7/13/2026 at 5:39:31 AM
So much of this space has been collapsed into homogenized entertainment. Nowadays, by the time a child is ten years old they have seen every form of the hero’s journey in the cartoons they watch, to the degree where there are tropes and nods to source material or even sometimes derivatives of source. Sci fi, fantasy and other genres are blended in as hooks because cartoons have to keep viewership and eye balls, so they throw everything they can find at it.As a result, unfortunately, there is very little “new” material. The old material that took centuries to develop and longer has been flattened and duplicated, over and over again. I sound like a curmudgeon (I probably am), but I stopped watching movies entirely not too long ago because it became a farce of seeing cliche writing. Shows are even worse so as to not even warrant discussing.
by tangenter
7/13/2026 at 11:05:01 AM
Cyberpunk specifically has also been outdated fast by real world developments, and other genres emerging with similar topics, but different design(?)-language. The whole cyberspace-element for example kinda died (or evolved) with the rise of the real internet, the Matrix-Movies and recently with stuff like VRMMO-stories from asia.The overall concepts and elements are still around in some way, but the specific combination and language that makes cyberpunk are gone. At the end I would say they were a result of their time, and time has changed, so not it's just nostalgia and retro.
by PurpleRamen
7/13/2026 at 3:36:50 PM
I always find it kind of funny that after Cyberpunk was coined "X-punk" (steam-punk, diseal-punk, etc) became a construction to denote a particular type of "retro-future", sci-fi as imagined from a past time period.This wasn't initially true of the word cyberpunk, but over the intervening years its become true, as cyberpunk has more and more denoted the future specifically as seen from the perspective of the 1980s and early 90's. Its become "retro-actively retro".
by simplicio
7/13/2026 at 1:14:51 PM
I'd go the other way and say Cyberpunk was meant to be capitalism taken to its logical extreme (unregulated industries rife with corruption, with markets/regimes perturbed only through acts of violence and espionage).As life begins to imitate art, we're met with a The Thick Of It type situation where the satire of reality is no longer applicable and would be further diminished by continuing it
> "Time and again, The Thick of It led and reality fell in behind."
by tetris11
7/13/2026 at 2:31:35 PM
Yeah, the issues of political critique that were key to early cyberpunk have largely been lost. It's partially the fault of the first Blade Runner movie, which exploded the genre while also sanitizing it of the harshest elements.by toyg
7/13/2026 at 10:08:18 PM
I'm intrigued. What's some good unsanitary cyberpunk that predates Blade Runner? I'm new to the genre.by butlike
7/13/2026 at 12:37:24 PM
It feels like the last remaining promise of cyberpunk is widespread cybernetic augmentation. The rest of the genre is not really fiction anymore.by pennomi
7/13/2026 at 12:59:49 PM
I got a flier in the mail last week, offering a subscription service for ambulance rides. It was the most cyberpunk thing I'd seen personally.by fooqux
7/13/2026 at 2:28:50 PM
The most Cyberpunk thing imo is the bird's nests made using fibre optic cable from Ukraine. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/bird-nest...by everyone
7/13/2026 at 2:43:05 PM
It's not really any more cyberpunk than, say, a crow collecting expended ammo casings because they're shiny. Just involving electronics technology doesn't make something cyberpunk.by fluoridation
7/13/2026 at 3:18:47 PM
Disagree, corvids collecting bullet casings because they are shiny is heavily Shadowrun/WoD/Hellboy coded aesthetically. Regular birds gathering fiber optic cables for nests is EXTREMELY CYBERPUNK are you kidding? The image evokes so much: capitalist excess, tech waste involving computers/internet/cybernetics, war bad, environmental degredation etc... the only part about this concept that isnt heavily cyberpunk is that the bird isn't sick, dying, or dead and is somehow happy to find such a workable and durable nest building material.by cgannett
7/13/2026 at 7:10:12 PM
the bird's children may be crippled if it gets tangled in their feet while they're still developing, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stringfoot (which is in general a common sight wherever pigeons can be found); when my flat's fibreoptic was being installed, the cable-layers made a big deal of collecting the cuttings where they spliced the cable and ensuring nothing would be in reach of any animals.by DroneBetter
7/13/2026 at 4:25:42 PM
>capitalist excess...What? It's waste from expended munitions. The Ukranian war isn't a corporate war, it's a war between sovereign nations. The drones were produced by and bought from corporations (I assume) but the result of the arms race for better measures and countermeasures would have been the same if each country had produced its own gear.
>tech waste involving computers/internet/cybernetics
Again, something doesn't become cyberpunk just because it involves computers or electronics.
>war bad
I don't think cyberpunk is anti-war as a central feature. It's certainly compatible with that message, but you could write a cyberpunk story that is pro-war, as long that war is to counter the power of corporations.
>environmental degredation etc.
All in all, discarded fibers are more of a nuisance to people than to the environment, I think.
by fluoridation
7/13/2026 at 5:45:23 PM
It's aesthetically extremely cyberpunk.by mandolingual
7/13/2026 at 6:19:37 PM
Cyberpunk is a genre of fiction.by fluoridation
7/13/2026 at 6:47:03 PM
Gibson's fiction created an aesthetic and I am pretty sure more people are now aware of the aesthetic than the fiction with gave rise to it.by korse
7/13/2026 at 6:25:19 PM
And an aesthetic. You can google it if you're unfamiliar!by mandolingual
7/13/2026 at 6:43:44 PM
I'm very much familiar. It's just incorrect.by fluoridation
7/13/2026 at 8:58:25 PM
So it is decreed! 'Cyberpunk aesthetic' is hereafter an incoherent concept! Well done, sir. Objective truth is defended.by mandolingual
7/13/2026 at 9:05:19 PM
I'm glad you've seen the error of your ways.by fluoridation
7/13/2026 at 10:13:12 PM
Why dig in so rigidly?by butlike
7/13/2026 at 10:20:08 PM
You're right, I should learn to be swayed by such compelling arguments as plain assertion and "just google it, bro".by fluoridation
7/13/2026 at 6:46:24 PM
> The Ukranian war isn't a corporate warCitation needed.
by panzagl
7/13/2026 at 6:54:46 PM
Uh... The combatants are members of the armed forces of political entities, not of the private armies of corporations? Checkmate atheists?by fluoridation
7/13/2026 at 8:41:37 PM
Since the conflict began in 2014, Wagner Group PMC has been involved in many operations in Ukraine, which seems to contradict your line of reasoning.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group_activities_in_Ukr...
by aspenmayer
7/13/2026 at 9:02:54 PM
First, the bulk of the Russian forces are still armed forces personnel. Second, even if most of the Russian forces consisted of mercenaries, their pay and their tactical objectives would come from the Russian government, which also directs the strategic objectives. A cyberpunk corporate war is fought entirely between corporations, for corporate reasons.What even is this argument? Why are you people wasting my and your time on this?
by fluoridation
7/13/2026 at 10:25:04 PM
Considering how the former leader of Wagner countermanded orders from above and was recalled, as well as Wagner’s usage of press-ganged convicts straight out of gulags, the unit was fairly irregular compared to the Russian military proper. Wagner’s other activities such as natural resource diversion from their legitimate owner/lessor seems to firmly put the organization proper in cyberpunk territory.Cyberpunk as a concept is fairly subjective and subject to interpretation. Perhaps your conception of cyberpunk is more exclusive and prescriptive than others’? I wouldn’t interpret a difference of opinion about the tropes or ethos of cyberpunk in a normative way.
Just because folks see cyberpunk aspects in society or literature that you do not is not a contradiction of your own perceptions. It might be a case of prescriptivism vs descriptivism.
Does art imitate life, or does life imitate art, or both (or neither)? You seem to be saying that cyberpunk is only a literary genre, which is somewhat limiting the discussion when so many cyberpunk works have been adapted to other media, which then inspires other works which were never in written form to begin with. To limit your own discussion to written works is your prerogative, but it seems a needlessly narrow scope for the discussion of others who don’t share your view.
To say that we’re wasting our own time is to discount the fact that others are participating in the discussion in good faith for their own reasons. HN writ large isn’t a means to an end, HN and the individuals of HN are ends unto themselves.
by aspenmayer
7/13/2026 at 10:56:40 PM
>Wagner’s other activities such as natural resource diversion from their legitimate owner/lessor seems to firmly put the organization proper in cyberpunk territory.What I said was that the Ukrainian war is not a corporate war. The composition or actions of the Wagner group are completely irrelevant. WG could be composed of anarchist hacker cyborgs who participate in armed conflicts to fund their struggle against what they perceive as a corporatocracy, and the Ukranian war would still not be a corporate war.
by fluoridation
7/13/2026 at 11:44:27 PM
The points system whereby Ukrainian soldiers’ units earn credits for confirmed kills (with a bonus for live capture) of Russian and other nations’ hostile forces, which can be redeemed for drones and other materiel from plethora of international and domestic startups competing with established arms megacorps, as opposed to top-down procurement diktats reads to me as cyberpunk. The growing usage of (semi)autonomous ground drones on both sides also seems fairly cyberpunk in a Terminator sense. The participation of forces from other rogue states like North Korea in exchange for food and arms is cyberpunk.Reasonable people can disagree, as I alluded to above, but I wouldn’t say that disagreement on the points or in itself is pointless or wrong, which seems to be where we differ. Whether something is cyberpunk is in the eye of the beholder, a subjective experience in the reader of art and of literature and of history. I don’t see how you can say what something seems like to others, as that is to second guess their own experience of reality (or as mediated by fiction, in the the case of artistic works).
To me, the cyberpunk ethos can be summarized as high tech, low life. Utilizing literal convicts as frontline soldiers by Wagner in Ukraine seems to fit that description to a tee.
In light of the above combined with the routine usage of AI on all sides, the conflict in Ukraine as a whole seems to be a literal expression of “sustainable war” as depicted in Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045, which is widely regarded as a cyberpunk work.
https://breezewiki.com/Ghostintheshell/wiki/Sustainable_War
> In effect, the G4 nations went to war with each other in a "sustainable" manner managed by AIs: fighting deliberately avoided damaging major cities and essential infrastructure, mercenaries, and autonomous war machines were heavily used, and the goal of most battles was to destroy enemy structures, vehicles, and equipment while taking reasonable measures to capture rather than fatally harm human combatants when possible. In other words, the conflict would be sustainable as almost all losses could, in theory, be perpetually replaced by the military-industrial complex.
by aspenmayer
7/13/2026 at 11:47:15 PM
>What I said was that the Ukrainian war is not a corporate war.I won't let you move the goalposts.
by fluoridation
7/13/2026 at 11:55:59 PM
It’s more corporate than any past war, and for the reasons stated, it is hard to imagine how it could be more corporate if the belligerents tried. The direct involvement of startups in weapons dev combined with the points system creating a market for material driven by individuals and small groups rather than a traditional procurement process is hyper capitalist. The absence of direct conflict between corporations à la Shadowrun doesn’t meaningfully change the calculus for my determination that the Ukraine was is a corporate war.Regarding your edit:
> I won't let you move the goalposts.
I don’t know what this statement is referring to, but I haven’t changed any of my positions regarding what I perceive as cyberpunk or whether or not I view the Ukraine war as corporate (and cyberpunk).
Perhaps you view the discussion as one where points are scored, but I don’t. I view the discussion as a collaborative enterprise where we both express ourselves and develop our own ideas in the context of a wider discussion.
If there’s something specific I said you would like me to address, please let me know, as I don’t know what you mean.
by aspenmayer
7/14/2026 at 12:12:41 AM
Okay, fine. Then you're using the term in a different sense than I did. What's your point with this line of argumentation? Are you disagreeing with my definition of "corporate war", or are you disagreeing with the Ukrainian war not being a corporate one by my definition?by fluoridation
7/14/2026 at 12:50:28 AM
> What's your point with this line of argumentation? Are you disagreeing with my definition of "corporate war", or are you disagreeing that the Ukrainian war is not a corporate one by my definition?It’s a discussion board. I’m discussing the topic and trying to get to know what you think and believe, and thanks to your prompting, I got to know what I think and believe a little better myself. I don’t have any desire to disagree with you, as I don’t think that either one of us are making statements that have an objective quality to them, as the context is too subjective and subject to interpretation.
I don’t know enough about your definition of “corporate war” in the context of this thread, since you said we’re using different definitions, so maybe you could share a little bit about what that term means to you? What would it take to make the Ukrainian war a corporate war, to you? What are qualities of corporate war, and how would you or I know it when we see it? Can you think of some examples that meet your definition of corporate war, either in fiction or in real life?
by aspenmayer
7/13/2026 at 4:44:10 PM
Incidentally, here's a recent article about how the economics of ambulances are broken in the US: https://davidoks.blog/p/why-american-ambulance-rides-areIf municipal emergency services in yout area don't cover ambulance rides, that subscription service might not be a bad idea.
by loudmax
7/13/2026 at 1:17:15 PM
We do have some degree of it, but it's more on the realistic side of performance. The remaining body has to handle them after all, so it's hard to enhance performance beyond human limits for real. Maybe with some more decades of development.But we've also learned that we don't need to change the body itself, when we can just enhance the tools we use. Smartphones are already seen as some sort of half-step towards humans becoming cyborgs. Similar have we now Exoskeletons, which are probably more practical than replacing a full limb.
by PurpleRamen
7/13/2026 at 1:59:12 PM
NIMBYs have managed to "safe" us from the architecture.by ajmurmann
7/13/2026 at 10:04:58 AM
When society is affluent enough, people say it will become corrupt and fall apart. But when society has truly deteriorated, stories of heroes come to mind. If you look back at the era when cyberpunk social critiques emerged, the world that led that movement was wealthy, with a thick middle class. But when society starts to become poorer, those kinds of stories become stressful for the public. When you have room to breathe, such macro-level critiques serve as a 'healthy amount of stress' for survival. But when survival itself is at stake, it becomes much harder to be tolerant of criticism.That's why the countries where cyberpunk flourished were wealthy ones
by jdw64
7/13/2026 at 12:03:14 PM
I’ve toyed around with this hypothesis about dark music and edgy culture.The roaring 90s were full of this: dark music exploring critical themes or things like depression and addiction, lots of social criticism, and edgy offensive humor. The mid to late 90s were an economic boom time for a broader segment of people and were optimistic in a way that’s hard to explain today.
I like to put it this way: it’s not that things were all better in the 90s. They weren’t. But people thought they were getting better.
Now people don’t want those things. They want light entertainment, either no criticism (the right) or only approved types via approved critical theories (the left), and offensive edgy stuff is out and may get you cancelled (which side cancels you depends on the content).
by api
7/13/2026 at 12:18:08 PM
It seems like we think alike. I feel like the dark and critical themes of the 90s were ahead of their time back then. A lot of what they predicted actually turned out to be accurate. The cultural media of the 90s said things like 'this is what will happen if wealth becomes concentrated or corporations take over'—and it's actually playing out in a similar way.But as our society has become more stratified by wealth and the vast majority have become poorer, people no longer have the mental space to think deeply. They've come to love clear, simple answers. I interpret this as the world becoming too excessive. Because there's so much information that it's hard to even find meaningful content. Critical interpretation has also become difficult. Just look at AI. It's different today and different tomorrow, and for freelancers like me, it's like we have to deliver immediately.
There's material poverty, but I think mental poverty is more due to the pervasive FOMO, the fear of falling behind in the flood of information
As you said, it's 'only approved types via approved critical theories.' As people lose their margin for error, they also lose the capacity to consider others' perspectives.
I think you explained it better than I did.
by jdw64
7/13/2026 at 10:15:51 PM
You're right. I just got a 3 day ban on reddit for a dark (not explicitly dark) joke. People don't want to look at shadows nowadays.by butlike
7/13/2026 at 9:17:36 AM
I meant to write quite a long response to your comment, but let me just bring it down to a single question: How is your feeling different from melancholia?There is and always will be mainstream, niche, the unknown and everything in between. There was always very little new material and a lot of works just gained recognition when their zeitgeist was long overdue, too. I think experimentation is hard, and it's even harder to justify experimentation in the evolving economic climate.
Genres are meant to be collapsed, or rather they should blend and dissolve into each other. The earlier (and good) seasons of The Simpsons are a poster child when it comes to "flattening and duplicating old material". Almost every episode cites a movie or work of literature, and there was nothing wrong with it! It's part of why I understand the 90s as a cultural era of citations, and I had to grow up with that sentiment. It took me quite some time to understand that we moved past it.
Nowadays, we are fortunate enough that a lot of things from the past 10 decades have been digitized and are readily available on demand. That's amazing! Nothing is stopping me from asking myself some naive questions, like "What makes a good drama?" or "If Die Hard is considered to be a Christmas movie, why isn't Falling Down considered to be a summer movie?". I think there is still stuff to explore.
I'll just leave this unfinished thought with a recommendation to a niche movie I discovered recently: Sleep Has Her House (2017)[0]
by whilenot-dev
7/14/2026 at 3:11:00 AM
Thanks for that recommendation. That looks just up my alley.You may wish to give On the Silver Globe a watch.
by ChoGGi
7/13/2026 at 9:24:55 AM
imo a good contradiction makes for a good stroy if you know what i meanby ozgur44
7/13/2026 at 11:51:08 AM
I don’t watch many movies due to time but those I do watch tend to be odd, unusual, experimental, and sometimes polarizing.A recent one I enjoyed was Rabbit Trap, a modern take on faerie lore. It was polarizing and got poor reviews.
Years ago I adored a two season series called Hellier. I have a hard time describing this. Ghost hunting show for thinking people? You have to suspend disbelief but it reminded me of Primer in terms of a lot achieved on little budget. If you want to see some hipsters try to use transcranial magnetic stimulation to talk to aliens this is for you.
I’ve enjoyed some horror for its tendency to subvert tropes: hero to villain, villain is really hero, everybody dies, etc.
But yeah. I can only watch blockbusters if I’m in a certain kind of mood where I want light entertainment with no thought.
by api
7/13/2026 at 1:40:10 PM
I've noticed this as well and I'm rather concerned about it. Those cheap rip offs will ruin countless classics for her and it's really sad. I'm looking for the most boring stuff for her to watch just so she doesn't become fully jaded by age 18.Side note: if you need new stories, I've found a lot of weird and fun stuff to read on Royal Road.
by kraf
7/13/2026 at 12:56:45 PM
I abandoned movies too, 5 years ago or so. There's little space for "art" (whatever that might be) when you need to invest giant sums and expect a return. There's still some good movies coming out, I'm sure. But I don't have the time or energy anymore to dig for it like I did in the past.by gverrilla
7/13/2026 at 1:38:10 PM
I think you are right for movies and TV shows, but not for "comics, manga and graphic novels" and I'll add books as well. Since those are much cheaper and easier to produce than TV shows and movies, they can be created independently, without the need to optimize for earning tons of money. Indie literature and comics are very diverse in the storytelling.But I acknowledged (and dread a bit) that the audiovisual storytelling is such a strong force that any discussion about storytelling, even when specifically talking about literature/comics storytelling, is dominated by audiovisual references. Any creative writing workshop/course that include sci fi and fantasy genres will inevitably mention Star Wars as example for whichever technique. The more literary ones will mention some Oscar winning movie, etc.
by soneca
7/13/2026 at 7:12:12 AM
it’s been this way forever. the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00, etc… all had generic trash movies and music too.stop getting recs from algorithms and the entire world will open back up to you. just like top40 music and generic movies from back in the day, you’re getting the lowest common denominator recs.
i read a book about the music industry in the 80s (it’s been a couple years and i can’t remember the name now) but people called the top40 music from back then formulaic. they were convinced record labels had formulas to make their pop music stars. what do you think algorithms are? they’re feeding you trash.
again, stop getting your recommendations from algorithms and the world will open back up. get your recs from actual film or music geeks. go to your local record store, look at their wall of employee recs, or *gasp* talk to them and ask them.
by toofy
7/13/2026 at 1:49:54 PM
Yes, and it's always been hot in summer!> go to your local record store, look at their wall of employee recs, or gasp talk to them and ask them.
What local record store?
What local cinema?
What local bookshop?
Congrats, if you're resistant to addictive algorithms and same-day delivery convenience, but it's ignorant to deny the new baseline.
by jijijijij
7/13/2026 at 5:28:46 PM
Indie bookshops have had a revival in the past decade, it's big box book retailers who are in trouble.https://apnews.com/article/independent-bookstores-expanding-...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/apr/19/independent...
by Apocryphon
7/13/2026 at 2:34:27 PM
I understand your point, but it's slightly exaggerated. At least in Europe, any decently-sized city will have at least one of any of those. Not as many as there used to be, sure, but at least one.by toyg
7/13/2026 at 9:02:55 PM
I live in a big city. There are a few record stores, but if we're being honest, let's also not exaggerate by calling them my local store. And if I would opt for the journey, it's not like I would find this cool group of music nerds sharing secret gems. Vinyl is an expensive hobby and everything else is digital now. It's not like every niche artist got the means to press vinyl and the presumed cozy record store will hardly point you to bandcamp. Bit silly to pretend it's anything like it used to be in "your local record store".At least in Germany, book shops and (small) cinemas are artificially kept alive through regulations (e.g. Buchpreisbindung) and public funding. Theaters got that too, techno clubs not so much. Lucky are the ones who still got a nice deal on rent, because without a solid revenue, your new whatever local scene experiment won't be in the city. Then recently, conservative politicians also decided to attach ideological strings to the funding. What's a good book shop and what's a bad book shop gets intransparently decided by the domestic intelligence service now. The stories our times need will get you demonetized. As we speak, lobbyists are relentlessly trying to push the compliance machinery onto our devices, so we're not tempted by anything outside of commercial supervision either.
It's all converging towards the brave new mainstream. Pretending like all these trends are just fads is wilful ignorance. Media attention may come and go, but the insects remain dead, temperatures unprecedented and art compliant.
We are hardly in need of cyberpunk fiction anymore, tho.
by jijijijij
7/13/2026 at 6:49:12 PM
I dunno, I've mostly lived in urban areas but I've always had record shops near to where I live. Sure, there are far less than there used to be, but the ones that made the cut appear to be on solid footing.by korse
7/13/2026 at 4:50:46 PM
Im in a US suburb and have a few places to buy records, books and to go to a movie. I don't think it's so unusualby tayo42
7/13/2026 at 5:40:03 PM
i think (safe guess) a plurality of hn users live in cities with most or all of these types of businesses. unless you're somewhere very rural, exurban or suburban, you owe it to yourself to at least try to find these places (and even if you are, you might be surprised at what's nearby).by GuinansEyebrows
7/13/2026 at 8:30:31 AM
It's been never at this pace, nor in this quantity.by rawTruthHurts
7/13/2026 at 11:13:07 AM
But it's always been at a faster pace and a higher quantity than whatever decade preceded itby nightfly
7/13/2026 at 6:46:06 AM
Unfortunately that's how the system is. New material is risky and hollywood is not performing well financiallyAt least we have houses like A24 which brings interesting content
by JimsonYang
7/13/2026 at 7:20:01 AM
a24 was great, they’ve definitely slipped though. as soon as they won their first oscar they’ve been chasing money rather than quality.their old catalog though, incredible. i’d say like 80+ percent of the movies they released were fucking amazing. but that has fallen dramatically.
neon is still going strong though!
by toofy
7/13/2026 at 8:48:35 AM
a24 style really hitsby ElenaDaibunny
7/13/2026 at 10:05:01 PM
Just don't get bored with life. If they live long enough, the wise man sees trends; the ebbs and flows of the zeitgeist.by butlike
7/13/2026 at 3:39:59 PM
Yeah, back in my day there were Elves, not Vulcans. There were Orcs , not Klingons.by dragontamer
7/13/2026 at 6:45:13 AM
While there’s a lot of slop out there that just exist to extract dollars, there are still some great movies being made every now and then. Don’t expect them to be the most popular high budget movies, you have to dig a little. The idea that there’s nothing new that’s worth watching though is clearly wrong and a typical bias that basically every person has to fight against as they age. You might even say it’s a cliche to think all new media is junk.by left-struck
7/13/2026 at 8:34:32 AM
Might as well provide a method for good discoveries, as the current channels are extremely lifelessby navigate8310
7/13/2026 at 11:53:38 AM
The answer is high effort: find a group of people who share your taste.by pjc50
7/13/2026 at 2:04:14 PM
[dead]by jijijijij
7/13/2026 at 8:54:55 AM
And yet. The other day I saw Dune described as this generation's LotR, which was that generation's Star Wars. Dune (and LotR, and SW) are all Hero's Journey stories (what isn't?), yet they're each pretty unique.Granted, LotR and Dune were written in the 50's and 60's, respectively, with Star Wars following a decade later.
All I'm saying is that what is new depends on what generation you grow up in. And I suppose how much media you're exposed to. Speaking for myself, LotR was the second film I ever saw in the cinema so it was a whole new experience.
For the younger generations, these are old films, much like how idk, Spartacus and co was an old film for me.
tl;dr, the kids will be alright. Actually the kids also appreciate older media, there's a whole generation of late teenagers now rediscovering 2000's music / culture.
by Cthulhu_
7/13/2026 at 12:00:22 PM
Dune isn’t a straight hero’s journey because Paul isn’t a hero, or at least is a tragic one. He’s not Luke Skywalker or Frodo.by api
7/13/2026 at 1:02:06 PM
I'd also argue in LotR only Frodo has an archetypal Hero's Journey, but the novel itself is almost (but not quite) an ensemble piece with many other important characters that are not necessarily embarked on a steretypical Hero's Journey (Aragorn, Legolas & Gimli, Merry & Pippin, Gandalf).by the_af
7/13/2026 at 12:57:37 PM
Sidestepping the Hero's Journey for a second (which Dune actually subverts, one of its key points being that heroes are bad for mankind), Villeneuve's Dune is nowhere near a massive pop culture phenomenon of its time like Star Wars and LotR were of theirs, respectively.by the_af