place it in a future setting and it is a terrific cyberpunk story. Out of control technology, shadowy corporations working behind the scenes, an unlikely hero who's in the wrong place at the wrong time... Hell, it even has a cyborg!
The fact is that the modern steampunk movement is a direct descendant of cyberpunk, and it merely illustrates its themes from an alternate history perspective. The fact is that negative impact of technology, economic and government interest, and dehumanization are topics which are ALWAYS en vogue, no matter what the setting or historical placement. Hell, can you think of a more cyberpunkish setting than Victorian England? Dark alleyways full of drugs, prostitutes and murderers, huge factories proudly claiming to be the wave of the future while they cover the sky in black smoke and pollute the drinking water around them, spoiled businessmen and beaurocrats oppressing the common man... Sound familiar?
I think it's actually a good idea to include the more cerebral steampunk stories in this website, and may I volunteer to review Steamboy as the first review in this genre?
Now, your questions:
1. The good cyberpunk stories are all either in books/graphic novels or animation. But other than that, the best I've found so far are Last Exile, Steamboy, Fullmetal Alchemist, Castle In The Sky, City Of Lost Children(this one can go either way, cyberpunk or steampunk, actually) and Robot Carnival(one of the stories involves wooden giant mecha!).
2. Sky Captain, I think, is more an homage to 1930s pulp serials. It doesn't explore the impact or technology beyond "big things go boom", it is just summer blockbuster fluff filmmaking.
PS Not part of this topic, but SFAM, add Robot Carnival and Neo Tokyo to the list of cyberpunk films 
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 10:37 pm |
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I saw Robot Carnival in the theaters when it made the rounds in CA around 1991ish. This was my first Japanese anime experience. I don't remember it being to cyberpunkish, but then again, I really didn't have that concept as clearly in my mind as I do now. I remember the Iron Giant-like guy in there, although I think its made up of a bunch of different stories.
I would definitely classify Castle in the Sky as steampunk (as would I classify Nausicaa and perhaps Porco Rosso, as long as we're doing the Miyazaki list - and would DEFINTELY include Tree of Palme from Miyazaki's protoge, Nakamura), but this really has a fantasy feel to it, as do, I think, many steampunk films. The darkness seems gone from most. I tried getting into Full Metal Alchemist (I know many love this), but to date, it hasn't resonated with me.
While I agree that Sky Captain is definitely a 1930s serial homage, how does this disqualify it from being steampunk? Again though, I don't have as clear a definition of steampunk. My guess is that in total, the definition for Steampunk is probably more muddled than cyberpunk.
Wikipedia has a list of steampunk movies that seems pretty similar to my thoughts, although I don't know that I'd include Howl's Moving Castle (a TERRIFIC movie) due to the magic:
* A Trip to the Moon (1902)
* The Impossible Voyage (1904)
* Conquest of the Pole (1912)
* The Invisible Man (1933)
* The Island of Dr. Moreau (1933 - as Island of Lost Souls, 1977, 1996)
* Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
* King Solomon's Mines (1937, 1950, 1985)
* The Wizard of Oz (1939)
* 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
* The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958)
* From the Earth to the Moon (1958)
* Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
* The Time Machine (1960, 2002)
* Mysterious Island (1961)
* Master of the World (1961)
* Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962)
* First Men in the Moon (1964)
* The City Under the Sea (War Gods of the Deep) (1965)
* Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969)
* The Asphyx (1972)
* The Adventures of Mark Twain (1982 claymation)
* Young Sherlock Holmes (1985)
* Return to Oz (1985)
* Castle in the Sky (1986 anime)
* The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
* Back to the Future Part III (1990)
* Delicatessen (1991)
* Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)
* The Quick and the Dead (1995)
* The City of Lost Children (1995)
* Mousehunt (1997)
* Wild Wild West (1998)
* Sleepy Hollow (1999)
* Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
* Vidocq (2001)
* Le Pacte des Loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf) (2001)
* The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)
* Hellboy (2004)
* Steamboy (2004 anime)
* Van Helsing (2004)
* Around the World in 80 Days (2004)
* Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
* Howl's Moving Castle (2005 anime)
* The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello (2005 short film)
* The Brothers Grimm (2005)
EDIT: If Van Helsing and Hellboy are included, than surely Sky Captain would.
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 10:41 pm |
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But in terms of actually including steampunk movies on cyberpunk review, we would really need to come to a far better understanding of what this is - post it, and than almost have like an alternate section for these movies. My fear is that inclusion of it within the same space as the cyberpunk movies would muddy the definitions of both.
Incidentally, you may notice that the reviews for movies I do that I do not include as cyberpunk, I don;t include them on the "cyberpunk movies by decade" page. I only include them on the star rating. Once I get enough, I'll give them their own page on the right-menu. I do this for the same reason.
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| Posted: Sat Mar 18, 2006 11:00 pm |
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Sleepy Hollow steampunk? I don't know, it just sounds... wrong. I've seen it w while ago, but I don't remember any time-displaced technology aspect there really... It's a very neat and visually attractive gothic horror film with a creepy, dark fairy-tale atmosphere Burton excells at and more beheadings than an Al Qaeda home video but I can't remember anything unusually sophisticated, apart maybe from some strange binoculars Depp wore during an autopsy.
Even Van Helsing had more going for it in that department with all that bizarre arsenal (the Vatican as a high-tech arms manufacturer... now that's a thought  ).
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| Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 12:19 am |
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| Metatron wrote: | Sleepy Hollow steampunk? I don't know, it just sounds... wrong. I've seen it w while ago, but I don't remember any time-displaced technology aspect there really... It's a very neat and visually attractive gothic horror film with a creepy, dark fairy-tale atmosphere Burton excells at and more beheadings than an Al Qaeda home video but I can't remember anything unusually sophisticated, apart maybe from some strange binoculars Depp wore during an autopsy.
Even Van Helsing had more going for it in that department with all that bizarre arsenal (the Vatican as a high-tech arms manufacturer... now that's a thought ). |
Yeah, I agree - Sleepy Hollow doesn't really fit. Then again, I had issues with most cyberpunk lists on the web as well. This is one of the main reasons that I started cyberpunkreview. Virtually every scifi movie appears in cyberpunk lists. Punk movies such as Mad Max are one thing, but TONS of completely unrelated movies seem to show up as well.
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| Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 12:20 am |
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BTW, I just purchased steampunkreview.com. So if in the future we want to detail this, we can work this up. I think it would probably be worth actually setting it up as a separate site, with its own look and feel, etc. That way, the clarification between the two could be maintained.
Currently I have the name parked, so if you goto: http://www.steampunkreview.com you end up back here. I can set it up essentially as its own site for another 4 bucks a month though.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 10:00 am |
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Steampunk qualifies as relavent to cyberpunk because the first book in the style was Sterling & Gibsons "The Difference Engine".
The basic idea of the style is that Charles Babbages ideas about computers are taken up rather than being ignored and that the information age occurs in the late victorian era.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 2:22 pm |
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| David Gentle wrote: | Steampunk qualifies as relavent to cyberpunk because the first book in the style was Sterling & Gibsons "The Difference Engine".
The basic idea of the style is that Charles Babbages ideas about computers are taken up rather than being ignored and that the information age occurs in the late victorian era. |
Hmm. I think people would consider books from Jules Verne to be Steampunk in nature as well. This would imply that it's being going on for quite some time, but just wasn't named as such. Or am I wrong about this?
EDIT: BTW, welcome to the meatspace, David!
I'll add you to the reviewers forum.
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| Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2006 7:32 pm |
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| Quote: | | Hmm. I think people would consider books from Jules Verne to be Steampunk in nature as well. This would imply that it's being going on for quite some time, but just wasn't named as such. Or am I wrong about this? |
As with any genre that has poorly defined bounderies SteamPunk has come to mean a load of things that it was never intended to mean. I guess people see echos of The Difference Engine in a load of things. Like Cyberpunk itself it's more of a "call it when you see it thing".
I think Steampunk is relevent to CyberPunk when it's doing CP themes but in the past rather than the future.
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| Posted: Wed Mar 22, 2006 12:00 am |
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| David Gentle wrote: | | Quote: | | Hmm. I think people would consider books from Jules Verne to be Steampunk in nature as well. This would imply that it's being going on for quite some time, but just wasn't named as such. Or am I wrong about this? |
As with any genre that has poorly defined bounderies SteamPunk has come to mean a load of things that it was never intended to mean. I guess people see echos of The Difference Engine in a load of things. Like Cyberpunk itself it's more of a "call it when you see it thing".
I think Steampunk is relevent to CyberPunk when it's doing CP themes but in the past rather than the future. |
Yep, excellent point. I know my understanding of steampunk is pretty muddled. I usually consider steampunk almost fantasy-like - where people in a past-like world use imaginary technologies. Castle in the Sky is a great example of this.
When did Steampunk as a term come into being? Are you saying the Difference Engine is the first instance of this?
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| Posted: Thu Mar 23, 2006 2:25 am |
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| Quote: | | When did Steampunk as a term come into being? Are you saying the Difference Engine is the first instance of this? |
I assumed it was but then I looked it up on the Wikipedia and found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk
Seems that K.W. Jeter coined the term. I guess I heard it first used to refer to The Difference Engine and assumed it was coined for it. Bear in mind that I'd just read Neuromancer for the first time when TDE came out (around 1990) so I made the wrong assumption.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:22 pm |
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"Sleepy Hollow" fits perfectly. A lot of the methods Crane uses (such as those Micro-Gogle thingies) are completely out of element with the time period that Washington's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" takes place. It may not be the MOST SP movie ever made (it's mostly gothic horror), but...if "Alien" (which, to me, is gothic sci-fi horror) is CP on this site... And "Sky Captain" is most definitely SP, as well...without a doubt.
You could also go so far as to argue that "Dark City" is steampunk AS WELL as cyberpunk. While it contains many sci-fi elements, the majority of the film (the ending "reveal" notwithstanding) takes place in a very down-to-earth (ahem, no spoilers) 1930's/40's-style city, while containing technology not native to that time (the syringes alone are pure SP if I ever saw it). It's a gray area, but it certainly fits.
I really think "Steampunk" should have it own site, though. I never thought the two fit together. They're like opposite sides of a coin, really. Yin and Yang.
_________________
“Time moves in one direction, memory in another.” - William Gibson
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| Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:45 pm |
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| Case wrote: | "Sleepy Hollow" fits perfectly. A lot of the methods Crane uses (such as those Micro-Gogle thingies) are completely out of element with the time period that Washington's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" takes place. It may not be the MOST SP movie ever made (it's mostly gothic horror), but...if "Alien" (which, to me, is gothic sci-fi horror) is CP on this site... And "Sky Captain" is most definitely SP, as well...without a doubt.
You could also go so far as to argue that "Dark City" is steampunk AS WELL as cyberpunk. While it contains many sci-fi elements, the majority of the film (the ending "reveal" notwithstanding) takes place in a very down-to-earth (ahem, no spoilers) 1930's/40's-style city, while containing technology not native to that time (the syringes alone are pure SP if I ever saw it). It's a gray area, but it certainly fits.
I really think "Steampunk" should have it own site, though. I never thought the two fit together. They're like opposite sides of a coin, really. Yin and Yang. |
http://www.steampunkreview.com
All we need is someone to take over the design and management of it, and we'll be money
At this point, I just have it pointing to the same location, but can switch this to its own location once there is actual content. I'm thinking of getting something for biopunk too, but am not sure this merits its own site.
EDIT: But to your point, I think it's certainly possible that a movie could show up both as steampunk and as cyberpunk.
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