A 100-year-old sci-fi masterpiece not only ended up inspiring genre classics like Blade Runner but also made many intriguing predictions about the present world by setting its story in 2026. If one harkens back an entire century, the term “cyberpunk” was yet to find its distinct identity. As a sci-fi subgenre, “cyberpunk” only became recognizable after seminal books like Neuromancer established its core storytelling tenets.
However, long before cyberpunk became a widely known sci-fi subgenre, many ambitious sci-fi movies, shows, and literary works paved the way for it to find its identity. Owing to this, the 1927 movie in question, Metropolis, does not exactly qualify as a full-fledged cyberpunk flick. Even the term “cyber” did not exist in its modern technological context at the time.
Despite this, though, it is hard not to look back at the iconic sci-fi movie and label it as a “proto-cyberpunk” classic because of how it ultimately set the stage for the subgenre to find its feet. Some might still debate where it is right to associate the cyberpunk subgenre with Metropolis, given how it predates both the movement and the terminology by almost half a century.
Still, a closer look at its themes and visuals reveals how it shaped modern cyberpunk sci-fi.
1927’s Metropolis Was The First Proto-Cyberpunk Movie
Metropolis was among the first movies in the sci-fi genre to explicitly portray the stark contrast between “high-tech” and “low-life” that defines cyberpunk. It showed how the wealthy lived in utopian skyscrapers and pleasure gardens right above the subterranean underworld where the masses are forced to survive through everyday labor behind steam-belching machines.
The vertical portrayal of the central city in Metropolis, where multi-story highways and buildings connect to massive buildings, also ultimately inspired the urban sprawls depicted in popular cyberpunk media, like Blade Runner and Cyberpunk 2077. Even the Maschinenmensch (machine-human hybrid) in the movie serves as an ancestor for replicants and human-like AI cyborgs in sci-fi.
Like most cyberpunk stories that feature megacorporations as giant overlords, Metropolis also introduces Joh Fredersen, who ruthlessly runs the central city. What Metropolis lacks is an overarching digital landscape in its story, which seems to be an essential part of most cyberpunk stories. Arguably, its visuals, too, do not exactly qualify as “punk.”
They are more inclined towards German Expressionism, making it closer to the dieselpunk subgenre. The classic sci-fi movie also ends on a relatively optimistic note, making it far less gritty and cynical than most cyberpunk stories.
For a movie that premiered in the early 1900s, though, Metropolis still feels remarkably ahead of its time. Without it, modern cyberpunk sci-fi fiction probably would not have been the same.
What Metropolis Got Right About 2026
Director Fritz Lang Metropolis ambitiously looked 100 years into the future by primarily setting up its story in the year 2026. While the movie did not exactly capture the digital landscape of the present world and portrayed how everything ran purely on steam and clockwork, it managed to foresee many specific technologies and dilemmas they bring in the modern hyperconnected world.
For instance, the movie explores the possibility of video calling where Joh Fredersen uses a massive wall-mounted video screen to call his foreman. This multi-tiered transit system in the movie, where pedestrian skybridges run through massive monoliths of buildings and even railway tracks pass through residential areas, mirrors the architecture of megacities like Tokyo and Beijing.
Screenwriter Thea von Harbou and director Fritz Lang also saw how the early years of industrialization and urbanization would eventually force the masses to work in shifts bound by 10-hour clocks. While their portrayal of development is more industrial than digital, they accurately captured how the overarching “machine” is expected to be kept alive and active at all times at the cost of humanity’s quality of life.
Metropolis also gives a glimpse of the uncanny feeling many are left with when they see AI and synthetic robots emulate human tendencies. The movie was perhaps also the first in sci-fi to show a version of deep-fake technology by portraying how a robot is given the appearance of a labor leader to manipulate the working class and infiltrate their movement from within.
Even though Metropolis is not as widely recognized and appreciated as other iconic sci-fi movies like Blade Runner after all these years, it seems to have aged incredibly well. The sci-fi movie’s visuals also seem fascinating when one remembers that it was made almost a century ago.