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Overview: If you read a lot of the reviews from others about movies on this site, you’ll find that over half of them reference Blade Runner in some way, other in the visuals or issues discussed. Along with Gibson’s Neuromancer, Blade Runner did more to establish cyberpunk as a genre. The fact that Blade Runner came two years prior to Neuromancer is rather interesting. Truly, this film set the standard for the near-future film noirs sub-genre we call cyberpunk.

Not too dissimilar to the wrath that greeted Metropolis’ release, Blade Runner was not an instant hit. Instead it grew from being critically panned to a cult classic, to now, where its well on its way to being considered a timeless classic.

The Visuals: The visuals in Blade Runner are simply stunning. We see corporate pharaohs ruling a society containing manufactured slaves from their Egyptian style pyramids, while we see rot and decay on the streets below. Noir-style beige and blacks dominate the screen, but are often supplanted by shocking neons. In Blade Runner, we see and Earth in ruin - a place that people are eager to leave. Only the poor and problematic are left on this rain-soaked dystopian planet that has been raped of any semblance of natural existence. The Earth is now almost completely devoid of trees and animals, which are now replaced with artificial ones for the pleasure of mankind.

The Story: Technology and corporate power are clearly the cause for this downfall. Genetic engineering has run rampant, and is combined with advanced organic computing technologies. It is in this world that we find a cast of flawed characters. Nobody is pure, nobody pristine. They are all a product of the environment they live in.

To augment humanity’s needs and desires, replicants, or genetically engineered humans imbued with artificial intelligence have been developed. They serve many important roles including protection, pleasure slaves, and hard labor for the most dangerous environments. While replicants start out as rather straightforward and useful machines, over time, they start to develop awareness - their own personality, and eventually, free will and a desire for self-preservation. Because they are defined as property, Replicants are given a 4-year lifespan, which is enforced upon inception, and is irreversible.

It is in this world that we encounter Deckard (Harrison Ford), a Blade Runner. Blade Runners are cops who hunt down Replicants. At the beginning of the movie, we find that Deckard has supposedly retired from the business.I say supposedly here, because if he is a replicant, then really, he has been imbued with false memories as well, and in fact has never been a blade runner prior to this. Really, he is just filling in as a laborer fulfilling another job that is too dangerous for humans.

Deckard is brought back in to "retire" 4 runaway "skin jobs" (replicants) who have murdered humans off-world and have escaped to Earth. Apparently, they seem to be interested in coming back to their creators - the Tyrell corporation. The story expands from there, and truly touches on some wonderful questions concerning ethical dilemmas that most certainly will arise in the future.

Deckard encounters Rachael (played wonderfully by Sean Young), a replicant who during the movie discovers her true nature. Blade Runner does a masterful job of exploring the questions and emotions surrounding this. We see Rachael’s theme echoed in Natural City, Armitage, Thirteenth Floor, Ghost in the Shell, Serial Experiments Lain, Malice@Doll, the Animatrix, I, Robot, and others. This question about what degree artificial life forms are human is a central theme of the cyberpunk genre.

What is Human? While other movies have been terrific in exploring this, Blade Runner still sits at the top of the list, both for Racheal, and for Roy Batty, the leader of the renegade replicants. Roy’s monologue near the end (see the quote at the top), which was supposedly adlibbed by Rutger Hauer, captures in a single moment the ethical dilemma with creating sentient life. If they have freewill, can they really be considered property? And if they aren’t property, what are they, exactly?

Blade Runner uses mannequins and toys as its set piece for representing this dilemma. In Blade Runner, corporations create these glorified toys - moving mannequins if you will, to meet the needs of society, yet while the toys themselves are clearly a product of the society just like all the other noir characters, are they truly nothing more? And if we do consider them to be on par with humans, what obligations do they have to their creators, who invested time and money in their creation?

The Bottom Line: On top of all this philosophical questioning, we get some great noir-detective-like action and suspense. Roy Batty is truly a badass. Deckard’s pursuit of him is a very fun engagement, as is the climax. Its flat out terrific. The pacing is wonderful, the visuals are astounding, and the story is enthralling. By now I’m guessing most have seen this cinematic masterpiece, but if not, you are truly in for feast!

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Overview: If you’re looking for the best instance of awesome 2D-3D anime with an incredible philosophically laden story, Ghost in the Shell: Innocence is the hands down winner. While I still like Wonderful Days more on pure cinematography, it doesn’t hold a candle on either the story or the philosophy. Oshii is truly a master at providing an incredibly intricate, fully researched message about the direction of humanity in a wonderful anime package. Make no mistake - Oshii is fully up on co-evolution theory (the co-evolution of man and his tools) and has something very interesting to add to the discussion. And while it has all of this, GITS:2 does suffer overtly and purposefully from the absence of its star character - Motoko.

Major Motoko, the main character from the first Ghost in the Shell movie (which might still make an appearance here…) is no longer here, and the rest of the cast has to pick up the pieces and move on. Bateau (Ôtsuk), major motoko’s partner from the first movie, and a cyborg detective for the anti-terrorist unit Public Security Section 9, investigates the case of a female robot - one created solely for sexual pleasure - who slaughtered her owner. Togusa, the mostly human detective that Motoko found in Ghost 1 is assigned as Bateau’s partner. The plot thickens as the movie progresses, and the two are sent to a number of incredibly cyberpunk looking locations to uncover the truth.

Overall, this movie has the feeling of a cast trying to cope when the major star has left. Similar to the Borg Encounter when Picard is removed, or maybe some of the first star trek series when Captain Kirk is lost somewhere doing green chicks, Motoko’s disappearance dominates a most of the back story. We get to see almost a character study of Bateau, a mostly cyborg being who has suffered the loss of the closest person alive to him struggle to maintain meaning in his life
and Togusa failing to live up to Bateau’s expectations as a partner. While the characters are able to work fine within the plot, the movie suffers from the lack of both sex appeal and the lack of a truly dominant character.

Similar to other Oshii films, there are instances where the plot gets put on hold to allow the philosophy to explored. This is a different sort of pacing (again copied by the matrix) which some like and others find pretentious (I like it!). The philosophy breaks are interesting, but only get fully connected at the end. Additionally, the plot is twisting enough and only clarified in the end that a second viewing would aid in comprehension.

Even if you don’t like the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo or strange pacing, Ghost 2 should be seen as mandatory viewing for its truly mind blowing merging of computer imagery and hand drawn animation artistry. This is cyberpunk at its finest! Truly, Neuromancer’s William Gibson would be floored with the continually awe-inspiring scenery that’s intermixed with the grittiest of settings. I lost count of the number of sets I would have loved to freeze and place on my wall. From the creation of robots complete with fiber optic circuitry and positronic brains, to the dingy alleys of the underworld, the vast expanses of the futuristic building-scapes, this movie employs every color palette in the most effective manner imaginable. Often, you almost stop paying attention to the subtitles to just take in the scene in all its heavenly glory.

On top of this, we get trademark moments of Oshii pacing. Oshii is fully content to leave the dialogue aside for a while and let the mood develop from the visuals and sound. Very few movies do this effectively - Avalon and GITS:2 certainly come to the top of the list. In short, the pacing makes GITS:2 a fully immersive experience in a way that visuals alone couldn’t do.

GITS 2 Philosophy: In looking at the philosophy, the first Ghost was dominated by a discussion of what it means to be human and being alive. It culminated in the creation of a new species - the merging of a sentient program called the puppet master with Motoko, an alive human complete with a soul (ghost). Without knowing the details of Ghost 2, one would have expected in seeing the first movie that Oshii would have explored this vast new experience in Ghost 2, Yet this was not to be, as instead the story takes a very different perspective to the ideas covered in the first movie. Innocence is really tracing the idea that what we "see" isn’t at all real, and that reality as a concept needs significant revision. This is done in a variety of ways through mirror analogies, VR segments and discussions of whether there is a difference between artificial life and real life. In this sense, GITS2 is far more the philosophical sequel to Avalon.

Ghost 2 almost turns the perspective from Ghost one on its head and looks at what it means to be a sentient program and how even humans seeking to become fully cyborg struggle to attain this plateau of ever increasing sensory perception and understanding. Taking Decarte’s notion ("I think, therefore, I am") that sentient life does not require a ghost, Ghost 2 explores the notion that a sentient program or robot (called a "doll") might NOT want to have a ghost, and looks at what happens when ghosts are foisted on dolls. Ideas taken for granted in the real world, like the demarcation between life and death get blended and rendered almost meaningless.

On Dolls: Let’s go into a discussion of dolls for a moment: On one hand, dolls in our terms are purely fake, but in the eyes of a child, are actually "real" in the sense that they are assigned virtual persona and as an object and affect the behavior of the child. In effect, the notion of the child’s mind being constrained to her head is challenged - the child’s mind functions "virtually" in the doll. This notion of a doll is also examined in the sense that it contains our greatest fears - that all we are is a "shell" without something actually unique inside that makes us special. In making a cyborg "doll" that mimics a human - GITS2 poses that we are creating a human-looking shell that is sentient in the Descartes sense, but is not complete. Even worse, when given a facsimile of a ghost, we are doing real harm to the doll as the doll is now neither a stable sentient robot nor a human, but a bastardized thing in-between.

In total, there is this ongoing discussion of three types of "ultimate" life forms: God, Dolls, and animals. They all embody the notion of innocence. God (in this sense, almost synonymous with Major Motoko’s new form) is all knowing so basic human frailties no longer affect her. Needs and desires that humans have are non-existent for God. Dolls, and in cyborg version of dolls - sentient robots, are also perfect in that they can think but don’t fall prey to human inadequacies. Finally, Oshii argues animals such as dogs are innocent. Their joys in life are simple ones - Batou’s dog scenes also serve to demonstrate that which is still "human" about Batou - everything else in his life has been rendered meaningless. In this sense, interestingly the dog takes on the same roll as a doll does with a child - This shows Batou’s mind expressing its "virtual" humanity externally.

Throughout the movie are instances of humanity’s self-gratification, extreme self-importance and the consequences of over-indulgence. From the enormous cathedrals to the dingy alleyways, to the making of dolls in our own “perfect” shell of ourselves, Oshii’s message is that we are doing everything possible to hide ourselves from true humanity. The beautiful imagery of GITS 2 is the result. Freedom comes not through materialism, but through real “humanity.” However, one wonders whether Oshii thinks real humanity is in anyway restricted to humans. At some level Oshii is saying our bodies are now obsolete, and that what makes us human, our shell, may not be the purview of humans.

As for the details of the merging of traditional hand drawn animation, there are a few scenes where the Babylon 5-like ships or statues don’t quite fit, but for the most part, the expansive scenes have incredible depth, and the close-ups are as exquisite as a portrait. You are truly missing out on a feat of artistic beauty if pass this movie up. And overall, GITS:2 is clearly in of the best new cyberpunk movies out. Watch it - you won’t be disappointed.

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Overview: Dark City was another one of those movies I was on the fence concerning whether it was cyberpunk or not. Yes, it has the visuals in spades, but what about the rest? After watching it again, I decided the answer was an emphatic Yes. Although we don’t really have computers or cyborgs, we certainly have machinery controlling human life - we have invasive and negative impacting technology, an underground, and truly, the strangers have ubiquitous accces to information. Also, Dark City fully exploits cyberpunk’s film noir roots.

But what really sold me was the whole focus on transforming the memories to get at the root of what humanity is. These strangers, or aliens, if you will, are engaging in virtually the same excersize we see from cyborgs in many a cyberpunk film - they want to understand humanity for the expressed purpose of being, or at least acting human.

And WOW! What a great film this is. I end up watching Dark City at least once or twice a year, and always end up loving it all over again! This film has awesome style, great acting, terrific suspense and truly interesting and deep ideas!

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Overview: While the budget for the animation is better than the original Armitage, the story is SIGNIFICANTLY worse. The place where Armitage III shines (identification with the characters) is exactly where the sequel is most lacking. They ramp up the cool explosions and fights while substituting mannequins for the lead characters. This was a sequel without a story - the message had already been communicated in the first one, and now there’s nothing left to do but rehash it, only with more incoherently and with more explosions. And really, I find the animation style in the first one lots better, especially for Armitage.

However, the two hot Armitage replicants in wings and skin-tight clothes are pretty cool. In fact, they were definitely the highlight of the movie for me.

Also, as an unintended plus (or minus, really), if you check out the English track, you get to hear the voice of Jar Jar Binks (Ahmed Best) reprise his famous role as a side-kick. Only this time he’s a cyborg doctor (but still sounds the same).