---
title: 'Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, and the Relevancy of Cyberpunk'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=YK6IjJkjkiI'
video_id: 'YK6IjJkjkiI'
date: 2026-09-20
duration_sec: 740
channel: 'Just Write'
---

# Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, and the Relevancy of Cyberpunk

> Source: [Blade Runner, Altered Carbon, and the Relevancy of Cyberpunk](https://youtube.com/watch?v=YK6IjJkjkiI)

## Summary

The video explores the origins and evolution of cyberpunk, focusing on its aesthetic and themes. It argues that the genre is stuck in the 1980s and needs to adapt to modern anxieties.

### Key Points

- **Cyberpunk's Founding Works** [00:55] — Blade Runner and Neuromancer are the two seminal works that started cyberpunk, both drawing from similar influences.
- **Key Influences** [01:24] — Cyberpunk was influenced by French comics, Japanese urban planning, and hard-boiled detective fiction.
- **Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction** [02:31] — Hard-boiled detective fiction, created by writers like Chandler and Hammett, moved the genre to crime-filled cities and featured antiheroes.
- **1980s Context** [04:16] — Cyberpunk is a product of Reagan's America, reflecting anxieties about capitalism and technology.
- **Advertising Contradiction** [05:23] — The use of advertising in cyberpunk is contradictory today—it's meant to be oppressive but is now seen as cool.
- **Crime Rates and Relevance** [07:16] — Crime rates spiked in 1980, but have declined since, making crime-focused cyberpunk less relevant.
- **Mr. Robot as Modern Cyberpunk** [08:44] — Mr. Robot is a modern cyberpunk that updates the genre by focusing on present-day issues and psychological themes.

## Transcript

In 1982, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner changed science fiction, launching the cyberpunk genre with a mesmerizing vision of a future run down by technology.
Except, this footage isn't from Blade Runner. It's from the new Netflix series Altered Carbon, which looks more like a sequel to Blade Runner than the actual sequel to Blade Runner does. But I don't want to pick on Altered Carbon too much. It's far from the only story that has yet to escape the influence of Blade Runner.
As a recent article in The Guardian pointed out, and which I'll hopefully expand upon here, flying cars, giant ads on giant skyscrapers, massive income inequality, it's all here.
What I want to do is ask why Cyberpunk is fixated so heavily on this aesthetic, and does it still make sense to use that aesthetic 40 years after it was initially created? And to do all that, I've got to talk about how Cyberpunk came to be.
There are two seminal works of cyberpunk that are credited with kicking off the genre. The aforementioned The Blade Runner in 1982, and two years later, William Gibson's novel, Neuromancer.
In an interview with Paris Review, William Gibson related how he had once ran into Ridley Scott, and the two talked about the ingredients they had used to form their respective works, and realized that they had basically been working from the same recipe.
That included French comic books, which in the 1970s were publishing some of the most provocative science fiction images anywhere. And one glance at them is enough to see the influence on Blade Runner's Los Angeles or on Gibson's urban sprawl.
Both works also owe a lot to Japanese urban planning, since every cyberpunk city sort of looks like downtown Tokyo. But to understand one of the most important influences on these worlds, we're going to need a primer on the history of the detective genre.
In Altered Carbon, there is an AI character who takes the form of Edgar Allan Poe, a nod to the fact that Poe is credited with inventing the detective genre
with his 1814 story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The story includes a brilliant detective, a narrator who is the detective's friend, an incompetent police force, and a scene where the detective reveals the solution to the mystery
through the application of logic. If you're thinking, that sounds a lot like Sherlock Holmes, Well, you're right. It is the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes. But in the 1920s, when American writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett started writing detective stories,
they changed a lot of the core tropes of the genre. And in the process, they created the hard-boiled detective. Hard-boiled detective fiction relocated the genre to the mean streets of crime-infested cities.
Instead of a gentleman detective with a mostly academic interest in the mystery, we've got rough-around-the-edges antiheroes who worked mostly for money but still had an inner sense of nobility. It a type of fiction that is inextricably linked to the time period in which it was created reflecting back at its audience the pains of the Prohibition and the Depression Now I been playing clips here from film noir movies from the 40s and 50s
and that's because many of the biggest hard-boiled hits were adapted into the most important films of film noir, movies like The Big Sleep and The Multi-Falcon. But it's important to bring up film noir here because of the way it depicted cities.
They are dark and mysterious places which feel gritty and dangerous, and where the weather is never good, all critical to the aesthetics of Blade Runner. The main character, Deckard, is a hard-boiled detective through and through,
just like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe. And Takeshi, the protagonist of Altered Carbon, hits every beat of this archetype as well. The protagonist of William Gibson's Neuromancer, a hacker named Case, is a bit different.
The influence of Raymond Chandler is still there. The novel even ends on practically the same line as The Big Sleek. Like hard-boiled characters, Case is an outsider who is selfish and works for money.
But unlike them, he's a criminal and doesn't have that inner sense of justice. So instead, he becomes the prototype of a character common in a lot of cyberpunk, the rebellious hacker who uses their ability to rage against the machine.
But just like the Prohibition and the Depression loomed large over hard-boiled detective fiction, the 80s loomed large over Neuromancer and Blade Runner. So what was happening in the 80s again? Oh yeah, I think it's hard to overstate the fact that cyberpunk is a product of Ronald Reagan's America.
Or at least, the fear of what Ronald Reagan's America could produce. Or at least, American cyberpunk fiction is. Japanese cyberpunk has a different cultural context, even if it often arrives at a similar aesthetic.
But in America, the common thread that runs through cyberpunk is the anxiety over the effects of unrestrained capitalism, and how technology can make all of those effects even worse. It's about how these great forces could erode our sense of civilization, the individual, the body, and the mind.
The standard cyberpunk cityscape is a fitting representation of all of this, as the lines between everything are blurred. Nothing stands out from the whole, mirroring the protagonist's struggle to maintain a sense of independence against forces greater than themselves.
Today, that anxiety isn't even really theoretical anymore, but it is different than what it was in the 1980s. Here's an example. Advertisements are absolutely pervasive in cyberpunk worlds,
like giant holographic advertisements that take up the whole size of buildings like this one in Blade Runner. Capitalism is literally wrapping itself around the city. It is the city. And it made sense in 1980. Almost immediately, Reagan was cutting taxes and slashing regulations,
basically taking the reins off of capitalism. Reagan also peeled back the laws stopping companies from targeting their advertising to children, which led to all of this. We are the same We are the same We are the same We are the same We are the same Thanks Reagan But there a bit of a contradiction implicit to the use of advertising as the aesthetic of choice in Cyberpunk today Because the presence of advertising is supposed to feel oppressive skull
But for us, having lived with Cyberpunk for nearly 40 years, they're part of the appeal. They're what gives the city its alluring neon glow. This shot in Altered Carbon isn't about the horror of advertising dominating the skyline,
but about how cool the city looks. Placed at the end of the first episode as it is, the shot is a promise to the viewer. It's a hook, inviting us to explore the city in the rest of the series.
Of course, today we're still terrified about the growing prominence of advertising, but if the worst types of ads were the neon signs on buildings, we'd consider it a blessing at this point. The ads we really fear today are the inescapable ones which track our behavior and collect data about us,
or fake news spread on social media that is used for political purposes. And I'd love to see cyberpunk explore that side of capitalism. Another example of how things have changed? Here's a graph of the murder rate in America from 1950 until today.
You'll notice that it spikes at 1980, so it made sense that the writers of that time would be concerned about the rising crime rate, and create worlds where crime was everywhere. It doesn't make quite as much sense today where violent crime has been declining for years.
A cyberpunk world is, almost by definition, a world that is on the brink of collapse. But it doesn't have to be on the brink of collapse because of crime. It can be because of climate change, mass migration, terrorism, nationalism, fascism.
For writers, there's really an embarrassment of riches out there when it comes to, you know, potentially world-ending crises that are happening right now. Yeah. And, in fairness, there are pieces of fiction out there that are tackling these topics,
but all of these things are the reasons a show like Altered Carbon feels outdated to me. In its defense, it has an intriguing sci-fi premise which it uses as an income inequality allegory, but the show is suffocated by an over-reliance on cyberpunk tropes,
tropes that are rooted in a time that is no longer our own. It's why Blade Runner 2049 feels fresher on this point, Even though it's sort of obligated to recreate the dystopian version of Los Angeles from the original movie,
the other settings in the film feel inspired by our present. The duffel version of Vegas is inspired by Sydney, Australia during the sandstorm. Another part of the story takes place in a junkyard, and both feel like they exist because of present-day concerns about climate change.
Tropicality is also one of the reasons I think Mr. Robot is so brilliant. Oh, yeah, Mr. Robot, it's cyberpunk too. But how can it be cyberpunk? There aren't even punks with leather jackets and purple hair in it. And I guess that's really what I've been trying to say here.
Genre isn't just about appearances, it's about the substance of the story and what drives the conflict. While it doesn't look like cyberpunk, you've still got the giant multinational corporation as the main enemy,
faced with hackers rebelling against the established order and themes of isolation and mental health Like so much of Cyberpunk the story focuses on how technology is pushing us apart And while there isn't any science-fictional technology in the story, at least not yet,
it does explore the trope of mind invasion that occupies so much of Cyberpunk fiction. Much of the show is about Elliot's battle to gain control over his own mind. And of course, as a hacker, Elliot Alderson is another descendant of Case from Neuromancer.
But while Cyberpunk traditionally takes place at some time in the future, Mr. Robot takes place in our present. Instead of cribbing from the visual language of film noir, it's developed its own style
of cinematography to emphasize the isolation the characters feel, often tucking characters into the corners of the frame. And I think the show may even surpass the goals of the Cyberpunk that has come before it.
Mr. Robot is genuinely revolutionary, with its characters focused on actually changing the established capitalist order. Most cyberpunk operates as a critique of certain power structures,
but they rarely offer a solution. Case in Neuromancer, for instance, never challenges the system that is controlling them. So Mr. Robot is revolutionizing both the arena that cyberpunk can take place in and taking many of the genre's core ideas further
than they've ever been taken before. Towards the end of the most recent season, the world has started to look a lot more like a traditional cyberpunk universe, with all of its political posters everywhere and government forces driving through the streets.
It's almost like a cyberpunk origin story. And so by setting the story in the present, Mr. Robot's mere existence is chilling, as it suggests that the dystopian world we fear may already be right around the corner.
Cyberpunk is a truly global genre. It has global concerns and global influences, ranging from American hard-boiled detective fiction to French adult comic books to Japanese, well, everything.
The possibilities for fresh takes on the genre are endless, so long as new writers are willing to shake up the ingredients they use to construct their fictional set.
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