I thought Boneshaker could be quite a good movie.
I’ve noticed the same thing at GenCon over the past two years. The number of people wearing steampunk costumes has just exploded.
Plots are fungible - they can be easily transferred between genres. Is the Seven Samurai a samurai movie, or is it a western? Steampunk is a setting, not a story; you can fit any plot you want to it.
Yes. Which is why we’ve had a few steampunk touches added to the art direction of things like the Robert Downey Sherlock Holmes movie. I’m sure we’ll continue to see the odd set of goggles here & there. (Of course, Brisco County Jr’s adventures were (partly) Steampunk In The Old West; rumor says the expense of the show had more to do with cancellation than lack of viewers.)
But who is going to convince a major studio to sink money into a big budget project in which the steampunk tech is really important? I wish they would. Interesting books have been mentioned in the thread; Boneshaker is fine for the YA & older crowd but is not Harry Potter. (Not to put down either franchise–but the Potter books had a huge audience.)
I’m not worried about the public being able to understand an alternate reality. Just toss them into a ripping yarn & let them be carried away. There was no solemn preface intoning “imagine cartoon characters are real” before Roger Rabbit started; still, many people loved the movie.
Alas, I don’t have the millions to spare. The big budget guys aren’t usually into risk & originality.
So what you need is some director with major clout like Cameron or Spielberg or Nolan to fall in love with a steampunk script, and everything else will fall into place. Which means someone needs to write a really good steampunk spec script.
I’ll get right on it.
Rubbish. There’s no accounting for taste, but people can be convinced that anything looks cool. Cite: hairstyles, kids wearing their trouser waists around their knees, KISS in full makeup, etc ad nauseum.
Eh, it’s a somewhat broad characterization, but it’s only now really taking off. I mean, I hadn’t even heard of it 3 or 4 years ago. Sure, there have been elements going along, and the roots certainly include Wells and Verne. But it’s only really branched out from the subgenre sticks into mainstream SF in the past half a decade.
There may or may not be any truth to your characterization, but this is rubbish. Sure, there are a fair number of people going for a steampunk costume in a very cheap way, but there are some really fine steampunk ideas, costumes, and themes emerging in SF. Airship pirates are probably overdone, as well, but it’s time for creativity.
A lot of steampunk looks to the Victorian world as the basis, because that’s the historical period of steam technology. So parallel worldbuilding by imagining a Victorian England where someone pushed the tech just a little farther is SF, and so is imagining a future world where technology has been lost and is rebuilding, falling back on old tech like steam power to survive.
With regards to the OP, I think the real reason is that Hollywood is essentially a conservative business. They are trying desparately to outguess the public at large for what will capture their attention. So they really like to copy things they already know work. That’s why a successful movie immediately gets cloned and sequeled to death. That’s why movie types are so formulaic. And they often misinterpret what made a movie work so well, and put too much time on the wrong parts. That’s why you suddenly get dozens of glitzy SF spectaculars showing off CGI, but bomb at the box office because the plot, characterizations, and acting suck rocks.
Steampunk as an organized theme is just now leaking to mainstream. How long did it take Comic Book movies to become popular? Superman was in 1978. Batman was in 1989. It wasn’t until Spiderman in 2002 that they really took off.
As a rule of thumb, Hollywood is generally 20 years behind the curve in terms of science fiction; TV is about 10 years behind movies.
Definitely not. Sky Captain is a pretty good visualization of 1930s-era pulp fiction, as it was never filmed at the time (not only was the film technology not available, nobody would have spent the bucks. But the robots were straight out of the same-period Superman cartoon The Mechanical Monsters, and a lot of it looks like 1930s cover art.
Steampunk, by comparison, is a modern affectation creating what folks today think that things would’ve looked like. Some of it does have roots in period art (some of the flying machines in Jules Verne and H.G. Wells novel illustrations look like steampunk creations), but for the most part, people in the time period would’ve thought the creations outre and not at al representative. Compare period illustrations of the Nautilus from Verne’s book (which look practical and streamlined) with Goff’s proto=steampunk ship from the 1954 Disney film.
It’s not supposed to be historically accurate. It’s fantasy.
(assuming you’re adressing me)
That’s not the point – “Sky Captain” is a pretty accurate picture of period fantasy as seen in its time. “Steampunk” isn’t. Also, “Sly Captain” is from an era too late to be identified as “Steampunk”.
I’d think it obvious. Because such do not often have ready, obvious audiences.
Even Sci Fi, as beloved as it is by SDMB nerd demographic, is hit and miss for mass popularity, particularly outside of the wealthiest nations.
It makes perfect sense that oddball niche genres aren’t filmed, the risk of failure is high.
I don’t really understand the distinction.
Sky Captain/dieselpunk/pulp adventure is sci-fi set in the 1930s. Steampunk is sci-fi set in the 1800s. Neither is possible, and I’m fairly sure folk in the 1930s knew their pulp sci-fi set in ‘modern’ times was just as implausible as anything set in the past.
“Movies”, plural: the upcoming sequel seems to continue that aesthetic.
Because it is a different flavor of alternate history.
Steampunk is brass and mahogany, London fogs and Spring-Heeled Jack, coal-fired boilers for the computing engines and saving the world from some fiendish plot.
Sky Captain is dieselpunk. Streamlining, fast airplanes, chrome, Art Deco, Doc Savage and robots, and saving the world from fiendish plots.
Totally differnt.
Well yes, I know what the differences between the two aesthetics are. I don’t understand why one is ‘legitimate’ and one isn’t.
I think someone also mentioned Wild Wild West. I’ll toss in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and that Jackie Chan version of Around the World in 80 Days too. There have also been a few animes with steampunk elements like Steamboy (obviously), Howls Moving Castle and Last Exile.
I would say that for the most part, the one thing steampunk films have in common is that most of them aren’t very good.
Brazil is closer to film noir and whatever Sky Captain was. Sci Fi as imagined by people in the 40s.
And actually City of Ember reminded me more of the Vaults from Fallout than steampunk. Which would techincally put it closer to Sky Captain and Brazil,
Not quite seeing it for “Extraordinary Gentlemen”.
I mean, they explain that Skinner’s invisibility serum makes a guy invisible; it doesn’t make him bulletproof, doesn’t let him fly, it does one thing and that’s it; Jekyll likewise doesn’t turn invisible when he hulks out as Hyde, but just gets big and strong (without getting x-ray vision or freeze breath or whatever). Once they’ve hit Venice, it’s been established that Captain Nemo has a sub and a car that do things a sub or a car could do today; Quatermain has likewise been established as a crack shot; both men are then known quantities for the rest of the movie, and neither breaks out a teleportation device or a time machine or whatever.
What rules did you have in mind?
He’s saying that Sky Captain tries to faithfully execute the aesthetic, the visual feel, of how 1930’s presented their sci fi. Whereas steampunk doesn’t so much try to match what a Victorian would project, but rather what a 21st century aesthetic of what the tech would look like if ramped up to 11.
Okay.
I guess my response boils down to: so what?
I’m not sure why it is a issue for him either.
Steampunk is a modern subgenre which plays with the common perception of Victorian science fiction adventure stories. It can be done well or done poorly, but anyone who judges it as attempted re-enacting is missing the point.