30+ Best Cyberpunk Movies Of All Times

The best known and quintessential example of cyberpunk in the cinema is Ridley Scott's Blade Runner movie. The movie is considered a cult and one of the greatest movies of all time. The film stars Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty, Sean Young as Rachael, Edward James Olmos as Gaff, M. Emmet Walsh as Bryant, and Daryl Hannah as Pris.

In the 2019 futuristic year, Los Angeles became a dark, depressing metropolis. Ex-cop Rick Deckard is a "Blade Runner" who are people assigned  to kill androids that look like real people.

Another sequel to the film is Blade Runner 2049, directed by Denis Villeneuve and released in 2017.

The magnum opus of the Wachowski's, which has benefited much from the literature of philosophy mostly from a descartesian point of view. The film stars Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Hugo Weaving.

Thomas A. Anderson is a man who lives two lives. He is an average computer programmer by day, and a hacker known as Neo by night. Neo has always questioned his reality but his imagination is far beyond the truth. Neo finds himself targeted by police when Morpheus, a legendary computer hacker branded by the government as a terrorist, calls him into contact.

William Gibson, a key figure in cyberpunk fiction, called the film "an innocent delight I hadn't felt in a long time," and stated, "Neo is my favorite-ever science-fiction hero, absolutely."

Kaneda is a bike gang leader whose close friend Tetsuo is involved in a government secret project known as Akira. On his way to save Tetsuo in Neo Tokyo, Kaneda runs into a group of anti-government activists, greedy politicians, irresponsible scientists, and a powerful military leader.

Akira is a post-apocalyptic cyberpunk film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo and considered as particularly a landmark film for the Japanese cyberpunk and adult animation. 

A must-see Alfonso Cuaron movie takes place in 2027. The world's youngest citizen has just died at 18, and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction. Set in and around a dystopian London fractious with violence and warring nationalistic sects, Children of Men follows the unexpected discovery of a lone pregnant woman and the desperate journey to deliver her to safety and restore faith for a future beyond those presently on Earth.

Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) is a lonely man in the final stages of his divorce. When he's not working as a letter writer, his downtime is spent playing video games and occasionally hanging out with friends. He decides to purchase the new OS1, which is advertised as the world's first artificially intelligent operating system, "It's not just an operating system, it's a consciousness," the ad states. Theodore quickly finds himself drawn in with Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), the voice behind his OS1.

A cyborg is sent from the future on a deadly mission. He has to kill Sarah Connor, a young woman whose life will have a great significance in years to come. Sarah has only one protector - Kyle Reese (Arnold Schwarzenegger) - also sent from the future. The Terminator uses his exceptional intelligence and strength to find Sarah, but is there any way to stop the seemingly indestructible cyborg?

If you like The Terminator you can also check out the sequels Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Terminator: Dark Fate (2019).

Blade Runner 2049 is directed by Denis Villeneuve and released in 2017 is a sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner. Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.

A Mamoru Oshii cyberpunk anime (Original: Mobile Armored Riot Police). It is the year 2029. Technology has advanced so far that cyborgs are commonplace. In addition, human brains can direct to the internet directly. Major Motoko Kasunagi is an officer in Section 9, an elite, secretive police division that deals with special operations, including counter-terrorism and cybercrime. Ghost In The Shell is considered one of the greatest anime films of all time.

A Terry Gilliam movie stars Jonathan Pryce and Robert De Niro. Sam Lowry is a harried technocrat in a futuristic society that is needlessly convoluted and inefficient. He dreams of a life where he can fly away from technology and overpowering bureaucracy, and spend eternity with the woman of his dreams. While trying to rectify the wrongful arrest of one Harry Buttle, Lowry meets the woman he is always chasing in his dreams, Jill Layton.

Anthology of nine short anime films tied into the 1999 blockbuster "The Matrix" and its sequels.

"Final Flight of the Osiris": The crew of the hovercraft Osiris attempt to warn their city of an imminent attack.

"The Second Renaissance, Parts 1 & 2": The story behind the war between man and the machines, how mankind scorched the sky, and the creation of the Matrix.

"Kid's Story": A teenager is contacted by Neo, and manages to escape the Matrix.

"Program": Two warriors battle in a samurai training simulation when one decides to betray his crewmates and re-enter the Matrix.

"World Record": A champion sprinter manages to break free of the Matrix by sheer physical effort during a record attempt.

"Beyond": A young girl searching for her cat discovers a haunted house caused by a glitch in the system.

"A Detective Story": Private investigator Ash tracks a hacker named Trinity through the looking glass.

"Matriculated": A group of humans capture a machine scout and insert it into a 'human matrix'.

A Terry Gilliam movie stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, Christopher Plummer, David Morse.

An unknown and lethal virus has wiped out five billion people in 1996. Only 1% of the population has survived by the year 2035 and is forced to live underground. A convict (James Cole) reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to 1996 to gather information about the origin of the epidemic (who he's told was spread by a mysterious "Army of the Twelve Monkeys") and locate the virus before it mutates so that scientists can study it.

A Paul Verhoeven movie stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone and was one of the most expensive movies made at that year. Douglas Quaid is haunted by a recurring dream about a journey to Mars. He hopes to find out more about this dream and buys a holiday at Rekall Inc. where they sell implanted memories. But something goes wrong with the memory implantation and he remembers being a secret agent fighting against the evil Mars administrator Cohaagen.

An apocalyptic cyberpunk (more specifically steampunk) story directed by George Miller and set in the furthest reaches of our planet, in a stark desert landscape where humanity is broken, and almost everyone is crazed fighting for the necessities of life. Within this world exist two rebels on the run who just might be able to restore order. There's Max, a man of action and a man of few words, who seeks peace of mind following the loss of his wife and child in the aftermath of the chaos.

A Rian Johnson movie stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis, and Emily Blunt. Joe is classified as a "looper", a job in which his employers use time travel to send men from the future to be killed into the past, where Joe can properly dispose of their bodies. However, to tie up loose ends and erase the evidence of his ever being a looper, Joe knows that one day his future self will be sent back for him to kill.