Cheap Movie Tuesday: Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Determining exactly when he transitioned from popular actor into full blown movie star is difficult, but Keanu Reeves probably became an A-lister in the spring of 1994 when he played the lead in, Speed, a movie about a bus that has to drive very fast or it will blow up.

Speed was a big hit, such a big hit, that movie studios all desperately wanted to replicate its success and soon the race was on to see who could release a Reeves-led Blockbuster the following Spring.

And so, it came to pass in April 1995, that Alliance Atlantis, 20th Century Fox, Tri-Star and MDP Worldwide all split the distribution of a sci-fi action film called, Johnny Mnemonic, which would become one of the biggest bombs of the decade.

Why?

I think the title had a lot to do with it.

Speed, is a pretty good title. It’s easy to say, easy to remember, it’s a verb and it’s a noun and it can mean several different things.

Johnny Mnemonic, on the other hand, is a bit of a tongue twister. And mnemonic is a word that has little use to anyone other than Scrabble Players.

The Plot: In the distant future, Johnny (Keanu Reeves) is a courier who moves top secret data around the world in his ‘wet wired’ brain. To do this job, he had large portions of his actual brain removed, which he regrets because now he can’t remember his childhood.

To afford an expensive operation that will restore his memories, Johnny agrees to deliver 400 megabytes of top-secret data even though his poor brain is only designed to hold half that much.

If Johnny doesn’t get his data delivered soon, he’ll die of “synaptic seepage”.

But he also might be killed by Shinji (Denis Akiyama) who has a laser whip hidden in a detachable thumb or Karl (Dolph Lundgren), a bionic hit man who thinks he’s Jesus.

Somehow, Ice-T and Henry Rollins are involved.

What makes Johnny Mnemonic interesting in 2026 is that it takes place in 2021.

Hollywood sci-fi is notorious for inaccurate future predictions. The 2022 of Soylent Green never came to be, nor did the 2024 of A Boy and His Dog or the 2026 of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

But while it certainly got a lot wrong, Johnny Mnemonic was surprisingly prescient on the second year of our current decade. So, I thought it might be fun to explore how many predictions the movie got correct.

12 PREDICTIONS JOHNNY MNEMONIC MADE ABOUT 2021

1. “The new century brought the rise of terminal capitalism”—Correct. 1 point

2. “The armored towers of multinational corporations rise above the ruined democracies that gave birth to them”—Partially Correct, they don’t just have towers, they also have space programs. Half a point

3. “Soldiers of the Yakuza defend these corporations”—Incorrect. 0 points

4. “Hackers, data pirates and ‘lotek’ media rebels are the enemy, burrowing like rats in the walls of cyberspace” —Umm, correct….. I guess? 1 point

5. “A new plague convulses the cities, nerve attenuation syndrome, incurable, fatal, epidemic”—Partially correct, but 2021’s disease had a different name and was pandemic, not epidemic. Half a point.

6. “The most precious data is sometimes entrusted to elite private agents, wet wired to function as human data banks, Mnemonic couriers—Incorrect, we have Dropbox for that. 0 points.

7. You can read your email on the television---Correct. 1 point

8. Masked protesters are ubiquitous---Partially Correct, in 2021 everyone was wearing masks except the protestors. Half a point

11. “Synaptic seepage is a real danger”—Incorrect, but to be fair, this movie was made in 1995 when Olestra was in potato chips and cookies and thus, “seepage” of all kinds was a legitimate concern. So, you know what, 1 point.

12. Dolphins are cyber warlords—Incorrect. 0 points

13. Dolphins are kept in inhumanely small aquariums---Correct. 1 point

14. We still use fax machines, VCRs and modems still make enough noise to wake the whole house—Incorrect 0 points.

That’s 6.5 out of 12. Not fantastic, Johnny. But it is a passing grade and you got way more right than Back to the Future Part II.

The Tea: It’s less about flavor and more aesthetics in this soundstage dystopia. So soothe your attenuating nerves with Windex-blue butterfly pea tea. For some extra pizzaz, squeeze a lemon over it and watch as your tea turns neon purple.

The Snack: It doesn’t matter what you eat, but whatever it is must arrive as room service! If you can’t afford a fancy hotel in Tokyo just call Door Dash. That counts .