Johnny Mnemonic (1995) on Netflix
In 2021, Johnny smuggles other people's secrets inside a chip implanted in his head. A job from Beijing overloads the device, and the yakuza and a corporation want the data back.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb5.6/1082,233 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes20%
Trailer
Plot summary
By 2021 the internet has become a virtual world, megacorporations run much of it, and a degenerative condition called nerve attenuation syndrome spreads through a population overexposed to technology. Johnny works as a mnemonic courier, moving corporate secrets through a chip implanted in his brain, a device that cost him his childhood memories. A group of scientists in Beijing hires him for a delivery to Newark, but the payload exceeds the implant's capacity. Unless the data is extracted within days, it will cause fatal brain damage and corrupt itself. The scientists are attacked by yakuza before Johnny leaves, and he escapes with only a fragment of the encryption key. The yakuza answer to Takahashi and to Pharmakom, and Johnny's help comes from Jane, a cybernetically enhanced bodyguard, and the LoTeks, the group led by J-Bone.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- William Gibson said Dolph Lundgren's cut monologue was actually a sermon about transhumanism that Lundgren delivered while nude, and it was removed from the film out of fear it would offend religious groups.
- William Gibson was deployed to field questions about the videogame from fans online. Despite having created cyberspace, one of the core metaphors for the internet age, Gibson had never been on the Internet, and he likened the experience to "taking a shower with a raincoat on".
- William Gibson said he and Robert Longo wanted to avoid flashy, MTV-style visuals and instead "plunge the audience into a very strange but consistent universe," yet Longo said the project ballooned from an intended $1.5 million art film into a $30 million production simply because they could never raise the smaller amount.
- Many of the casting decisions, such as Dolph Lundgren, were forced upon Robert Longo to increase the film's appeal outside the United States. Longo and William Gibson had no idea what to do with Lundgren, so they created a new character for him, but the street preacher's monologue was cut during editing.
- Val Kilmer was originally cast in the title role before dropping out and being replaced by Keanu Reeves, a swap William Gibson approved of, saying Reeves understood the character well.
- For the film's 25th anniversary, director Robert Longo ripped a Blu-ray copy of Johnny Mnemonic and re-graded it into black and white himself, intending to post it on YouTube, until producer Don Carmody was impressed enough after seeing it to convince Longo to bring the idea to Sony Pictures for an official release instead.
- The Wachowskis used Johnny Mnemonic as a reference point when pitching The Matrix to investors, and the 2011 video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution also drew influence from it; artist Dora Budor later turned props from the film into sculptures for her 2015 exhibition Spring.
- Before Sony financed the film, the industrial band Black Rain, which had already worked with William Gibson and Robert Longo, wrote an entire score inspired by the original short story; Sony scrapped it for artists like Stabbing Westward, though one Black Rain track, "Memory Johnny," survived on the Japanese soundtrack.
