Movie recommendations that share the same themes as in the Deus Ex franchise

Duders i need some recommendations for movies, that are somewhat similar to the Deux Ex franchise. Now i personally don´t want to watch any Anime, as that is not my thing. (Have watched all the Ghost in the Shell stuff though, ranging from the movies to SAC, as that is the only Anime i apparently can tolerate)

But feel free to add them anyways as other people who might be looking for the same thing might be into Anime.

Throughout the years there has been some movies that kind of delt in the same themes, but i would´t say they are in the same ballpark as Deus Ex. Movies like:

• Lawnmover Man
• Virtuocity
• Dark City
• Minority Rapport
• I.Robot
• Blade Runner
• Hardwired
• Terminator
• Robocop
• Nemesis
• Elysium
• Johnny Mnemonic
• Equilibrium
• THX 1138
• Virus (kind of a reach)
• The Machine

So know of any movies that sort of fit the cybernetic, human augmentation, world dystopian bill please let me know.

Duder suggestions

• Aeon Flux
• Surrogates
• Automata
• Strange Days
• Children of Men
• A Scanner Darkly
• Repo Men
• Class of 1999
• Appleseed
• Hardware
• Cyborg
• Judge Dredd (1996) & Dredd (2012)
• Universal Soldier
• Death Machine
• Burst City
• Prototype X29A
• District 9
• Chappie
• Gattaca
• Mr. Robot
• Lockout
• Fifth Element
• Escape from New York
• Split Second
• American Cyborg: Steel Warrior
• Ex Machina
• eXistenZ
• Oblivion
• Texhnolyze

Aeon Flux, never saw the anime/tv-series on mtv, but the movie is good enough.

Some other dystopian future/cyberpunk tips:

• Surrogates with Bruce Willis
• Automata with Antonio Banderas

That's already a decent list but idk why you don't think Bladerunner is in the same ballpark as Deus Ex because that movie should be topping everybody's lists unless you're looking for something to hammer that whole aug vs. natural thematic angle

Strange Days perhaps?

But if you don't even consider Robocop as in the same ballpark, that one is probably farther from what you want.

I'd also say the 1998 Italian movie Nirvana, but that would require you tracking down the original Italian version as the English dub, which is the most common one, is insufferably awful.

Children of men has a some Deus Ex feel, also a bunch of Half life, it doesn't really have any cybernetics, but human biological change is central to the plot. I guess it's mostly tangentially related to Deus Ex, but Children of men is probably my top dystopian future movie, it is really great!

I dont whether CG counts as anime but the Appleseed movies kind of dabble with the same sort of stuff/setting. (think the same guy wrote the ghost in the shell mangas)

Also if Terminator counts as dystopian (future timelines sure) then Hardware is also kind of similiar.

And while not too cyberpunk (somewhat near future) I quite like A Scanny Darkly. Weird proto drugs and Keanu Reeves getting pissed at Robert Downy Jr. is pretty good mix of things.

I'll echo Strange Days. Other than that... Repo Men perhaps? And I want give a shout out to Class of 1999 because that movie is wonderfully dumb and it does kind of fit the bill: teachers secretly being replaced by modified military robots to keep the kids in check sure sounds like dystopia to me.

@boozak: Yup, Hardware is amazing, but I'm not sure it's what the OP is looking for.

I guess Blade Runner is one of the few actually. But as you said doesn't really nail the whole aug themes home. But as a whole package i know it is a lot to ask for in a movie.

Nice catch, removed the duplicate. And thanks for the suggestions, been eyeing Automata for a while, i should check it out.

Watched A Scanner Darkly some years ago, was actually a decent movie. Super weird movie, but decent.

I will add it to the stuff i need to check out. Nailing everything i asked for in one movie, is pretty much impossible. So i will gladly take anything that deals with any of it.

Judge Dredd

Cyborg (van damme movie)

universal soldier(another van damme movie)

Will definitely check out Class of 1999 that sounds pretty amazing.

Seen all three, but will add them to the list.

@meierthered: Glad to be of service. But while there is a 'cyber theme' to it, be aware it's absolute 80's schlock and nowhere near a serious attempt to tackle any subjects other than 'highschool kids battle murderous robot teachers'. It wasn't exactly the most serious of suggestions.

Edit: Also, provided you can track it down somewhere, there was a TV movie adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron which I thought was actually quite decent.

Edit 2: Quite decent meaning: as a movie on its own. As an adaptation, it does stray a lot from the original short story and adds a bunch of things to stretch it to movie length.

There's been some debate about how cyberpunk it is, but I recommend checking out the TV show Mr. Robot. It's set in modern day, but a lot of the themes in Deus Ex (corporate paranoia, hacking, conspiracies) are explored in it. Also, the show is really, really good.

Does Her count? :D I know some that would call that a dystopia.

Since Cyborg has been brought up, I'll mention a few more B (or lower) tier movies that deal with some of these themes.

You'll have to know what you're getting into to enjoy them, but I think they still manage to do a few things quite well:

American Cyborg: Steel Warrior, switches quite a lot between a low rent Terminator knock-off and a pretty fascinating dystopian future vision of human biological change á la Children of Men.

Prototype X29A, the plot is kinda the same as in Hardware mentioned above, but it's way lower budget in every regard. Still has some neat scenes of life in a post-apocalyptic future where military robots have gone on a rampage.

Burst City, japanese live action cyberpunk movie about a group of squatting punks (played by real members of Japanese punk bands like The Stalin) fighting against the militarized police trying to clear out their neighborhood in preparation for the construction of a new power plant.

Death Machine, a bit a traditional monster horror movie, but with a killer cyborg running rampant inside an office building. Everybody is named after famous sci-fi movie directors. And it has the most adorable doors in movie history.

Split Second, another monster movie set in the future flooded London of 2008, featuring Rutger Hauer.

Renaissance? I remember really liking that one.

Gattaca touches on similar themes as Mankind Divided - but in the opposite direction.

Ex Machina.

And not just because of the title.

Also I guess X-MEN?

Ex Machina doesn't quite share the same themes as Deus Ex but they're kind of adjacent and Ex Machina is just a really great movie.

Lockout

Fifth Element

Escape From New York

Ghost in the Shell is an anime movie but it shares the main theme of deus ex.

You've already mentioned Elysium, but the other Neill Blomkamp films also work to varying extents. District 9 and Chappie (I think? Never saw Chappie) also have the whole "sci-fi but this time with broad social ramifications" kinda theme that Human Revolution/Mankind Divided are going for. Maybe not specifically cyborg dystoptia stuff, but if Mankind Divided is sorta about mechanical apartheid (but is really actually about Jensen doing a bunch of robo-detective work 95% of the time), District 9 is more literally about alien apartheid.

Oh man American Cyborg: Steel Warrior is some movie, remember watching it way back. Not sure it even registres as a B movie haha. Split Second actually still holds up somewhat... somewhat.

Seen that movie mentioned a lot around the web, so i will have to watch that one too.

Escape is still pretty awesome, re-watched it not long ago, good movie still. Also Fifth Element is still amazing. Will have to check out Lockout doesnt ring a bell.

I guess Oblivion fits the bill? Might be spoiling the whole movie by saying that.

It's currently the best show on TV. Would recommend it to anyone.

Man, i just looked up cyberpunk, and Super Mario Bros. movie came up. Not that i'm recommending that movie, although i think that if you havn't seen it at least once, maybe check it out.

Total Recall (not the new one), eXistenZ, Lucy, probably some others I'm not thinking of.

Guess i have to jump on that one as well.

Total Recall is solid for sure. Watched a trailer to eXistenZ looks interesting as well.

Man seen it when it came out on VHS, im scarred for life.

Actually have Oblivion, never watched it though because of the main actor. But i guess i should just look past that.

@meierthered: I love Tom Cruise as an action star, even though the guy must be a special kind of crazy on the personal front. Still, he comes off a such a great guy in a lot of interviews and stuff. Maybe he's just a good actor.

True he has been in some amazing movies, there is no doubt about that.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves; I mean, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend exists. But I get your point.

Not remotely close to similar themes, but Ghost in the Machine (1993) is pretty funny.

Sometimes a picture can say more than a thousand words. Sometimes you need a picture worth a thousand words plus six words to get your point across. This is one such time.

@bojackhorseman: Oh, I'm dead serious. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is fantastic. If there's anyone on TV doing better work than Rami Malek, it's Rachel Bloom.

@darth_navster: You're horsin' around. Zing.

@bojackhorseman

Metropolis, both the Tezuka animated and Lang original versions. They're all about class division and revolution.

Deus Ex, in some small part at least (although I think it's a bit more apparent than that) is highly influenced by the works of Philip K Dick. So any of the film adaptations of his work will probably do (although some as a movie are better than others).

Blade Runner
Total Recall
Minority Report
A Scanner Darkly

The more hollywood-ized films that were great stories but not great movies and probably don't fit anyway:

Adjustment Bureau
Paycheck

Of course these are more themes more so than direct inspirations. You could probably argue most scifi since Blade Runner was in some way influenced by several of these (especially Blade Runner). I mention them because of a large theme in them is consciousness, and the questions they ask are similar. I also know Philip K Dick's work is an influence of the original (and probably the newer) Deus Ex games.

Isaac Asimov has a couple of stories that were adapted with similar ideas as well however some people (especially if they were big fans of the book but not exclusively) dislike the films made about his work so mileage will definitely vary.

I, Robot
Bicentennial Man

I never saw the only other Isaac Asimov based film I know about, Nightfall.

Cyborg was a Jean Claude Van Damme film where he has to save a cyborg from some mean guy for reasons I forget. I love the movie because I saw it for the first time when I was like... 6, and it's a weird movie so it was one of the first DVDs I ever bought when DVDs were still new. It's not considered a good movie, but I love it and it's about a cyborg so I mentioned it. It's a fun B tier action flick that tries to tackle these concepts but doesn't really succeed that I recall (I just realized it's been a long time since I've seen Cyborg and I need to watch it again, damn).

Obviously there's the Terminator movies, but those touch more on AI and robots trying to destroy humanity which is the opposite of what Deus Ex is really trying to talk about so it's different. Once you go down that route it's all HAL and shit like that and that's just different from the robotic existentialism of something like Deus Ex or what I'd consider what Deus Ex is doing.

I'll mention Chappie too, because I liked it, but I'm not sure that counts either. In that arena is also Batteries not included, Iron Giant, WALL E,Short Circuit and others. There may be some amount of that which counts, but it feels somewhat different in intent. I don't know. In those robots are more like pets. Chappie maybe delves a little deeper but it never really gets where I think it wants to go with the conversation.

RoboCop. Maybe that counts. It's first and foremost a action satire film, though. It's not actually trying to say anything profound.

Ex Machina is a good mystery scifi that has interesting conversations about the topic, but I'm not sure if it counts. Or even if you'll like it. It depends. It's divisive from what I've seen. You should probably see it if you haven't, though.

Other than maybe in cartoons (or Anime) I can't think of any other live action films that have touched on bio mechanical consciousness (cyborgs, robots, or the like), and not even these touch on it as deeply as the Deus Ex games do. They are often vaguely discussed, or hinted at, concepts but no movie that I can really think of has really tackled the concepts Deus Ex generally breathes in as deeply as video games of that type tend to. Interestingly I think video games I have discussed this topic better than any film has to date. At least in what I have seen. There is so much I'm sure I missed something.

Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention Hardware which, by the posts people are making, I'm sure people will misconstrue as similar to Deus Ex because I can tell already there is a misunderstanding of what Deus Ex is and the scifi genre as a whole. It's a terrible movie with good actors in it. I recommend no one to ever watch it ever. Unless maybe you want to see how to not make a movie. It's really irredeemably bad and rips off a lot of really good movies in horrible ways. Just don't watch it.

Ghost in the Shell: SAC and Appleseed are my suggestions, I guess. You don't see many cyborgs in live action movies. Probably a bit of an uncanny valley thing.

While it is anime I think Akira still fits the bill also Demolition Man might fit as well.

The Animatrix

Batman Beyond and it's movie

The Dark Knight Returns

Edge of Tomorrow

@lttibbles: I still like The Animatrix much, much more than the later 2 films in the trilogy. Because it's basically a professionally-produced officially licensed fan short story anthology set in what you would imagine the world of The Matrix to be like, based on the first movie. Like most settings, The Matrix has an interesting setting when it isn't all doom and gloom, end-of-the-world, and that's the problem that plagues Reloaded and Revolutions: the looming apocalypse is this shitty, unnecessary plot device that plagues both movies. I'm way more into the original movie's only conflict being "Neo discovering the Matrix, expanding his abilities, then the more personal struggle of Morpheus being captured and they really need his leadership", and then most of the Animatrix stories are also more on the interesting, personal side of things.

But it looks so amazingly dumb that i almost have to.

@meierthered: That is fair. You might actually enjoy that aspect of it. =)

Lockout is set in a space prison!