For a great example of a modern-day shadowrun, you could do worse than see the documentary "The Cove." It's got it all. A greedy corporation. Environmental decay. An indifferent populace. Spiffy surveillance tech. Vigilante black ops.

I enjoyed the hell out of it, and I'm not even an environmentalist.

Are you talking about this "The Cove"? Its billed as a documentary?

He means the oscar winning film about how a Japanese community slaughters dolphins. They make all sorts of claims about humanitarian deaths and not killing females or pups but any attmeopt by film makers to record it was brutally shut down. sometimes by muscle bound fishermen, sometimes by corrupt police who could not, when pressed, explain what law forbad filming but they would sieze any camera anyway. The film was an SR op in and of itself as activists slipped into the cove covertly and set up hidden cameras that then had to be equally carefully extracted.

The Japanese have tried to protest that the film should not be shown as it is biased and does not cover the cultural portions of the cull but the visuals unedited, is too strong to ignore.

That's the one. It's worth noting that the filmmakers tried to follow the law at first. When that didn't work, well, what else are you going to do? You can give up and go home...or you can collect a team of adventurers, adrenaline junkies, tech specialists, and the best free divers in the world, and go on a shadowrun.

I'll tell you which one makes a better film. And DLN is right, this film did win the Academy Award for best documentary of 2009. Try not to hold the fact that the guy from Whale Wars is in it against it.

How could Buckaroo Banzai not be on the list?!?

Cherry 2000

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092746/

Good demonstration of riggers, sprawl, barrens, general apoco-punk. Also, Melanie Griffith with the pink hair.

Does this list really lack Nirvana or am I blind? The only real cyberpunk movie I've ever seen!

Just have a look at this guy who sold his natural eyes and made a profit by installing only cheap b/w cybereyes. Or this girl with her datajack, loading another person's memories. Now, that's pure cyberpunk.

Eh, I wasn't very impressed with Nirvana to be honest, while it has cyberpunk tendencies, it didn't really feel very cyberpunk to me.

I liked Renaissance. It moved a little slow and I think the black and white animation was a bit too dark at times (interesting complaint for a cyberpunk film, I know), but its plot was intriguing.

La Zona, for the SINless feeling.

Dystopian future
Virtual reality
An AI
Deadly biofeedback
Hackers
Cyberware
Simsense
Asian (Mega)corps
Mr. J
Runners
Talking car threatening to explode at a theft attempt


What do you want more? (Apart from magic and metahumans? )

"Repo! The Genetic Opera" and it's descendant, "Repo Men" (Not to be mistaken for "Repo Man", which also is a nice movie.).

*Bing* "You are past due on your organ transplant. Please wait here while our repossession agents come to claim our property."

The Cove seems to feature a bit of IRL shadow running - [paraphrased?] "We wanted a view from the sky, so we put together an aerial drone, everybody likes balloons."

HoBo with a shotgun!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nbl78cj5vM

Eagerly awaiting that movie!

BTW, that's one of the options I give players when making a character, and if I ever play, I'm seriously thinking of making one.

I saw "The American" the other night. It was pretty solid as a spy-thriller for your more serious shadowrun games. However, the plot is a little ill-concieved as it's simply not that hard to get an M-14, even in Italy.

Try something completely different. Mix Shadowrun with Buster Keaton and a touch of ... I don't know... The Muppets Take Manhattan. Watch "Micmacs".

See here: LINK to Micmacs

Repo Men definitely hit the Shadowrun vibe. However, it's not actually related to R:TGO. Well, at least depending on who you talk to I guess. It was based on a book. The concept similarities are quite suspicious though.

I think the main difference is that while Repo Men was a bit sluggish and certainly way gorier than it had to be, RtGO was almost unwatchable. I tried. I really did. But it's just crap with a gimmick that doesn't hold it together. I made it about half way before I had to turn it off. Repo Men was no masterpiece, but Jude Law and Forrest Whitaker made for good leads and had good chemistry.

I watched the French film Chrysalis the other night because it's on Netflix Instant. The plot was a little murky but it was decent. Some Shadowrunny elements to it. AR type interfaces, cyberpunk themes and locations, etc.

The fact that the two are so closely connected, and Repo Men was made by the company that was first offered R:TGO, is why I mentioned them both.

It's basically an extraction job with a script rather than a person. Then again, that's Hollywood for you.

R:TGO is very hard to watch, and oh so bad from a writing standpoint. There's a major Chenikov's Gun (SP?) that is just left lying there, for instance.

I think it may be more that the author of the book/screenplay stole the idea from the stage production, assuming nobody would ever hear of it and then it got made into a movie as well. Then again, one of Amazon's reviewers for the book said the idea was stolen from an old stand-up comedian, so who knows even who had the original idea. If there were more striking aspects stolen from RtGO, I didn't make it far enough into the film to notice them, heh. According to Wiki (so take that for whatever it is worth), both of them were filmed at approximately the same time in 2007. I did know from reading a review around the time it came out that Repo Men had sat on the shelves for a long time. Probably because Universal didn't know what to do with it when the final film came out as a gory shoot-em/chop-em-up rather than a quirky sci-fi/social satire like they might have imagined.

I think Larry Niven made the idea of Organlegging popular in the '70s, but probably didn't come up with the idea.

IIRC, he got the idea when thinking about mass murderers sitting in prison and not even donating blood for use in surgeries or some such thing.

I haven't read the all five pages of the topic nor do I know if we only supposed to keep it to just movies.

Here are two that seem very Shadowrun to me:

1) A TV show called "Leverage". (It is "'hooder" based, has a team (mastermind, hitter, hacker, thief/infiltrator, and face/grifter) that work together, and frequently break the law.)

2) A movie called "The Expendables". A team used as deniable assets.

I'm going to throw The Losers onto the list. The movie plot was kind of lacking, but you got ridiculous plans of action, high tech gear, conspiracy, big guns, a team operating outside of the law, and gratuitous violence.

I will admit, I haven't liked a villain as much as I liked Max.

Trailer Park Boys. Worst shadowrun team evar.

Chekov's gun. And if it was just left lying there, then it really wasn't Chekov's gun.

The comic was much better.

"Are you hacking in your underwear again?" "Of course not. I'm also wearing a hat."


What do you expect from Canadian Criminals?


Checkov's Drop Piece?

I'm sure.

I like to draw a correlation between the movies The Losers and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Yes, The Last Airbender sucked but I was made aware of the cartoon which I started watching and -greatly- enjoyed. The same will likely be said of The Losers comic.

It also doesn't wreck the point that it is a good movie to -use- for Shadowrun themes or inspirations.

Right down to using a Jackrabbit... Er, Ford Pinto, to blend in.

Who wants to look at that POS.

Oh man, now I am so imagining a Shadow Run where one of the team members tries to piss on the pursuing vehicles in a vehicle chase.

Preferably a female troll.

GO TO "(...)a running list of things I am not allowed to do in Shadowrun(...)" TOPIC WITH IT.
BOTH OF YOU.
NOW.

.... oooh, my poor imagination....

Didn't see that Trailer Park Boys movie, eh? *shrug* Oh well, its not everyone's thing. It was just me basicly agreeing with Laodicea, those characters really are the worst SR team evar ... but if you can top it with another hapless criminal team, I would love to be reminded of that silly movie too.

Heh, the fake security guard outfits, oh my...

The raid on the kitty shelter was the best botched shadowrun ever. I mean, yeah, the bank job was botched, but it's a bank. ANYONE would tried to rob a bank would botch that up.

Posted this one yesterday before It was pointed out to me that there was a Movie List thread already.
So... cut and paste, here it is.


Today I watched a french film Called MicMacs.

Written and Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, creator such films as Amelie and City of Lost Children, it has his identifiable fun and quirky style.

Long story short I feel it's a good film for Shadowrun research.

A man who's father died diffusing a landmine then later in life gets wounded by a stray bullet. He later seeks retribution against the two powerful Munitions makers who made the Mine and Bullet. Meeting a group of odd people (each with an odd talent) who live on the fringes of society he becomes friends with them and they agree to help him in his quest.
The ending really had me on the edge of my seat and was not at all what I expected.

I would reccomend this film for people who like to play shadowrunners on a shoestring. Despite the lack of super-futuristic or Raw Magic content it has a charm and cleverness that draws you in and makes you believe that the little people really DO stand a chance at toppling the Corps.


Offhand it makes me wonder what Jean-Pierre Jeunet might be able to do if someone properly introduced him to Shadowrun.

Yes! Another one who has seen it! I too would love to see what he does with Shadowrun.

I wasnt a big fan of City of Lost Children. Maybe I need to watch it again.

I just watched "Flame and Citron" last night. It's set in WW2 but works as a great example of a subtle double-cross and a whole bunch of other intrigue.

I watched MACHETE yesterday . . do it and tell me it does NOT remind you of how runs tend to go usually . .

using your enemies bowels as a rope when you jump out a window does seem commonplace in shadowrun :/

Needed more Lesbian Hispanic Stripper Ninjas.

Did you watch the big huge fighting scene in the end?
take a look at the whaambulance coming in . .

Reminds me of an old Japanese action movie I saw where a guy used his own laceration protruding intestines to choke a guy out.

Got to love Riki-Oh^^

Is that what it was? I saw part of it playing at a booth at the San Diego Comic Con when I was like 14 or 15. That scene happened to be on. Guess I was just lucky. As you can see it left an impression on me.

It's the most famous one where that happens, and it's pretty well known for that scene in particular, so I assume so^^

I happened to watch it because I was translating the manga that it's based on a while back.

For Shadowrun purposes you'd need an "elven" in there somewhere.

Babylon AD (the recentish Vin Diesel movie) is one of the most Shadowrunny movies, in my mind. The tech is not as advanced as 2070 tech, and there are no metahumans, but there is a bit of magic (IIRC) and cyberware is just being introduced. In addition, the aesthetics are spot on, the main character is a runner, and the dystopian elements are definitely there. The movie isn't wasn't much more than mediocre, but it is a great Shadowrun film.

Additionally, District B13 and its sequel. Set in future France where the government builds a wall around a ghetto (which becomes ruled by gangs) and later decides to secretly bomb it to get rid of the crime problem. Fortunately shadowrunner with a heart parkour master David Bell (low magic physad) and infiltration/combat expert Cop McBadass (higher magic physad) are there to pull of some SR worthy stunts and kick ass.

I must say though, the master list isn't very useful when it contains movies that are only barely connected to Shadowrun.

It's more about the feel of the movie than any tangible link to SR (though I agree that there are a few on the list that make me go ????) I mean, Leverage has almost no connection to SR in terms of technology or magic or anything like that, and yet I think that we can all agree that it's one of the most Shadowrunner-y things ever made.

I definitely agree about the feel of the movie being very important, which is why Leverage is fantastic for the list. But I (for instance) don't ever see myself recommending a player watch Angel Heart in order to get a feel for what the Shadowrun is like. I guess my point is that the master movie seems more useful if the movies are more than scarcely like Shadowrun.