I remember loving Johnny Mnemonic, at the time. Iâm sure a big part of that was that I had (have?) a huge crush on Dina Meyer. And I love everything Gibson, even horribly cheesy movies that are only loosely based on his work.
What movie is the good cyber punk movie that has Johnny Mnemonic playing in the background? Is my reading comprehension bad⌠is it an actual movie being referred to?
Nah, itâs just the article authorâs imaginings.
Johnny Mnemonic surely wasnât a good film either as an adaptation of the short story or on its own merits, but I do have a soft spot for Johnnyâs rant after circumstances toss him about to end up in a junkyard. âI want room service!â
I also loved it. It runs like a filmed tabletop game of Shadowrun.
Plus, Ice T in one of his early acting roles.
It is a measure of Johnny Mnemonic's badness that, having stumbled its way to a place of insight into corporate hegemony, as illustrated by an ahistorical caricature of Japanese power, it then fails to comment on it at all.
I think that was the commentary.
Corporate Hegemony exists so people can get room service. I learned this from watching Downton Abbey.
Eh, I liked the story more than the movie. The special effects were better.
I have been tempted for ages to are an intentionally outdated 80âs âthis is what the year 2020 isâ thing based off the lense of gibson.
My problem is whatâs the point? Is it just some shut inâs take of what hevfinds familiar and vomiting it out, or is it exposing everyone to the world as he sees it: hostile, strange, but oddly hopeful?
I liked the book based on the movie. The effects were way better, shootout sequences more lively, played by actors that cared, and the technobabble making sense.
Also notable, an early casting of Left Shark as a retired military cyborg cryptography dolphin.
CSB:
When I saw Johnny Mnemonic in the theater the projectionist showed the reels out of order so the middle of the film was reversed. A sign of how bad the movie was is that no-one really noticed. I pointed out one of the serious continuity errors to my roommates afterward (i.e. Johnny and Molly use the grenade then get it later IIRC) and only then did they realize what had happened.
I love early Gibson novels and shorts (OK, Peripheral was pretty good too) and really wanted this to be good but no.
So so bad.
They even threw the d**n bridge in there, from a completely unrelated series. It annoyed me.
JN was vastly disappointing from both the persepctive of a Wm Gibson fan, and a Robert Longo fan. I was hoping for something more Alphaville, I guess. If only he had stuck to high-contrast B&WâŚ
Thatâs what a budget will do to you:
Longo and Gibson originally envisaged making an art film on a small budget, but failed to get financing. Longo commented that the project âstarted out as an arty 1½-million-dollar movie, and it became a 30-million-dollar movie because we couldnât get a million and a half.â (source)
Of course, there was this:
And this looks cool:
AND, just in case you were thinking of Takashi Miike:
Hunh:
âŚ
That passage seems familiar. Was it the subject of a BB post last year?
I always thought that Henry Rollins as seen in Johnny Mnemonic would make an excellent Gordon Freeman. Better than Charlie Sheen in The Arrival.
I could do with a reboot of Johnny Mnemonic, but Iâm still waiting on a good Neuromancer movie (that isnât too Hollywood with miscasting such as decidedly non-cyberpunkish actors like Mark Wahlberg). On that note though, Iâm also waiting for The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to get turned into a movie.
And The Diamond Age, for that matter. I almost never 100% agree with anyone, but I do with you, on all of this.
At least weâll always have The Lawnmower Man.
And donât forget Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace.
Nobody can respect a villain that tries to set up a cyberspace utopia but completely forgets that all the other people who he wants to come and populate cyberspace will disconnect once their physical bodies die from starvation.
Although that may be a utopia for the poor people who couldnât afford to connect and therefore survive to take over the world once all the privileged people die from their technology fetishes.
Sounds more like a bug in the uploading process (or, more accurately, botched testing) than an omission.
I break out JN at least once a year. Yes, there are spots that drag, but I watch it for the good parts and they never disappoint.
So far, the best adaptation of William Gibson that Hollywood has produced was the Sony Hack/âThe Interviewâ international kerfuffle which, like any good trilogy, is probably not really finished yet.
That would be Reds, non?
I only watch it for the articles.
if youâre looking for that Cyber Punk/Shadow Run feel, nothing beats good olâ fashioned anime:
