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Old 3rd September 2016, 12:00 AM
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MacBlayne MacBlayne is offline
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Johnny Mnemonic
Directed by Robert Longo
Written by William Gibson




Johnny_mnemonic_ver1.jpg

When artist/photographer Robert Longo met William Gibson at a party, they discovered they had similar interests. Both were fascinated with the way the world was changing. While the advances of technology were improving civilisation for the better, it was having a different effect on society. People were becoming more alienated, as they now possessed the means to retreat into a world of their making.

Gibson and Longo decided to explore what would be the conclusion of this advanced form of mankind. They would take one of Gibson’s short stories (Johnny Mnemonic, as it was the most straightforward) and expand it to showcase a world wrought with zaibatsus, pollution, and a new disease (a new form of cancer caused by mobile technology’s radiation). The plan was simple – they were going to make a modest $1.5 million dark comedy. The low-budget guaranteed low-risk and made it easy to secure funding. At least that was the idea. As they shipped their pitch across Hollywood, no studio bit. However, it was not for the reason they expected.

Back in the mid-nineties, Hollywood realised that the internet was going to a big deal. Originally thought of as something of value only to the military and computer scientists, the world wide web was now accessible to almost everyone that wanted it. Forums and videogames soon started popping up online, ready for use by a hungry young audience. Hollywood spotted a new demographic and thus began their love affair for everything cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk, in a way, was the perfect genre. It had all that gee-whizz technology that was new and exciting. It touched on themes that were relevant back then as they are now. And it was dark, cynical and dangerous – just the way the young crowd wanted it. How could Hollywood lose money on that package?

And yet, cyberpunk didn’t take off in cinema like it did in literature or video-games (with the exception of Japanese anime). Brett Leonard’s The Lawnmower Man and John Flynn’s Brainscan did okay-ish business. But, Leonard’s Virtuosity was a box-office failure and Iain Softley’s Hackers was commercial disaster. Despite all the marketing and cool accompanying soundtracks by Juno Reactor and other electronic musicians, cyberpunk wasn’t taking off. Hollywood was not giving up, though. It was just going to have to bring out the big guns. Or, as it turns out, the very big gun came to them.

Gibson, the father of cyberpunk, was astonished when Sony turned down their low-budget pitch in favour of a $25 million adaptation. Gibson and Longo now had the funds to fully realise their world. Keanu Reeves, now a superstar after Speed, was very interested in working with Gibson and Longo. Sony had the support of Gibson - Johnny Mnemonic was going to be the cyberpunk film and audiences were going to have to pay attention to this one. It looked like a win-win situation for everyone.

Only, it wasn’t. Gibson and Longo discovered that while $25 million buys a lot of sets, it also means that, in order to get its money back, the film would have to appeal to a wider audience than they originally intended. The studio forced the filmmakers to include extra action sequences and special effects gimmicks. Much to their eventual displeasure, these action beats clashed horribly with the offbeat setting of the story. This is a story that has a former Navy dolphin addicted to heroin as one of the greatest brain hackers, after all.

The result was a film that neither party was happy with it. Critics and cinema-goers were of the same opinion too. Johnny Mnemonic just about broke even in the box-office. The reviews were pretty damning too, although most were just cheap gags at Keanu Reeves’s expense (“Reeves gives up part of his brain to store data… snark, snark”). Even Roger Ebert didn’t pay too much attention, forgetting that Reeves’s character was transferring sensitive data that couldn’t be uploaded online.

In fairness to Ebert, it’s very possible that he grew board with the film. Johnny Mnemonic is a tonal mess of a film. It awkwardly shuffles from trying to be a John Woo thriller, a Blade Runner-esque noir, or a sci-fi comedy. It doesn’t succeed too well at either genre. Furthermore, while the idea of cyberspace was probably hot shit back when the story was published in 1981, it was comical in the already internet savvy world of 1995. The internet was back then just as we know it today – a collection of web pages that can be accessed by entering a web address, rather than wandering the streets of a metaverse.

And yet, I still like the film a lot. There are intriguing ideas in Johnny Mnemonic, such as our dependence on media and technology. While it may have got the internet itself wrong, MMORPGs and the new VR helmets owe a debt to Gibson and Longo’s efforts. Plus, contrary to what the critics thought at the time, Reeves is quite good in the role. He effortlessly captures the selfish but likable nature of Johnny, and seems quite comfortable in stepping aside to allow Dina Meyer’s Jane (replacing the more iconic Molly Millions of the story) to be the action hero. Reeves becomes increasingly hilarious as he grows more exasperated with the events occurring around him (you’ll never forget his ROOM SERVICE monologue). If it wasn’t for Dolph Lundgren’s completely insane appearance as a mass-murdering cyber-preacher, Reeves would have the most unhinged performance in the film.

1995 would prove to be Hollywood’s last year at trying to do cyberpunk. It certainly left its influence though. Computer espionage and hacking became and still is a viable plot device for many thrillers today. Corporate dominance and government surveillance still make up the base structure for many stories. And in 1999, the Wachowskis would evolve the genre when they unleashed The Matrix into cinemas. The Matrix achieved what most of Hollywood gave up trying in the years previous.

And it’s a shame, because we have still yet to see a true adaptation of Gibson’s work. Over the years, there have been frequent attempts to turn his debut novel, Neuromancer, into a film but it always falls apart. Cyberpunk is starting to become more relevant again thanks to video games such as the Deus Ex series and the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, so maybe Hollywood will decide to have another go.

There is one perfect almost-adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic. One that captures the neon dystopia human nature of Gibson’s work, and ties it into a plot involving memory chips carrying explosive secrets. But, I’ll leave it at that for now. Maybe I’ll review it over the next few Strange Days.
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Last edited by MacBlayne; 3rd September 2016 at 12:17 AM.
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