Patrick

I record­ed John­ny Mnemon­ic last night and watched it this morn­ing, and here’s the Mastodon thread that I sort-of live-toot­ed while I watched.

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Is it retro­fu­tur­ism if I watch John­ny Mnemonic—made in 1995, set in 2021—in 2024? Or is it some­thing else entirely?

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Either way, this movie is a weird arti­fact. It’s based on a William Gib­son short sto­ry, fea­tur­ing the first appear­ance of Mol­ly; but when it was made, IIRC, some­one had the film rights to Neu­ro­mancer, and since Mol­ly’s a big char­ac­ter in that, they replaced her with a dif­fer­ent character.

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I saw this in the the­atre, or—more likely—at the dri­ve-in. (There’s some retro for you; any­one still have a local drive-in?)

My mem­o­ry of the movie is that they got some of the Gib­son­ian aes­thet­ic down—

holy crap, is that Ratz, tend­ing bar?

—sor­ry, got dis­tract­ed. They got the look of the thing, but they missed the sto­ry­telling by a wide, wide margin.

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Also, I dis­tinct­ly recall two quotes about this movie, one from a review and one from Gibson.

The review: “You know your movie’s in trou­ble when the two most con­vinc­ing char­ac­ters are played by Dolph Lund­gren and Ice‑T.”

(My reac­tion at the time: “You for­got Hen­ry Rollins.” But now, about 30 min­utes in, Rollins’ act­ing was pret­ty wooden.)

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The oth­er quote, from William Gib­son, is one that I’ve held on to.

“Once you sign the cheque [from Hol­ly­wood], your cre­ative con­trol ends. They can fill it with danc­ing pink rab­bits and you can’t say a word.”

(para­phrased from mem­o­ry, but I’m pret­ty sure I’ve got the gist of it)

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I record­ed this off the TV, and the ads are amus­ing: most of the tech­nol­o­gy in them is light-years ahead of what the film­mak­ers pre­dict­ed. (But then again, sci­ence fic­tion isn’t about the future; it’s about the present.)

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Did he… did he just ask for a “Thomp­son iphone”?

(Prob­a­bly “eye phone” but it was a weird bit of prescience)

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Also, this 2021 inter­net is wild

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Some­one just said “Crazy Bob’s Com­put­er Shop” with a straight face and if that’s not act­ing, I don’t know what is.

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I’d love to find a copy of New Rose Hotel, based on a dif­fer­ent Gib­son short sto­ry, and see what it’s like. Com­pare & contrast.

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Huh, the Yakuza bad­die in Newark is played by the same guy who played Zato­ichi.

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Hen­ry Rollins is back, and he’s very much Hen­ry Rollins-ing all over the place.

Ice‑T, in the very next scene, remains convincing.

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It’s been so long since I’ve seen this that I can’t remem­ber if Jones the dol­phin makes an appear­ance, or if he’s only in the short story.

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320GB is a lot of data, yes, but back in ’95 it would have been a lot

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I can’t help but think Mol­ly Jane might be more com­fort­able if she had an under­shirt between her skin and that chain­mail tank top she wears.

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Oof, 20% on Rot­ten Toma­toes (and a whole 31% from The Audience)

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Ah, there it is, the burn­ing VW Bug (as I recall this was the source of WG’s com­ment about “danc­ing pink bunnies”)

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Aaaaaand the “room ser­vice” solil­o­quy (which reminds me of a 3^rd quote I saw about this movie, in anoth­er review; the review­er said that “I want room ser­vice, dude!” would’ve been more in keep­ing with Keanu’s act­ing chops. (You have to remem­ber this was made long before movies like The Matrix and John Wick, back when we thought maybe Keanu Reeves had peaked in Bill and Ted.)

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But hon­est­ly, watch­ing this movie now, the “room ser­vice” solil­o­quy might be the clos­est thing we get to a gen­uine emo­tion from John­ny, or from most of the characters.

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That bridge that hous­es “Heav­en” echoes the Bridge tril­o­gy, too, which IIRC was Gib­son’s next work after fin­ish­ing the Sprawl trilogy.

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Also I’m not sure the screen­writer ful­ly grasped how encryp­tion (or I guess enci­pher­ing) works, but then again I don’t think Gib­son was a com­put­er sci­en­tist either.

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Wait, there’s two flam­ing VW Bugs in this thing? How did I for­get that?

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I like how the Lo Teks in the movie use cross­bows and dress like Mad Max extras, but in the short sto­ry “low tech” was a sawed-off shot­gun in an Adi­das bag padded with ten­nis socks.

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The Preach­er seems like a pro-wrestling gim­mick incar­nat­ed. (Also like a danc­ing pink bun­ny, q.v.)

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this CG is… well, “dat­ed” is prob­a­bly the kind­est way to put it

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A lot of CRTs in 2021, apparently

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Impres­sive how quick­ly the bad­dies’ office tow­er caught fire once the down­load happened

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Boy, there’s sure a lot of 90s indus­tri­al music in this.

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So, as I recalled, the movie is strong in sug­gest­ing a William Gib­son milieu, but not near­ly as strong at telling a sto­ry in that milieu.

Which is a lit­tle odd, giv­en that the screen­writer is [checks notes] William Gibson.

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Any­way, this was fun. I’ll leave this as a coda, from the Music sec­tion of the credits:

“Alex Descends into Hell for a Bot­tle of Milk”, writ­ten by Bono and the Edge.

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