The futuristic city with flying cars at the beginning of the movie definitely has all the cyberpunk visuals, and technically Zorg is the head of an evil corporation. But the real villain of the movie is incoming force of evil/darkness. And the plot is resolved through the power of love. Even the President of Earth is actively trying to help do the right thing and save the planet.
While there are some great cyberpunk visuals at the beginning of the movie, I don't know if the themes are there to call this cyberpunk. What do you think? Would you consider The Fifth Element to be cyberpunk?
While I agree with your other points, I'd argue that Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel Zorg is part of the system grinding people down, and the government is pretty feckless.
To the first point, Corbin Dallas is fired from a taxi company run by Zorg. He's the head of a massive conglomerate that does everything from taxis to weapons sales.
To the second, while the government does have power Zorg also has a bug (literal and technological) in their war room, which shows while they might not be subordinate to Zorg the government isn't powerful enough to prevent this sort of thing. Also, the government ends up failing in their mission to save the planet.
However, there's also magic in the universe and, as you said, they're saving the earth from destruction and not overthrowing Zorg, so I wouldn't call it cyberpunk.
Totally fair. It's been a long time since I saw the movie.
There's an interesting question here. IMO government's loss of control is a big part of cyberpunk, because it kinda/sorta shows people have lost power to corporations.
I was going to say that governments are usually absent/background in cyberpunk, but then you have Deckard (Blade Runner) who is employed as a cop.
But whatever. It's a genre, so there are no rules, only commonalities.
I know this is a very old thread, but cops being essentially legalized corporate forces empowered by law is also very cyberpunk.
I dont think it is fleshed out if the government in blade runner isnt actually a corporate puppet that exists to create the legal framework the corpos behind it desire, especially if it turns out the blade runner and alien universes are one and the same as ridley scott suggests.
In that case the government would be subservient to weyland yutani, who are nonchalantly able to deploy government military personnel as they see fit.
Both are good. From a genre perspective it shows that corporations have taken over. I like the idea of corporate militaries, but corps influential enough to tell governments what to do hews closer to reality.