THE END OF THE WORLD WEEK WITH JOHNNY MNEMONIC

This is one of those late ‘80s early ‘90s films that everyone remembers with a kind of… Nostalgia? Disdain? I don’t know. Sci-fi films of that era (in fact any era gone by) suffer greatly these days, don’t you find? I mean, technology has come on in gigantic leaps and bounds, with films like the Matrix (trilogy), Lord of the Rings and what have you on our hands, any previous and feeble attempt is well… Sneered at. If you like the genre, I can’t blame you. I mean, most of us watched the Matrix for example, right? I mean at least the first one if not all three (I honestly wouldn’t have watched all three unless it was kind of necessary for my self-education but there you go). Remember the effects there? Wow. So I get why you might pat Johnny Mnemonic on the head and let it pass… But it was when I actually saw the film advertised on TV when it hit me… The slogan they used can be roughly translated to English as “Before the Matrix… There was Johnny Mnemonic.” I took one look at it and thought “Damn right”. The topic, the casting (Keanu Reeves leads in both – heck of a coincidence, no?) in every respect. In a lot of respects Johnny is a kinda prequel to the Matrix. As you know, the story of the Matrix opens in a time where machines have taken over the world (I’m putting it very basically, don’t jump down my throat). Here, it is sort of just before that happens. Machines are getting more developed, fusing with humans, big corporations are pushing them on, getting greedier and greedier…
In this dark world exist people like Johnny (Keanu Reeves). He is what is called a “Mnemonic courier”. What that means is that he has a computer implant in his brain (mechanic and computerized implants and chips in the body are apparently common in 2021). The implant is a sort of storage device. Think of it as a hard drive stuck in your brain. He uses the device to courier information back and forth. He earns well but he wants out. He has had to give up a lot of his long term memory to be able to have the implant – he no longer thinks it is worth it and wants his life back… Trouble is, he has to do one last job… But in this last job something goes wrong. Johnny, eager to just get it over with, takes on way more data than his implant can take. It’s no sweat really; he easily has 2 or 3 days before the data seeps out and kills him. Problem is, getting to his destination is going to be a bit of a problem. The yakuza that have been hired by a mega company are out to kill him… The information Johnny has in his head is extremely valuable… Unwittingly, he has in fact taken on something that could change the destiny of the planet for ever…
Now, I have to admit even the story line makes you smile. “One last job” – but something goes wrong… How many times did we hear that one eh? There is a girl involved of course. And a resistance group who fights the corporations that have almost literally taken over the world. All the clichés of the 20th century are there. Thing is, so are a lot of things that we see time and time again afterwards. I mean, from the smallest to the biggest thing… From the touch screen computers (well very early interpretations of – I’m not talking about tablets by the way but the stuff you see on Minority Report or CSI these days) to the whole concept of people being hooked up to computers and the internet (now what does that remind you of, hm?) come to the screen for just about the first time here. There is even a direct reference to the famous sci-fi anime “Ghost In The Shell” (a fascinating work that also takes place in a world were humans can fuse with machines. The whole question of machines with souls thus arises and one of the characters – her soul that is – is uploaded into cyber space, highly recommended if you haven’t seen it). And you will see that a lot of mediocre sci – fis have copied and referenced Johnny since then.
I know that this film can be considered “quaint” at best by some standards, and I’d have to agree with you. But it is also kind of an historic film, the first time a lot of things happened. Not to mention the whole thing with machines and humans – a topic we may well have to actually tackle in the future… A “must-watch” by my standards.