I wonder how long it'll be until someone makes a film called "steampunk"?
It'll be a heavy-handed attempt to own the genre, and it'll likely be wildly successful.
I can't help but think that when it happens, it'll go horribly wrong.
Well, maybe not horribly, but it could cause some damage to the movement if it were... well... specific about anything.
I think that anything that becomes the "definitive answer" to "what is steampunk?" does damage to the creativity of the genre.
If you say it's one thing, then you're also saying it's NOT something else. I happen to like that question to be a lot more open. Heck, I'm making a monsters-in-steampunk-fantasy-world comics, and I like it.
But if Monster Commute somehow defined the genre (which it doesn't), it'd kick out all of the Victorian optimists and clockwork evangelists out there, as well as the atomic punks and the airship adventurers.
That would suck, at least from my point of view.
So, smart movie producer dude: please don't name your steampunky movie "Steampunk: the movie."
I like my punk in many delicious flavors.
- Daniel
