A crew of low-lifes working with an android in a dirty old spaceship for a faceless corporation that treats them as expendable.
Obviously the movie is really scifi horror, but it does hit a lot of cyberpunk themes. So do you consider Alien to be cyberpunk? If you don’t, what would need to change to make it cyberpunk?
I usually include a trailer for the movies I reference but come on, it’s Alien. You already know about this movie.
It’s streaming on Hulu if you haven’t watched it recently.
I think the main thing that doesn’t make it cyberpunk to me is that it’s inside the corporate machine, rather than outside of it.
I never thought of this question before now, but your answer explains my initial reaction. I was thinking “actually, yeah, Alien does seem kinda cyberpunk, but not quite…” Until I read your response, I couldn’t put my finger on why.
If the story was changed only slightly, and this was the crew of an independent ship that got screwed and betrayed by a corporation, then my answer would be an unqualified YES.
So even though they don’t particularly like or trust the corporation, the fact that they’re employees of a major corporation is enough for you to say no? That’s an interesting distinction. So if they owned their own ship and were hired as mercs by the corporation to pick up some unknown artifact would you consider it cyberpunk?
So even though they don’t particularly like or trust the corporation, the fact that they’re employees of a major corporation is enough for you to say no?
I mean, the world/setting could absolutely have cyberpunk stories, but the movie is centred on corporate staff, and followed up by a story about the military response to the loss of corporate assets. That’s a story you can tell in a cyberpunk setting, when the main characters are dealing with that shit, not part of it
When you’re inside the machine, you’ve got the cyber part, but not the punk part
So if they owned their own ship and were hired as mercs by the corporation to pick up some unknown artifact would you consider it cyberpunk?
Potentially. Cowboy Bebop could be considered cyberpunk. A shift in tone, and Firefly could be cyberpunk, so yeah, you could absolutely tell a cyberpunk story with that setup in the Alien universe.
You could also tell a cyberpunk story if they start as corporate employees, but end up outside the system and on their own as part of the story…
