Sorry to bump a moribund thread but I heard this song and thought of y’all. Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk) - YouTube
I’d like to see, well, sandpunk I guess, for lack of a better term. The concept being Islamic culture took over back in the 1200s or so, and all technology derived from that idea.
I think you actually proved the opposite point. Despite having a completely different setting, Seven Samurai is immediately recognizable as a form of a Western. The Western genre was not about the cowboys, stagecoaches or gun battles. It’s about an ethos, a way of looking at the world, a certain kind of pacing and shot framing, specific archetypical characters, a relationship with nature and history, certain plots, etc. It’s not the “stuff” that makes a Western. It’s the story, characters and atmosphere.
How would you recognize a “Steampunk” story without the streampunk window dressing? The idea isn’t even comprehensible.
As for why it isn’t more popular…go back to the steampunk Nerf gun. A lot of steampunk fandom relies on taking things and making them look pretty. interior decorating, propmaking and costumes just aren’t ever going to be popular with a mainstream crowd.
The Years of Rice and Salt*, Kims Stanley Robinson, although not so much with the tech/punk and more with the alt history.
[ol]
[li]Most Hollywood Producers have never heard of it.[/li][li]Most Hollywood Producers won’t take a chance on new concepts inside genres they have heard of.[/li][li]Unoriginality is key–once a Hollywood Producer makes the first Steampunk film, the rest shall follow, like sheep. Sheep with cocaine habits.[/li][li]The Economy must mend first–everybody wants to put dough into sure things only.[/li][/ol]
I don’t think thats true. Part of the appeal of Steampunk is playing with the ideas of Victorian Sci-fi and adventure stories, and with the optimism in the possibilities of Science and rationality found in Doyle, Verne and Wells dialed up to 11. It has its own ethos, arch-types, settings, etc. Its not just gears glued to stuff.
The robot in this upcoming movie isn’t the Steam Man but he does look similar.
The 2002 version of The Time Machine (such as it was) would fit in there, and I suppose the 1960 version to a lesser extent.
Steampunk is doing just fine in my little universe, thank you very much. But I get my dose mostly on the big screen from a source no one else seems to have thought about - Hayao Miyazaki’s animated features such as Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (or Howl’s Moving Castle), Kurenai no Buta (or Crimson Pig or Porco Rosso), and Tenkū no Shiro Rapyuta (or Laputa or Castle in the Sky). I liked The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as well, but I seem to be only one of around 7 people in the US who actually saw it.
My impression is that, aside from a fanatical bnch of people who like to dress up, there isn’t much depth to the movement. Sure, it is neat to re-create giant machines with large gears, but the trend (has always been) is toward fewer moving parts.
And mid-Victorian clothing is a pain to put on-too many buttons, hooks, etc.
I like the optimism about technology though.
They are coming out with a new Shadowrun game: Shadowrun Online, which will be a browser-based game. I’ve seen some of it (I’ve freelanced on several SR books, so I was able to wangle myself a beta invitation and might actually get to be involved with the project once it gets to the point where they’re looking for content and stories). It’s not very far along yet, but it looks like it might be a lot of fun when they get it ready for prime time. Definitely better than that travesty of an XBox game (to SR fans, that game is kind of like Highlander 2–it didn’t exist. No, it didn’t. We don’t care what you saw. 
)
Here’s a little update from the company that’s producing the game.
Here’s a Q&A session about the game from the official forums.
Steampunk can be amusing in little bites, but as others have noted it’s more of an aesthetic interest and fascination with the style of steampunk that drives a lot of the interest in it.
People who are huge steampunk fans are all about the look. Unlike other types of science fiction, where there is more solid technical and philosophical underpinnings and people engage in serious discussions about the philosophy of that genre. What “philosophy” is there behind steampunk? Who discusses the technological and moral significance of steampunk science the way Star Wars and Star Trek fans go at it in their genres? Steampunk which starts out not making any kind of historical or technological sense and proceeds from that point.
At it’s root steampunk is an affectation, and it is being used precisely as it should in movies. It’s a spice you can add to movies and TV to make them more visually interesting.
I think that this says it best. It’s like the girl with 3 breasts in Schwarzenegger’s “Total Recall” movie: breasts are good, and three breasts were a shocker, but, the next time they are in a movie, I would go yawn; and, the time after that, I would start looking to kill me a director.
Same with steampunk.
Again, I have to say that breasts are very good.
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John Carter Warlord of Mars is coming. Doesn’t Tars Tarkas’s daughter have four? That would set the bar a little higher…
Hey elfkin!
Since you’re the OP of this thread, I thought you’d want to know about this movie, Thelomeris.
It’s a Hungarian production and is undeniably steampunk. Here’s the wiki article on it. Note that Mark Hamill is involved both as an actor and as a consultant.
People have issues with the 30s that they dpn’t with the Victorian era. They’re understood today as a cultural Black Plague: nothing but depression and totalitarianism.
People are wrong, of course, but there’s no good way to tell them. Playing big band music at them just reminds them of the war.
I’m answering a slightly fresh zombie thread, but I hadn’t seen this before now.
I made no claim about how “real” the stories were, in either csase. But Sky Captain really does look like the product of the period it’s set in. The story and the visuals look sand feel as if they come from one of those 1930s pulps.
A lot of the lok of the Disney 20,000 Leagues is a 1954 nostalgic look back at what they imagfined as “Victorian Times”. The film is arguably a founding moment in Steampunk – as I’ve noted before, designer Ivan Goff came up with his extravagantly knobbed steampunk Nautilus for that film precisely because he wanted something interesting to look at. He complained that Verne’s deswcription of the Nautilus was an unornamented smooth heedle of a ship, like a weaver’s shuttle. And it was, and the period illustrators depicted it that way. Aside from a couple of decorative animal heads in an engine room illustration, and a Victorian parlor for Nemo’s study (which wasn’t so different from real Victorian parlors, and not as elaborate as films have made it out to be), Verne’s book and the period illustrations aren’t all that “steampunky”.
so the distinction, and my point, is that Sky Captain is a pretty faithful realization of the yay things looked in the minds of their creators at the time the film is set. 20,00 Leagues isn’t – it’s the nostalgic imagining of a later era imposed on a story from Victorian times.
As long as we’re reanimating this thread, I’d like to point out that the central conceit of Hugois a Victorian-style automaton (even though the movie itself is set in the diesel era). The film won five Oscars (including one for Art Direction) and was nominated for several more. Perhaps the steampunk aesthetic has found its first cinematic hit…
Ex-graphics guy here to say “except for the type.” The printed matter, and most of the signage, is all done with the most common Microsoft-compatible laser fonts. Lots of Times Roman, which nobody but The Times was using yet, and a diferent looking one at that.