Filmic Friday 239: Johnny Mnemonic aka SUDDENLY JONES

Johnny Mnemonic; Robert Longo dir., Alliance Communications; 1995
Also, SPOILERS AHOY

Just what in the everloving heck did I watch?!

Let me put this out there: cyberpunk might be the most underutilized and underappreciated aesthetic in filmmaking ever. There aren't many cyberpunk films, and the few there are don't tend to have budgets or starpower or... y'know... good writers. Johnny Mnemonic, however, is both the best known and best funded. It has the greatest starpower, and it even has the writer. The writer who literally invented the aesthetic.

It has William Gibson.

Yes, both of these guys are in this movie.
Yes, it's based off of the William Gibson story.
Yes, it had a budget of $40m USD

This is also, strangely enough, one of the less appreciated of the Keanu Reeves ouvre? What went wrong?

I actually kinda don't have an answer, because this movie is heckin fun.

Set in 2021 in a landscape that's really only half a degree away from our own personal late-stage capitalist hell, Johnny Mnemonic tells the tale of a man who only knows that his name is Johnny and that he had to have a great deal of his past removed to make room for an implant that turns his head into a squishy, death-prone USB drive for moving sensitive information from location to location. Since Johnny has no idea why he started doing this job to begin with, he's now continuing to do the work because he needs the money to get the implant removed and his memories restored.

I think we can all guess that this... might not really be a thing he can get done. But Johnny believes.

Now, I also believe that this movie is responsible for a bunch of the current technological designs (VR headsets, keyboard gloves, etc), and I cannot wait to show you this next image, because I really hope we get the chance to explore an internet that looks like this some day:

This is what people in 1995 thought the internet would be like in 2021.
I hope we don't disappoint them :P

The titular Johnny is, in fact, played by Keanu Reeves, who is just as good as he will be in a few years when the Matrix comes out.

Johnny has to take on a data load that's way, way too much for him to handle, so he'll die in 48 hours if he doesn't get it out of him. Unfortunately, what he's carrying is something a lot of people want, so he's constantly under threat. He hires a bodyguard (kind of by accident) named Jane (played by Dina Meyer) to protect him from the Yakuza. Jane has been altered by a doctor named Spider (played by Henry Rollins, yes that one), but he hasn't been able to really help her.

She's a total badass, though. Why does she need help?

Well, unfortunately, Jane is suffering from a new, incurable disease called NAS (Nerve Attenuation Syndrome), which is like if epilepsy and AIDS had a baby. Everyone's terrified by it, no one is willing to really study it, and there is absolutely no cure.

Meanwhile, there's a bit of gang warfare going on between the corporate police or Yakuza and a group of punks called "Lo-Teks" (low-tech). The Lo-Teks are also interested in saving people from the Black Shakes (NAS), but they are being stymied by the corporations, who have more of an interest in treatment than cure.

Also, the Lo-Teks are 100% cyberpunk.
And yes, that's Ice-T.

The Lo-Teks help Johnny when they realize he's being chased by Pharmakom, who they have suspected strongly of intentionally preventing the discovery of a cure for NAS. Unfortunately for everyone involved, the CEO of Pharmakom has hired not only the Yakuza (who turned on him and have decided to steal Johnny's payload for themselves) but also Karl the Street Preacher, a heavily modified killer for hire.

Who is also Dolph Lundgren in his last role before 2010.

Now, with both the Yakuza and Street Preacher after them, Johnny and Jane completely throw themselves on the mercies of the Lo-Teks, who shelter them in their crazy home base, Heaven, which seems to be partly suspended under an utterly decimated Brooklyn Bridge. See, the only person left who can help Johnny at this point is Jones, who lives in Heaven, that's who they have to see.

Jones was experimented on by the Navy to penetrate enemy defenses and hack into their mainframes. He was given a lot of cybernetic implants, and he was really, really good. Unfortunately, he was also the property of the Navy, so he had to be rescued by the Lo-Teks, who brought him to Heaven and took care of him.

By the way, there's no way to prepare for the batwild insanity that is the true identity of the mysterious "Jones".

...

He's a freaking dolphin.

Darwin hack you.

Seriously, there's no warning about Jones. The only animals we've seen up to this point are fish in a tank and a single rat in the underground, so it's not even clear that there are still non-vermin/non-food animals in this post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Jones is, thankfully, able to not only stop Karl the Street Preacher, he's also able to unlock Johnny's head and save his life! Jones is literally the most effective character in this movie and he can't even talk.

So what was Johnny carrying that's so important?

What do you think?

It's the cure to NAS, of course. A group of scientists were very upset that Pharmakom was going to bury the cure in favor of continued treatments that barely worked, so they gathered enough money to hire Johnny, crammed the data into his slowly liquifying brain (they didn't know he didn't have enough space), and were promptly slaughtered by the Yakuza.

So thanks to Jones and one very confused Hawaiian, 2021 was saved.

Go watch this freaking movie.

Even knowing what Jones is does not prepare you.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Saturday Casual Gaming 229: Miner Dash

It's so freaking hot it feels like the Earth's core is squeezing up into my soul...

I know, I know, it's way warmer and muggier than 88℉ (~31℃) with 51% humidity elsewhere in the world on a more consistent basis, but...

I'm a fall person. I prefer the cool, crisp weather of a proper New England autumn, and this gross oilslick weather just will not stand!

I will confess that I was originally going to do something like a "Christmas in July" schtick where I would list a bunch of Kongregate titles that feature snow and ice, but then I found a totally unrelated game and fell down the rabbithole of playing it. Before I knew it, it was lunch time and I hadn't written anything in this blog!!! Oops.

The game, as you may have guessed from the title, is Miner Dash, and it's an offering from Kongregate user "dabontv", who has made 26 games on Kongregate alone, all of which are absolutely bonkers. They have what appears to be an Angry Birds-style slingshot game about mummies, an idle clicker starring poop (with a sequel!) and a game where you set people on fire.

Miner Dash is a relatively simple and straighforward game by comparison, but even here we find some small hint of crazy.

When you click on the Guide, it helpfully informs you of the goal of this game.

Your goal, as this tiny red-bearded miner, is to dig to the center of the Earth. No, seriously, that's the goal. You want to dig down to the Earth's core (and they're very specific that it's Earth, and not some random fantasy world) within 30 in-game days, which are measured in mining time.

See the thermometer at the top of the screen? That's your time.
You have until the whole thing fills up with red to get to the core or as close as possible.

You can use the left and right arrows to move either direction while digging,
but you have to hold and not just tap, because he needs some nudging.

Once you fill your gauge all the way red, your pick explodes, which means you have to go to the crafting screen and make a new one or multiple replacements.

That's why you want to get a bunch of the ore and even trees!

Whenever you breach a new layer of soil, you find a "recipe", though perhaps "blueprints" are a better term. This "recipe" will allow you to make something new. You start out only being able to make wooden pickaxes and cheapo bombs, but so far, after a few hours of fiddling around, I've gotten special items, golden pickaxes, and red bombs that explode way bigger.

And while some experimentation is possible, it's just easier to just wait for the recipe
to show up, and then just click on what you want to craft from your Recipe bar.

Provided you have the materials, crafting is as simple as "click item, click CRAFT"

I love the red bombs, since they can really take you deeper when you're running out of pickaxe power or when you're trying to get large swaths of materials but you don't want to change direction!

Overall, this is a fun, silly little game with great graphics. I think I'll probably be sinking more time into this mining simulator (especially since it's so hot out and I kinda want to stay near fans and AC).

Go Enjoy Something!
FC