It has low-lifes living in the future, but there really isn't much high-tech and governments are still in control (not corporations). So do you consider Escape From New York to be cyberpunk?
Apparently the movie was an influence for William Gibson:
Escape from New York never made it big, but it’s been redone a billion times as a rock video. I saw that movie, by the way, when I was starting “Burning Chrome” and it had a real influence on Neuromancer.
But that doesn't immediately make it cyberpunk. After all, Gibson was also influenced by hard-boiled detective novels and that doesn't make those cyberpunk.
I could see the argument for this either way so I'm curious what your thoughts are.
It's streaming on Roku Channel and Freevee (Amazon Prime) if you haven't seen it before.
This is my thought process as well and why I wanted to post the question. I was tempted to make the same post with They Live. These movies have a strong anti-authority theme, but not "cyber" enough for me to call them cyberpunk. It's interesting then that you consider Escape From New York dystopian while you would put They Live in the cyberpunk category. We're definitely discussing shades of gray here but it's interesting how we would draw the lines differently.
For me, I think the use of technology (hacking) to find a solution is what crosses the line into cyberpunk. Escape From New York and They Live both involve punching and shooting things to win; they're using the "old" way of thinking. Cyberpunk is using the "new" technology to fight the injustices of the world. At least that's how I think of it when looking at these shades of gray.
I know - I think They Live is definitely borderline. I was thinking specifically about the fact that the aliens were specifically using technology to control the population, represented and ran corporations to drive consumerism and sheep-like obedience, and the rebellion were scruffy leftist hackers as well as having a guerrilla movement. The concentration of the film was on the action, but the story with the aliens was more than a McGuffin.
“Scrappy tech folks trying to hack and crash the system and bring about the revolution” tips it for me, but it’s definitely an edge case and not what you’d call a canonical example.
Neither Escape nor the Mad Maxen had that kind of plot line, so I’d exclude them.