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GHcool 
"Forever a curious character."
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 Posted - 09/04/2007 : 06:18:46
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Does anyone remember Johnny Mnemonic? In the 1980s, a writer named William Gibson wrote a short story called "Johnny Mnemonic" about a futuristic courier that uses his brain as an external hard drive. In 1995, following Keanu Reeves's success as an action hero in Speed and right as the start of the dot com bubble, TriStar released a film adaptation of the short story. I saw the movie on television about 10 years ago and was required to read the short story in freshman English class in university about 4 years ago.
Both the film and the short story were instantly forgettable. In fact, I forgot I had even heard of Johnny Mnemonic until I popped in an old VHS copy of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (the Kenneth Branagh version) that I bought for 99 cents. They had trailers for theatrical releases that were upcoming at the time of the VHS's release. One of them was for Johnny Mnemonic.
It was amazing how completely out of date almost every major idea in the film is. The story takes place sometime in the early 21st century. Johnny (Reeves) downloads important, confidential material onto his brain in Japan and is chased down and almost killed by the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) all the way to the United States. He must get to the United States in 24 hours or else his brain will die from all the excess memory stored in it or something. In order to free up space in his brain for computer data, Johnny had to dump some of the memory that was already there: his childhood memories. In the trailer, Johnny boasts that he can carry "almost 80 gigs" in his head. (I just bought an external hard drive the size of my wallet for about $100 that can hold 80 gigs.)
There have been some technology movies that now seem a little dated (WarGames is a good example), but I can't think of anything that has been rendered utterly meaningless in such a short amount of time. |
Edited by - GHcool on 09/04/2007 06:19:46 |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 09/04/2007 : 14:55:18
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It's the idiotic companion piece to that same year's Hackers, another movie predicated on the idea that audiences know nothing about the Internet.
Johnny Mnemonic is the one with the dolphins, right? Also, both Henry Rollins and Ice-T? Ice-T is the black Henry Rollins and vice versa. They're both in this movie, they both gave similar comments on I Love the '80s, they're practically the same person, I say. |
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Beanmimo 
"August review site"
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Posted - 09/04/2007 : 16:17:29
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that god awful movie...I regretted every minute of it except for the tiny part of Dolph Lundgren who played some sort of sawn-off shotgun weilding preacher (I liked that idea)
When the Matrix came out I compared the two movies in my mind. Johnny Mnemonic was a science fiction movie that relied on Keanu Reeves to carry it and He fell over whereas The Matrix was a science fiction movie whose elements all other than keanu carried him along and it worked. |
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rabid kazook 
"Pushing the antelope"
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Posted - 09/04/2007 : 23:24:05
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quote:
Originally posted by Beanmimo
except for the tiny part of Dolph Lundgren who played some sort of sawn-off shotgun weilding preacher
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GHcool
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 09/05/2007 : 00:41:06
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quote:
Originally posted by MisterBadIdea
It's the idiotic companion piece to that same year's Hackers, another movie predicated on the idea that audiences know nothing about the Internet.
I actually like Hackers. Even though the movie is dated, it still works as drama. Also, the idea of a brilliant teenage hacker is not so far fetched. There was actually a kid in my high school who could fit that description. He wasn't in my class and I didn't know him, but I heard from friends that after serving a short sentence in juvenile hall for breaching some kind of classified government database, a computer company immediately hired him and gave him a six figure salary. He wasn't even 18. |
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Revisiting Johnny Mnemonic
