Desthmachine? *snickers*
yeah, it's pretty bad, i'll admit that ^^
But it still very much is shadowrun, aside from the missing magic of course.

The Cowboy Beebop movie/series isn't too bad as an example of a runner team, it's got cyber, but no magic. Also I really like Firefly, again as an example of a runner team, I guess. They have psychic powers, if not magic per se, and hmm guess they don't have cyber. I'll also throw the Matrix 1 in there - in terms of the moves they pull off as what a "real world" cyberguy might do. Also.... star wars? It's got magic. It's got cyber. It's got guns. And little runner like teams.

Double Dragon

So bad it's good, kinda. Definately in Pink Mohawk territory, it has just about everything from earlier editions: distopian setting, gangs ruling the streets, evil mega corp, cyber/bioware and magic (no augmented reality, and though the matrix isn't VR, it does seem to be arranged in PLTGs), even if the cyber and magic are rare rather than common.

Not than I can actually recommend watching it, not with a clear conscious anyway.

Doc Byte has the correct answer, just try this some time, watch the two seasons back to back, no commercials. Its like watching a movie series, almost like as if Johnny Mnemonic or Bladerunner became a trilogy.

It has the dystopia, the corps, what remains of Seattle and the surrounding area, corrupt cops, thieves, hackers, drones, gangs, slums, secret groups, cybertech, biotech, social "niceties" towards different people, and yes, even IMHO magic which expresses itself as cults, adepts, some "out of body experiences" (see: Astral) and UGE (helped along in some cases by biotech) that spans eons. The main character certainly led the double/triple life of a shadowrunner and did dirty deeds which would range between Pink Mohawk and Ice Cold depending on the make up of the team she would get stuck with/pick.

The only things I can think it was missing from Shadowrun and who knows, it was probably on purpose so they weren't sued, was dragons and other awakened creatures and the NAN rise to power. Instead there was a Biotech/UGE rise to power, which we didn't get to see because as usual, something good comes along and Fox can't fight its compulsion to cancel it.

Ok i take it all back, the 80's were awesome.

Hah, I read this while listening to "In Love with the 80s" on Rhapsody*. Yeah, the 80s rock.

*This isn't quite as huge a coincidence as all that. Most of my playlist is from or about the 80s. But I still thought it was pretty funny.

As no one's mentioned it, I'll list Gunhed (1989). The first part of the movie especially, witnessing the team interaction, struck me as pure Shadowrun. I watched it thinking "This is a runner crew, no question about it."

For more recent movies, especially the pink mohawk crowd, although not really distopian future, it does have a corporation (CIA, but still counts in my book) influence, as well as the runner group dynamic, The Expendables.

Hey, the CIA is basically a Non-Cartel Aztechnology in the making.

Has anyone seen the Lincoln Lawyer? Nice example of leveraging on the contacts to pass messages in jail, get some muscle, guns, hack the police tracking system,... with a great line when he passes his order to a biker gang:

"Remember: I said hospital, not morgue."

Cyberpunk: Blade Runner, Strange Days, Brazil

Anime: Akira, Armitage III, Bubblegum Crisis, Serial Experiments Lain

Shadowrun: Johnny Mnemonic, Super Mario Bros

Even though it's not a bad movie I have to disagree with Ronin.
Not cyberpunk-ish and certainly not shadowrun-ish at all.

Errrr if you don't think Ronin is Shadowrunish at all we're really not playing the same game:

They have their initial meet in a bar after being sent their by a nebulous fixer.
They are given the job and must suss out each others skills and attitudes, conflict occurs.
Edit: They also negotiate price.
They must get gear, perform recon, and do some hacking.
They perform the job, gunfire and explosions ensue.
There is a betrayal.
There is a visit to a street doc.
There is dealing with contacts and legwork.
There is an end resolution that deals with, but goes beyond basic wealth.

With the exception of the lack of magic and no full VR computer related scenes that's a Shadowrun.

One movie... would be Split Second (1992). In the grim future of the year 2008, Rutger Hauer works as gung-ho police, hunting a mystical killer...

Honorable mention goes to Alien:Resurrection. Just set it on earth and switch the aliens to insect spirits...

And for my own, upcoming street-level barrens-hellhole campaign, our group watched the documentary The Vice guide to Liberia.
Drugs, check.
Guns, check.
Corruption, check.
A former cannibal warlord, called General Butt-naked who now works as a preacher, check.
...Yes, Butt-naked, that's how he fought. He's also friends with General Rambo and General Bin Laden (not the Osama dude, though...).

I blame my group. :P
I have to admit I don't remember it like you described. Maybe I'll watch it again sometime.
But to be honest, Sneakers and Mission Impossible felt more shadowrunny, but even those not that much.

It's probably because Shadowrun is way too cheesy to take seriously. At least that's the case for me.
I'd rather imagine the Turtles live action movie than Ronin when thinking of Shadowrun.

Yeah, forgot that. Great 80s cheese.

Oh god!



And I totally forgot Black Rain. Feels a little cyberpunkish too.

Streets of Fire and The Warriors for old-school feel.

Burst City, too. It's kinda exhausting to watch, though.

Hardware Mark 13 and Gunhed for more late 80s / early 90s cheese.

I agree that there are lots of movies that have Shadowrun elements to them. As has been pointed out nothing hits REAL close, certainly nothing with high production values, not that I've seen.

I have been hoping, almost since I discovered and started playing Shadowrun several years ago, that someone would make a movie from one of the novels or write an original screenplay that truly is Shadowrun - and make it edgy and R-rated and have All of the SR elements to it. Skip the big names unless deemed absolutely necessary to draw a wider audience.

If it looked like it was NOT going to suck I would venture out to the theater. If it was in fact good or great (like Matrix, LOTR, V for Vendetta, Blade Runner...) I would go multiple times. I would buy the the DVD/BD unless it was horrible.

That means that I would risk my "sanity" (or at least relaxation) by virtually guarantying my exposure to rude ignorant self-centered morons that talk during movies, text in dark theaters, kick the seats in front of them, etc. Understand that I would prefer to never set foot in another movie theater ever and that I only break down to support the most promising and awesome of movies every 2-3 years or so.

I look forward to researching and watching a number of the flicks mentioned above.

At least the way I run SR (lots of underworld organizations rather than megacorps, paranoia, and Game of Thrones level backstabs and double crosses) The Usual Suspects is a great movie. A top notch criminal teeth-clenched team is brought together by a mysterious and powerful man (Keyser Soze) through his Johnson (Kobayashi) through a mix of bribery, blackmail, and force. Each have their expertise, quirks, and they have to navigate an increasingly complex maze of twists and turns as they are lied to, betrayed, and set up. I actually hadn't seen this movie until one of my players, who acted like Benicio Del Toro from that movie IC btw, suggested I watch it after playing a few of my games. My game then ratchetedup a notch or two in the paranoia department after that.

Its funny to me how these threads always degenerate into the same sprawling list of movies, but they keep popping up every few months.

And for what its worth: Ronin. blah blah blah.

I personally recommend a strong Max Headroom chaser (at least the original British movie), but that's just me perhaps.




I was prepared to make some snarky comment about the Magicrun bellyaching that occurs on occasion, and that if you want to watch the adventures of a plucky band of Adepts of various Ways and their pet Technomancer you should give this series a look, but I suppose there's no way it wouldn't have been mentioned 4-5 pages into the thread.

But if plucky adventures, yada yadda appeal to you, it's not half bad for a SciFi original series...

Parts of the movie, The Town. Blade Runner. Beowulf (with Chris Lambert). Ronin. Nemesis. Equilibrium.

roninroninroninronin

(I know the guy who wrote it, kind of.)

Once at a con a gm ripped off ronin.
I was playing a rigger and he left out the car chases.
Worst session ever.

Worst GM ever.

The car chase scenes where part of what made that movie!

They are pretty legendary. Why would you leave them out?

Still if the session had even anything close to the tone/tension/mood of Ronin, the GM didn't do that badly. (Of course, I kind of doubt it did. That tone is mighty hard to accomplish even at a home setting, let alone at a con table with six to eight strangers to wrangle.)

Has no one mentioned "The Losers" at this point? I know the grit isn't there (it's such a goofy film) but the team dynamic is perfect. Everyone has a basic archetype from the game...

And I'm seconding Strange Days and Ghost in the Shell.

EDIT: Now that I think of it I have a little anecdote that might interest the "Ronin" crowd. My prof. in college wrote that film and was discussing to us a movie he wanted to write called "Privateers". He started off his explanation with, "Okay, so, it's in the future, and megacorps rule the world... and they need to hire criminals, called privateers, to perform corporate espionage...". I had to raise my hand at that point and ask him if he'd heard of Shadowrun. He wrote it down and said he'd check it out

Nope. It was pretty horrible. The GM focused on totally unnecessary elements, the planning took an hour and was pretty much outgame talk until I forced it to end and there was no tension at all. We went there killed the dudes, took the suitcase and escaped. All AAA of course.
No police, no drones, no magic and half of the group didn't even do anything. The group were two over-the-top orc samurais, two dwarfs of which I have no idea what they were supposed to be and my buddy and me. Everyone was around 500 BP, while both of us were 350-400 and we ran the thing pretty much by ourselves. Anyhow when we had the suitcase and I started the car for our escape, while popping some jazz to compensate for the missing rigger control of our car, the orc sams who had done nothing (all targets were sniped by my buddy) entered, knocked me unconsious (the player even said he knocks me out without rolling or anything) and then the GM said we're back at the hideout.

Worst session ever.
Worst players ever.
Worst GM ever.

Sounds interesting... Privateers is a very nice term for what shadowrunners do, really. Did anything come from it?

Just to go a little left-field, I'll add me 0.02

Blade Runner (style, setting), Dark Angel (setting, style, teamwork), Batman Beyond (setting, teamwork), Transmetropolitan (setting, style), Altered Carbon (style, setting, Murphy's Law), The Losers (teamwork), Red (style, teamwork), Kiss Of The Dragon (Murphy's Law), Hudson Hawk (Murphy's Law, style), Global Frequency (teamwork), Gravel (magic, style)

I know they're all over the place, and some have been mentioned before, but those are some of my influences on the tone of my games/plots/etc. I'm sure there are a lot more, but my aging brain can't seem to conjure them at the moment.

I'm trying to figure out how to tell if the scenario being described is Ronin or Pulp Fiction.

What makes Ronin, Ronin and Shadowrun, Shadowrun isn't the mission pretext or the two dimensional NPCs. It's the characters and how they react with the world and the other characters.

In Ronin, "Sam" isn't called "Sam" because it's just a name. The name says who he really is, as opposed to who he is pretending to be, similar to the difference between who Ōishi (47 Ronin) was and who he pretended to be. Both Sam and Ōishi had the same end goal and employed deception to get close to their target and achieve their goal.

Ronin is a great Shadowrun movie, not because it sets up a great mission (Leverage sets up much better ones), but because it sets up great characters and great character interaction with each other and their environment. There are a lot of classic archtypes and memes in the movie. If the table wants to play that sort of grit and interaction, it's a great model. If they want Ghost in the Shell instead, it's a different table.

People are going to hit me, but, you gotta think on this a bit...

The Dirty Dozen.

Why would I hit you? I am just surprised it hasn't been mentioned sooner.

A bunch of anti-social drekheads crammed together and forced to do a nearly impossible job for a small reward.

It's Shadowrun in WWII! Apparently there's been some sequels, which I'll have to see now. If I can find them.

Saw Smokin' Aces coz of this thread. Great movie! Highly recommended.

Then saw Smokin' Aces 2. Very bad. Stay away!

Smokin' Aces 2 is a drinking movie and a comedy. It's a fun movie to watch while folding laundry. The ending scene also had me rolling.

It also nicely sums up SOME Shadowrun players I've run with.

Starting up a game set in magic-drenched Denver in a few weeks to introduce a newbie to gaming to Shadowrun.

Thinking of making it a two movie night - The Fifth Element (the over-the-top and exotic) with Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker (little grit, a little grime, and working for one of the most powerful Johnson's in the Sixth World).

Don't know if it would fly with the other players though,

With all the talk of Anime, I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Outlaw Star, nix the space aspect and you have Magic, high tech, cyberware, adepts, riggers, AI, Ancient Conspiracies, drones, and a plucky team of adventurers .

The Eggman

That is a really fun movie and it has the whole "team of outsiders" bit down pat.

I wouldn't say it's the singular Shadowrun movie, but Spartan is the movie that gets me the most amped up to play Shadowrun. It hits on legwork, interrogations, cons, cons turning to sudden violence, extractions, fixers, conspiracies, half-truth telling Johnsons, and how professionals end up in the shadows. Plus it has classic Mamet dialogue (see the sig.)

The Losers comic is better at being Shadowrun than the movie.

Although, that might be because of the scene where the hacker is working in his boxers and a newspaper pirate hat.

I own the second volume (need to get the first on the cheap); my favorite has to be where they go to Seadonia for their free satellite uplink, talk the skipper into handing them his rifle...and then it hits the skipper why.

Silly popcorny fun with American politics as written by two British men. Not a bad combination.

Has anyone mentioned cowboy bebop yet? For me at least it's very shadowrunish

Cowboy Bebop has been mentioned numerous times. Anime tends to offer the cyber + magic schtick very easy in terms of media. While I used to be a big anime fanboy/otaku, I never saw any series having the gritty/dystopian feel that SR has (or had, depending on your edition & viewpoint).

Certain episodes of Avatar, Last Airbender... guy with metal arm & blew things up with his 3rd eye. The Earth city with the secret service guy brainwashing people.

Serenity (aka Firefly the movie). Some episodes of the tv show Sliders. Babylon AD. Children of Men. Doomsday. Avalon, Natural City.

I think some of what I have listed has been posted before. I'll double check & edit this later after confirming.

Since someone already mentioned Dirty Dozen, I would add Kelly's Heroes as a great old school shadowrun.

Then I submit The First Great Train Robbery. My old school is older than your's!

fritz lang metropolis

Beat 1927 buddy...

OK, Sleeper with Woody Allen.

Ah, but that's made well after 1927, right? It's based on When The Sleeper Awakes by H.G. Wells (1898).

Not just an explosives geek, I see, but a Literary geek as well... I am Impressed.

I read at High School level when I was 8, and College level when I was 10.

I'd be better read if my so called "Teachers" hadn't taken my books away from me because "It was reading time" and "you have to read the designated book."

Moby Dick was ripped out of my hands for My Darling, My Hamburger. Which took me less than two hours to read the previous night.

Would you say Ceaser's Column is also possible as a SR type of novel?

I do feel your pain...

F***ing ghetto welfare school.

"Why bother teaching the little bastards, they'll just end up on welfare like their parents." was something I heard more than once. I was a sneaky and quiet little SOB.

Back to movies before I get angry.