I’ve mentioned in the past that vampires and zombies have had their day as pop-culture trends, and now it’s time for them to fade away. Another trend that has been going on long enough is Steampunk. What else can I think, when I see specimens like this:
Steampunk Palin, via ComicsAlliance
For the record, behind her are John McCain and “Robama.” And yes, Professor Greenhouse is indeed an evil Al Gore. And no, it’s not a parody. McCain, Obama and Palin are steam-driven (??) cyborgs, fighting against a big oil/nuclear power coalition who have allied with the Russian along the Russia/Alaska border (???). And there are eight pages of Sarah Palin pin-ups.
Fortunately, she already has a theme song. And there’s even a new metal version of it:
You’d think that the heavy guitars and drums would completely cover up the vocals, but they don’t. Something else will have to be found.
Hey, steampunk is awesome. And it can’t die until I finish watching Last Exile, the most recent fantastic pure steampunk anime.
“And no, it’s not a parody.”
Correction, it IS a parody. The author even came out said so repeatedly in the comments section of various comic book blogs. I mean, “Robama”? People think that’s supposed to be serious?
Second, steampunk going on long enough, or is played out or oversaturated? I’ve heard this elsewhere and just don’t understand this. We’re still not mainstream, noone knows what hell we’re about outside of fellow con-going geeks. There’s not scores of steampunk movies and TV shows coming out like there is with vampires and zombies. Heck, the only mainstream big-budget “steampunk” movie was Wild Wild West and it came out 1999 and was terrible! (the recent Sherlock Holmes movie counts I suppose, but that’s about it)
The new Sherlock Holmes movie is also terrible, to be fair. First time I can remember seriously debating walking out of a cinema – Such a train wreck. I was gutted that they took that budget and cast, and produced such a steaming pile of crap :-(
1) that’s not really steampunk. It’s just set in that time period.
2) That movie was awesome. I loved it. What are you talking about?
Dude, it sucked arse. I sat there hoping against hope that some actual plot might show up, or that I might be given a reason to get invested in the story, but it never heppened. It was a series of feelingless action scenes strung together into vague order.
Yeah, no, I’m with MahouSniper on this one. The movie was excellent. Having just started re-reading the Doyle stories, I have to say that the casting and characterizations were near-perfect.
Downy Jr. might’ve been a tad too much for Sherlock, but I really enjoyed the movie as well, and I’ve read all the Holmes stories.
Perhaps. I like how they played with the interpretation that Holmes has, in modern terms, low latent inhibition. It gives an extra shade to what is otherwise a character quality that film adaptations have till now found elusive at best.
I loved Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes in the TV series. He was the first actor I really felt acting like the Sherlock Holmes I knew from Conan Doyle books.
I’m not sure if I would quite call the movie “excellent,” but I definitely think it was good and I enjoyed watching it.
It wasn’t flawless by any means, but I can’t see why you say it had no plot.
Yeah, it’s not “really” full-on steampunk, but the elements are there. The electric cattle-prod weapon and the ornate brass-n-gears doomsday device at the climax edge it from historically accurate to sci-fi. It even has some (flashback) scenes of a mad scientist in goggles.
Wow, really? I quite enjoyed it personally.
Yeah.
Come on!
-> Gay Sherlock Holmes!
-> The only movie where the hero does NOT kiss the chick! ^^
The plot is largely irrelevant when there is so much awesome!
Well, I can tell that I’m democratically out-voted, but I’m still going to voice my right to free expression: Sherlock Holmes was probably the worst £7 I’ve ever spent on a cinema ticket (bearing in mind that when I saw The Blaire Witch Project it was only £4 a ticket).
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would qualify, wouldn’t it? As well as anything based on Verne’s seminal work, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Or maybe it’s just anything with the word “league” in the title.
Oh yeah, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen definitely fits…. forgot about that.
Well, maybe I just blocked it out of my mind due to how terrible it was, and how much it deviated from the graphic novels.
But still, when the most obvious examples are those 2 movies, I don’t have much fear of the style going too mainstream.
True that. Is there such a thing as a really good steampunk film?
Pretty much all Jules Verne books are steampunk.
Video games actually have some good steampunk. Bioshock’s the obvious one, but TimeSplitters has some great steampunk levels, especially in Future Perfect.
Vorjack hit a little nerve? ;)
?
I think that was to me, lol
I just came from the other post where I responded to some homeopath who was putting down James Randi and “big pharma”; so I was a little hot under the collar.
I just wish I could watch that video at work. Alas.
No wonder she wants to trademark her name. To get rich off the phat loot steampunk moneypolooza.
Wow – that new metal version of the SP song. Must have been made by that Band of Demons that dig that gig in Georgia a while ago. I’d compare it to cats playing bagpipes, but that would be an insult both to cats and to bagpipes.
… did that gig …
Funny you mention that! I’ve been working on another version that features cats playing bagpipes.
Thanks for listening!
Wait…did you mean felines? I was talking about these cats I know from Scotland!
Judging from the number of steampunk novels that are just starting to appear on the scene, I’d say it’s on the rise, not the decline.
Hey! I’m (very slowly) writing a steampunk story. Well it’s steampunk magiteck (and it does get explained in detail) and its not really upfront much, it’s more the background. The story also involves cruel gods (based on actual mythologies (guess which pantheon, I’ll give you a hint: their king is a serial rapist)) and a fantasy world.
I’ve mentioned in the past that vampires and zombies have had their day as pop-culture trends, and now it’s time for them to fade away.
Sigh. Why do so many genre bloggers think that since they’re personally tired of a trope that everyone else should be too? I’m delighted that THE WALKING DEAD has had a successful first season and hope to see at least 4 more. Anyone who’s tired of zombie apocalypse stories (or never cared for them to begin with) is free to not watch/read them.
Same as I don’t read or watch steampunk but still manage not to assume no one else should like it either.
Two words: stephenie meyer. She pretty much fucked up the genre of vampire fiction and now people are copying her bastardization of vampires.
Vampires are fucking killers. Immortal amoral killers who have to feed on the blood of the living to survive even if the protagonist is a vampire.
Meh. I’m not crazy about a canonization of any one interpretation of what this or that imaginary creature ought to be. Vampires have gone through many iterations of characterization, motivation, demeanor, and ability over the course of centuries, as have pretty much any other creature of legend one cares to mention. 28 Days Later, for example, was a good demonstration of how good things can happen when a canonized mythos (Romero and O’Bannon zombies) gets deliberately ignored or heavily modified.
I don’t remember that 28 Days Later was about dead people being re-animated. It was about living people getting “the rage”. And when they died, they stayed dead. But it’s a good reason to dig it out and watch it again this weekend :-)
That was his point, Len.
Exactly. So not zombies.
Horrible looking gaunt people running after the hero trying to eat him, aparently mindless, brainless automatons driven only by instinct… Sounds like zombies to me!
I’m with Custy, they were still zombies, just not un-dead zombies.
Originally zombies were voodoo-hypnotized slaves, not undead, anyway.
Horrible looking gaunt people, yes – but not formerly (and maybe still) dead people. That’s not just modified the genre, it’s completely redefined it. Should have thought of a new name.
Anyway, I’m still going to watch it this weekend. Maybe also 28 Weeks Later (I know a couple of people with different colour eyes* – makes it even more fun).
* You have to watch it to understand.
@CoffeeJedi: in the films, they were ex-dead people.
This is nothing new. People were saying the same thing about Ann Rice when she wrote the Vampire Chronicles.
Yeah but the Anne Rice vampires are vampires, they kill people for their blood. They are not the pussy vampires of The Vampire Diaries and they are not the faeries the smeyre. (of course I stopped reading the vampire conicals a forth of the way through The Tail of the Body Thief so after that I don’t know)
I am going to note my own hypocrisy, I do like Forever Night.
Forever Knight is AWESOME.
And hey, not the same. He doesn’t sparkle and he did kill people. His conscience just caught up with him. =)
I think fantasy fiction would become very stale if we didn’t have new ideas and new interpretations of old ideas constantly bobbing to the surface of our collective zeitgeist, so I have no issues about an interpretation of vampires as sparkly wimps – really, is it any different from LeStat in the Anne Rice books being a wimp about his vampirism?
I have issues the Smeyer for a lot of reasons (shitty story, inability to write, gaping plot-holes, inconsistent application of rules/laws in the Twilight universe, crappy grammar, apparent inability to grasp punctuation, the fact that she hates women, the fact that she promotes creepy undead paedophilia, the list goes on), but her trying to reinvent a genre is not one of them.
No Steampunk is not dead yet. Not while I’m alive anyway. Steampunk rocks and will continue to rock.
As to the vampire thing? Well I’m not convinced it is a passing fad either. When I was 15 There wasn’t a Twilight series. But I was caught up in the idea of Vampires anyway, and ended up writing my own Teen Vampire romance.
Anyway here is a theory I just came up with (so its either insightful or a load of …) Teenager fascination with vampires is an expression of the fear of growing up. The I’m going to be an adult in a couple of years . . . But vampires can stay forever young, (and yet don’t have parents telling them what to do) ie Awesome.
Whether you like steam-punk or not you have to admit that the three characters shown look a lot cooler and more interesting then their real life counterparts.
OMG. I didn’t think it was possible, but the metal version is EVEN WORSE than the original!
Steampunk: When Goths discovered brown.