The futuristic city with flying cars at the beginning of the movie definitely has all the cyberpunk visuals, and technically Zorg is the head of an evil corporation. But the real villain of the movie is incoming force of evil/darkness. And the plot is resolved through the power of love. Even the President of Earth is actively trying to help do the right thing and save the planet.
While there are some great cyberpunk visuals at the beginning of the movie, I don’t know if the themes are there to call this cyberpunk. What do you think? Would you consider The Fifth Element to be cyberpunk?
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TV Tropes calls it Cassette Futurism, which is part cyberpunk.
What kind of punk restricts themselves to “punk rules”?
Gimmedacasshhh
That’s…a… very nice hat.
“You like ittt?”
dances
Negative, I am a meat popsicle
Please place your hands in the yellow circles
Not a lot of cyber in it, more just sci-fi.
CyberPop
I think it definitely is, especially if you go back to the original Heavy Metal source material. Its just a very 1970’s/ New York portrayal of what Cyber Punk can be. The original material is also very much more in the film noir/ crime drama vein, which also aligns with some older cyber punk classics like Ghost in the Shell, Robocop, Total Recall, Bladerunner, etc.
The 90’s version is brighter and more up beat than the 1970s version, but are actually pretty close overall. My assessment is totally cyberpunk, just not the narrow view of what cyber punk actually is. Its story hits the right beats and the world is the right size, shape and feel. I think both the original material and the new material are very much cyber punk.
Here is a youtube video comparing the elements of both the 1970s Fifth element and the more recent one.
My vote would be no. Just straight up sci-fi.
I’m just here to say when I saw this as a kid, I had a massive crush on the President’s Aide.
Is that the total number scenes they are in?
Like, so specific…
Its more sci-fi fantasy if i had to pick a genre
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Like the other person said, I’m just trying to start a discussion. I don’t actually care what the answer is, I’m just providing a topic. I try to find movies where i could see the arguments for and against being cyberpunk and I’ll post it here to see how others feel.
Honestly, I consider these posts a success if the top two comments are “of course it is!” and “of course not!” because that means i picked a good movie that walks the line between cyberpunk and not and typically leads to a good discussion.
Also, I’ve been trying to post something here every day for almost three months now and it’s hard to keep coming up with items that fall firmly into the cyberpunk category. So I start to question how I define cyberpunk and these posts help quantify it.
