Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

JOHNNY MNEMONIC (1995) — dir. Robert Lungo
when Johnny, a data courier who stores information in his “wet wired” brain, gets a dangerous package of information to bring to the LoTek rebels, the Yakuza are hired by biotech Corporate power brokers to mark him for death and intercept the message.

This cult classic is a fairly loose adaptation from one of Cyberpunk’s founding short stories by William Gibson by the same name, published in 1981. Despite the dialogue and character development feeling hilariously awkward, it’s important to remember how seminal this film was in visually articulating for the first time the incredibly precise predictions that were still (10 years after publication) ahead of their time.

In 1995, Internet was still relatively and connections were painfully slow (14-28kbps) so this became the visual standard of communicating the immense world still yet to be built. Gibson and Lungo articulated the world-to-come as dense, urban-like informational structures of Data and they had a particularly insightful, dramatic vision of the psychological impacts of this cognitive overload on our organic systems. This also cemented the hacker-as-political-actor aesthetic and corporate enclaves as the central site of conflict which obviously influences the biggest films of Cyberpunk — Blade Runner and the Matrix.

Of course, not all the predictions aged well. I always find it funny that despite predicting the value that Data would come to play in the near-future, that Johnny nearly sacrifices his brain to carry just 320gb of data — not sure why they couldn’t imagine the amount of data or storage density scaling at all. Not to mention, of course, the failed prediction that Newark would be some sort of cultural epicenter.

While I find this film incredibly visually imaginative, I feel it leans too heavily on spectacle and other occular-centric way of approaching or interacting with cyberspace. I’ve also observed that despite data being the locus of power and control, there is a strange amount of fist fighting that advances major plot structures.

Given some of the reading I have been doing on Divine Machinery and TechnoMagic, I’ve paid particularly close attention to the Street Preacher in my most recent watch-through. It’s a little sloppy in terms of execution: he is in Catholic church one moment, but later, seems to be an Evangelist street preacher. I believe his role is not just supposed to be a surreal intrusion but an attempt to communicate the corrupted forms of worship, mistaking the Machine of corporate power for the actual spiritual truth. It should be noted however that this character did not exist in the book. Even though I’ve seen this movie probably a hundred times, I still cannot help but belly laugh when Henry Rollins steamrolls him with a delivery truck and Keanu Reeves just asks, “who the fuck was that?” at about 54minutes.

The cybernetically enhanced Dolphin’s role in decrypting the data was also played up dramatically by the film — a risk they took that ends up really permanently dating the film as the mid 90s obsession with dolphins did not stand the test of time. That said, I actually find this an incredibly interesting story telling device and honestly wish we knew more of the mechanics of how this interface worked. The answers in the film were lackluster.

I’ve always felt this film deserves a contemporary re-soundtracking. There are some great (albeit now dated) breakcore moments that depict Logging On and Locking In, but there are other more cringe moments that sound like they could be out of Jurassic Park. Unfortunately I don’t have the skills to rescore it, but I’ve always thought this would be a fascinating remastering project to be taken seriously.

I very recently learned that the film was actually intended to be in Noir style Black and White, and was recently reworked, but the director was pushed into summer blockbuster 80s pop colors.

(Johnny Mnemonic: Back in Black (and White)

Or watch the full film here: YouTubeJohnny Mnemonic