Future Imperfect - Johnny Mnemonic (1995) - Strange Days (1995) - ThisWeekInGeek

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
No ooh, check that bit out man the internet. Let's
see if those first words something new about us with
that stupid ass flick.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Something you want to add to this briefing, Captain Hillar, No, sir, just.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
A little anxious to get up there and whoop be
Tea's ass. That's all all right.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Look, there's only one return, okay, and it ain't of
the King, It's of the Jedi.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Batman is playing.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Gallagher thought we wouldn't notice, but we did. I'm running
this monkey part of franking time, and I want to
know what the food you're doing with my time?

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Would you like to know more? The year is twenty
twenty one. It is no longer safe to transmit information. Phones, computers,
and satellites are all vulnerable. But there is a solution
your storage capacity. I can carry nearly eighty gigs of
dead in my head.

Speaker 4 (00:52):
Input the data into the brain of a human courier
like Johnny mnemonic, hit me.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Have you ever checked?

Speaker 5 (01:00):
Dan?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Have you ever wired?

Speaker 4 (01:01):
Tripped?

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Are you ready?

Speaker 4 (01:08):
This is not like TV? Only better?

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Is life.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
A piece of somebody's life. It's about the stuff that
you can right, the forbidden fruit straight from the cerebral cortex.
I mean there, you're doing it, You're feeling in Are
you beginning to see the possibilities?

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Here? Guys?

Speaker 3 (01:29):
What's going on? You are listening to this week in
geek dot Net's Future Imperfect, the twig show that is
dedicated to all things science fiction. Something's real, some things not.
Some things could also be. I am one of your
hosts this evening. I am Mike the Birdman, but I'm
not alone. I'm joined by my compatriot, my brother, my

(01:50):
best friend, from the free city of Kitchener, Ontario.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Canada, Alex the Producer, and from.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
The corporate controlled sector of Land's, Michigan. We are joined by.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
I'm Aaron Pollyeh.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
That's right, guys. So if you haven't guests tonight, we
have a bit of a theme. So as we are
enjoying this lovely summer weather, sometimes it's time to get
a little bit dirty, a little bit grimy, and we're
gonna talk about one of my favorite subgenres of science fiction.
We're gonna talk about cyberpunk movies. And you might be thinking, well,

(02:24):
the matrix. Probably we're gonna cover those over on loose
Cannon with like me, Dave and Cannon whoever else I
can drag into it. But for this one, I wanted
to do a pair of these, a pair of movies
that often get mentioned in the same sentence. And I
was very surprised that you two hadn't seen one.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Or the other of these movies.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Kind of blew me away. So the two movies we're
gonna be talking about are two cyber hung movies that
came out during the nineteen nineties. We're gonna be talking
about nineteen ninety five's Johnny Mnemonic, and I think Strange
Days came out around the same time.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, so we've got, you know, without dating ourselves too much,
at least of the year. It's been at least thirty years.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Which is like crazy because I remember seeing Johnny Mnemonic
in theaters and I guess that's where we're gonna kind
of start tonight's conversation. So way back when when I
was growing up in the Owen Sound area, way back
when I had a very small cinema. I think this
was back when it was Owen Sound Cinemas three, it
wasn't five yet. I remember Johnny Mnemonic coming there and

(03:32):
the reason I wanted to see it.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
I was a big fan of Keanu Reeves.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
I'd seen Speed, I'd seen Bill and Ted. This is
before he was cast as Neo in The Matrix, which
would be in nineteen ninety nine. So yeah, I thought
he was a cool guy. I mean, I thought he
was awesome as the FBI agent or cop or whatever
the hell he was in Speed. So I was like,
all right, this looks kind of interesting. And around this
time I was really getting in the tabletop role playing

(03:59):
game so and it wasn't just it wasn't just Advanced
Dungeons and Dragons second Edition, and it wasn't just Star
Wars Westing Games. No, this was another game I was
really getting into at that time, which was produced by
the Fossa Corporation, which also does the BattleTech or mech
Warrior franchise. This was Shadow Run, which is a cyberpunk

(04:22):
meets fantasy. So think Lord of the Rings with machine
guns would be a good way to like kind of
think about it. So seeing Johnny Knaemonic really turned me
into the cyberpunk genre because then I started reading books
by William Gibson, which upon This movie's actually based upon
a short story that appeared in the nineteen eighties in
a short story collection. If I'm not mistaken, and this

(04:45):
isn't the first William Gibson adaptation that would be done
to film. There was another one thing it was called
Wild Palms that was like an ABC mini series in
the late nineteen eighties, which was kind of cyberpunky, but
not as much as not as much as this, But yeah,
remember going to see this in the theater. I think
I saw this two or three times in the theater
because it was unlike anything I'd ever really seen before.

(05:07):
I actually went back and watched a trailer for this,
and I think it does a really good job of
nailing the vibe of what this movie's trying to represent.
And I want to say this was one of Dina
Meyer's first movies, if not her first, And I do
have some trivia involving the character that she plays of
Janey in this movie, because this was supposed to be

(05:29):
based upon a character from Neuromancer named Molly Millions but
writs issues shenanigans and it never quite happened. But I
saw this, absolutely loved it. I rented this tape a
crap Ton as a kid.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
I like to show it to.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
Friends or girlfriends at the time. So this one got
a lot of play for me in the nineties and
I revisited it every so often. But I actually don't
own this on physical media, which is a real surprise
to me, because I think there's a couple copses of
this available in different formats. I think there's even one
There was one that was shown at a film vessel

(06:06):
in black and white, which was very cool. But yeah,
that's my history with this. Like, I'm a huge fan
of this. This is my jam completely. So I guess
I'm gonna throw things to Alex because you're the baby
with this.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
You'd never seen this before.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
I've never seen either of these films. And what's funny
is I had seen the vhs at my local corner
store for rental forever. I had friends that had seen it,
my core group of friends, like maybe one or two
people had seen it. But you got to remember it
came out when I was like eight years old, so

(06:41):
it wasn't really on my radar where I really heard
about it, and I had thought I was going to
see it but then just never got around to It
was when I was in like middle school going into
high school when I started watching a lot more like
Dolf Lunger movies, and I knew he was in the movie,
but you know, because he wasn't on the cover, it

(07:01):
just never it would it never really drew me to
grab it. And I was like, ah, I'll check it out.
I hear it's okay, you know, like that was from
my group of friends. They are like, that's fun. But
it wasn't like you know, it wasn't Demolition Man, so
I wasn't like super into having to get it right.
So you know that my history with it was that.
And then you know, as we were talking shortly before recording,

(07:23):
probably about five to oh actually probably about six or
seven years ago, it popped up on a Canadian YouTube
channel that was sponsored with government money, like they paid
to license it for Canada Day was would that have
been for the twenty fifth anniversary? Then you think, I
would think, so you know what, you know what, that
channel got really big during the pandemic, so it would

(07:46):
make sense that it was probably for the twenty fifth anniversary.
And it you know, being that this film was filmed
entirely within Canada and Montreal, Toronto, some parts of Mississauga,
so I guess they did that. So I thought ill
go watch that. And you and I had talked about
it just before this that You're like you were looking
for the copy on there and it doesn't exist because

(08:07):
that channel doesn't exist because they lost funding from the
government to keep the licenses up to date. So there's
plenty of other ways to watch it. But yeah, like
every time I went to watch it until now, I
just didn't. And now that I've seen it, I'm kicking
myself thinking like, how did I not watch this, you know,
in the last thirty years.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah, because this seems like the sci fi that you
might dig. I mean, it's a little goofy, it's a
little dated, but it's fun.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
You know. We will go into it afterwards. But I
can say this that coming into it with completely fresh eyes,
not knowing anything, not having any you know, preconceptions, I
can say unbiased. It has some of the worst fight
choreography I've ever seen, laughingly bad. But that aside, Like
if I was a kid watching it and this was
like in my you know, deep memories, it wouldn't bother

(08:59):
me as much. It was wite noticeable. How bad the action, uh, Like,
like entire fights where nobody's touching each other and the camera,
like the whoever directed it was pretty inept at figuring
out how to shoot actual action. But the but but
the feel was great and the rest of it was great.
But I'll let you guys continue obviously, Eric and you

(09:20):
will have way more to talk about for this as
far as your history goes, all.

Speaker 1 (09:23):
Right, Aaron, So where do you start with this? Seeing
it in the theaters? Yeah? This this was after I
graduated high school, and I remember seeing it in the
theater because a it's it's it's science fiction, it be
it cyberpunk, and I was also into like Shadow Run
and cyberpunk at the time as gaming. And it had

(09:47):
Keanu Reeves and I freaking loved Bill and Ted more
than anything. So I'm gonna go see it. I'm gonna
go see it in the theaters.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
Did it have bad white choreography? Of course, of course
it did. But it was a lot of fun. I
really enjoyed it. And I remember being really excited to
see like monofilament wire on screen and like stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
That was awesome.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Uh, Like Henry Rollins again, like you have Henry Rollins
and iced tea in this movie, Like even as as
eighteen years old or whatever I was when at exactly
when this was released. You know, I knew who both
those people were. That's and they're both kind of musicians
at the you know, That's how I knew them. And

(10:32):
then Dolph Lundgren Holy crap. Like, yeah, I love this movie.
I have revisited it many times. It is a guilty
pleasure in a lot of ways. But I also think
that out of all like the big screen sort of
cyberpunk ish movies, it actually feels like the cyberpunk setting

(10:54):
more than a lot, if that makes sense. Yeah, the
game the games.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Punk, Yeah, like it nails the vibe and the environment
of what games like Shatter Run and Cyberpunk twenty twenty
now twenty seventy seven or Cyberpunk Red Cry to Envision
and for those listeners out there that trying to think
of games that feel cyberpunky, but you maybe I've maybe

(11:21):
might have played I might think maybe system Shock. I'm
trying to think of what other cyberpunky games. Syndicate would
be another one.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Wow, that's a blast from the past too.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
Yeah, so like stuff like that, stuff where it's basically
I've often heard of cyberpunk described as high tech and
low life dread that we talked about a while ago
is often mentioned in the same venus cyberpunk, and I
guess you you could consider it the first terminate.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
Yeah, it's dystopian, where like, yeah, your life is gonna suck,
but you can get the best soda in the world,
but you will pay ten thousand dollars for a new
heart or whatever. Basically, Rubbel cop would be considered another
Blade cyberpunk. Yeah, and Blade Runner would be other examples
of contemporary kind of cyberpunk. So the story for Giant Amnic,

(12:15):
very very simply is Johnny plays a courier, a data
courier who has a piece of cybernetic hardware that goes
in the back of his head that can hold a
mind whopping forty gigabytes, but with a doubler he can
get that up to eighty. And he goes to visit
these people and they say, hey, we want to hire

(12:37):
you to transport some data, but you need to not
know what this is. It protects the courier, and it
protects him and the Akuza get involved. There's this really
great opening crawl that kind of sets up the world
for Giant Mnemonic, where they talk about the yakuza work
for all these core corporations, there are these low tech

(12:57):
rebels and hackers and all this shit that you know,
try and fight back on behalf of ordinary people. And
it really sets the scene for what cyberpunk is, or
basically corporations and governments opposing ordinary people, not unlike right now.
And then Johnny gets basically he gets something called synaptic

(13:18):
seepage where the data in his head is going to
kill him in about twenty four hours or less unless
he gets it out. And the data he's carrying is
the cure to this thing called nerve attenuation syndrome, which
everybody in the world has, or at least is at
risk of getting from all the electromagnetic radiation. It's never
clearly explained, but it's a techno virus. Would be the

(13:40):
best way to disciss.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Like anybody that has had any alterations to their body.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah, and this is yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
They so in this world of gyantamonic there are people
who have cybernetic org have cybernetics in them, like Aaron
was mentioning monofilament wire. One of the guys there, one
of the Japanese yakuza people has a monofilament whip built
into his thumb where it's got a weighted tip and
it's got a piece of wire that is like molecule thin,

(14:13):
but you can whip it around and it'll cut through
almost anything because it's literally as sharp as a molecule.
And that's technology we'd never seen outside of like a lightsaber,
something that could do that much damage and was just
visually impressive as hell.

Speaker 1 (14:30):
And it's supposed to be that scary, and they do
a really good job of showing just how messed up
it can be, Like you don't even know you've been cut. Yeah,
there's just fall apart. Yeah, there's a great kill.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, and he's like, which you know, I saw, I
was like, Oh, it's gonna be one of these kind
of movies When I saw he was which one of
these kind of movies usually means entertaining at the very least.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Oh yeah. And that's another thing too that this movie
nails with the cyberpunk sthetic. The crime in the criminal
underworld is very established. There's very much a routine with it.
With Johnny being a courier. He needs a fence. A
fence will talk to other people who want to steal
stuff or sell stolen goods, and you deal with corporate type.

(15:16):
So there's very much layers to the underworld. And Giannamnic
nails this really, really well, where it literally feels like
a shadow Run or Cyberpunk twenty twenty adventure and it,
like I said, it really nails the vibe bit. And
eventually at the end of the movie, Johnny does find
someone who's able to get the data out of his head.

(15:37):
He runs into a former naval hacker who happens to
be a dolphin named Jones.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
So I was watching this and I was like, they
just pulled a little bit of everything You've got, you know,
a little sequest DSV involved and and like all the
like character actors in here, they just sort of pulled
from like other Canadian sci fi productions.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Oh yeah, crazy Like it has an outstanding cast. They
and they tried to bring in this Japanese guy. You
would know him as Takahashi. I can't I can't remember
his last yeah, Katano, And he's literally one of the
most famous Japanese actors. They've tried to make him a
thing over here with middling success, but you know his

(16:20):
face and.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
I probably would know him from like Battle Royal, like
when that came sort of big here, like that's right. Yeah,
as far as like like import movies, as far as
like our generation would have known, it would probably be
from that. I know he's been. His likeness has been
used in video games like a.

Speaker 3 (16:38):
Lot Hashi's Challenge guy, isn't he yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Right, yes, yeah, yeah he is? And for I might
be wrong. I'm not gonna look it up, but it
might be wrong. I couldn't remember if he's one of
the guys that got in trouble for cocaine and they
like dropped him from a bunch of movies over there,
or if it's somebody else who looks a bit like him.
It's he's one of the really, I'm just not sure
if he's the one that had that happened to him,

(17:03):
but he would definitely seen his face if you look.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
At him, Oh yeah, like he's like very recognizable. He
plays ahead of this corporation called Pharmacom. Turns out they're
trying to keep the secret of the cure for nas because,
like any good cyberpunk corporation, the people don't matter, profits do,
and obviously the end of the day gets saved and

(17:26):
it's really cool. The other thing they kind of introduce
is Dina Meyer's character, who plays Janey. She plays in
cyberpunk or in William Gibson's world, she's she's what's known
as a razor girl, someone who has cybernetic enhancement, like
she might have amped up reflexes in the novel or sorry,

(17:47):
in the short story, she has razors under her fingers,
so hand raisers. If you're a shadow Run player, you
know exactly what those are. So think a little more
Freddy Krueger, a little less Wolverine. Those cybers are also
a thing too, But they couldn't get the rights to
the character because it was all tied up because they've
been trying to make Neuromancer, which is another big William

(18:08):
Gibson story.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
It's it's the Deck, right, Yeah, it's that is the
book that all cyberpunk basically comes from, all at least
all the modern uh. It sprouted all the modern ideas.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
And if you have not read it, you should.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Yeah. I've only gotten about halfway through and then I
lost my paperback and I went, I'm going to find
it one day, and I still haven't found it.

Speaker 3 (18:31):
Like, it's a really good story and it's really short.
And then even in the story there are some pretty
significant differences, like where Johnny gets cosmetic surgery to look
like a low tech if I remember this right, and
he ends up looking very dog like if I remember.
It's very strange. But the adaptation to film, it's fun,

(18:52):
it's entertaining. Like Aaron said, it's very much a guilty pleasure.
I think Joe Blow on YouTube did a what the
what the Fuck? Half the Giant a monic within the
last year or so, and there's an incredible amount of
behind the scenes info for this movie.

Speaker 1 (19:07):
This is incredibly interesting.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
I know with Dolph Lungren they wanted somebody else, but
they were able to get him. I know, getting Henry
Rollins was kind of a big deal as Spider the
flesh Mechanic, which that's another shadow Ren term that I like, you've.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Got him, you got iced Tea. And when you think
about it, at the time, two of probably some of
the more political, outspoken counterculture musicians like iced Ty had
started doing movies and stuff at that point that was
this is one of his earlier pictures that he's in.
But like this is very shortly after like a year
or two after he his uh metal driving body Well,

(19:45):
body Count came out with like cop Killer and all
those like like and songs you know, anti uh you know,
anti racism, anti authority stuff, and Rollins is basically, you know,
the poster child of of that of the the second
punk movement, right and just being you know real. And

(20:05):
this is like right around the time that he's doing
his Rollins band stuff where he's getting like actual singles
on the radio and people are like, how is he
getting singles on the radio? He's he's so anti corporate,
but he was getting the stuff and and it's funny,
like if you look at him now, other than the
gray hair, he looks the same thirty years later.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah, he's a hard as hard as hell like that.
He's an amazing person to listen to. Yes, he's very
well spoken.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, Like that's part of the reason why I think
this movie does remain so timeless, because Iced Tea, he's
no fool. In fact, one of the few interactions I've
had on Twitter, the site now called X fuck You Elon,
I remember tweeting at ic T saying, hey, man, one

(20:51):
of my favorite roles that you've ever done outside of
law and Order was giant to monic. I remember seeing
you in theaters. I thought you were the coolest guy
ever that I thought Surviving the Game I think it was.
And he's like, hey, thanks man, and I said j
Bone forever. He's like, you're fucking right, And I.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Just thought that it was like looking it up, this
was sort of hit one of his breakouts, you know,
outside of you know rap, and then like right after
was like Mean Guns, which is also another fun, ridiculous,
you know movie, And then.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
I think, didn't he do Warriors of Virtue like a
couple of years later tank Girl?

Speaker 2 (21:28):
It was like one of the other I think it's
Tank Girl. Yeah, I might be wrong, but he did
like a slew of these movies, like some were theatrical,
some were direct to video, and then he just sort
of slotted himself into SVU in nineteen eighty nine, and
he's basically been there for twenty five years or whatever more.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
Yeah, like him and Marishka are basically the franchise. Everybody
else is.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Like he joined in like season two and then he's
been there ever since. He's had a career on television,
doing one role for longer than most people have entire
career and like to the point where a lot of
people don't even know that he was like in music.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Yeah, and more like it's just kind of amazing how
much I think this movie has like influenced like a
lot of you know, movies when it comes to like
how they portray cyrapunk, what we thought of cyberspace CAUs
hackers would be.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
I think the same here. I'm almost positive in nineteen
ninety five, and.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
The vibe of the way it shot and filmed and
just the feel of the production. It's a lot like
a lot of the syndicated TV shows that were coming out,
just at a higher budget. Like even some of the
actor crossovers. You've got Don Franks in this, you probably
know from La fem Nikita and some other stuff around
that time you've cut. For a second, I thought it
was Shannon Tweed, and then I realized, no, it's her

(22:43):
sister in this, So you got like, so it's like
all these like Canadian production TV show people involved in this.
I looked up the director only ever directed this movie
and did a few music videos beforehand and had comments saying, uh,
basically making movies is hard. When questioned why why the

(23:04):
action wasn't good. And it's like that's an honest response.
Making movies is hard and it will kick you in
your ass, is what he said. So it's like, yeah, okay,
he at least admitted that, you know, he wasn't great
at directing action, but doesn't mean he didn't have a
great vision for the movie.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, you know one other thing that really works. Like
with vision, let's say in this the rig that Johnny
is hooked up to when he's with the dolphin, the
helmet and all the wiring, Oh my god, Like it's
still amazing. It looks so just like organic, techno organic,
The Tower.

Speaker 2 (23:39):
Of syrts Like a lot of shots in this. I
looked and I went, having not seen it before, but
having played Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven twice both at launch
and when they did the next gen stuff and doing
a full play through, look at there is stuff that
they liberally were inspired by. You know what it took
from this, Like there's entire storylines for both this movie

(24:01):
and the next one we're talking about that are almost
directly one to one in the Cyberpunk game as side
quests or quest chains even and like there are times
and not just that, even in the more recent well
not recent, but the most recent days X games, where

(24:21):
like in the Deox, I believe, I don't know if
it's human revolution, it might be mankind divided. But there
is a side quest where you investigate essentially a techno
cult that worships work modication, body modification, the machine. They
were there, God is essentially the modifications itself and hive mind.

(24:41):
And when like you show up, there are preachers that
are you know, crazy, like Dulph longer than this, that
are obsessed. And in watching this, all I thought of
was like, if he was in like a fully mechanical suit,
he would just basically be Adam Smasher.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
But so, yeah, he's basically Adam Smasher. Yeah, it's ridiculous
how much I said this is just here carried forward.
I mean even in shadow Rum there's a thing called
I can't remember what the proper term is, but you're
basically a cyber zombie where yeah, yeah, you're like almost
entirely the terminator. There's very little meat left.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
And yeah, you lose yourself to the machine, you kind
of lose your connection to reality.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
And beyond that, even just the like the visual asthetics
are very much like a source of inspiration for a
lot of stuff that came after. Clearly, even though you know,
the movie itself didn't get great reviews when it came out,
didn't make money when it came out, it's sort of,
you know, fluid of the radar, but it's clearly influenced
the next generation of film and game makers.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
Oh yeah, Like, I know, the director went around like
a couple of years ago and he showed them like
originally he wanted to shoot this movie in black and white.
And there's a version of this movie you can watch
in black and white. And I think there's even a
director's cut that has some deleted seams. I'm not one
hundred percent sure on that one, but yeah, Like, this

(26:02):
is one of my all time favorites. I cannot recommend
it enough. You can rent this, you can buy this
on physical media. I highly recommend you do. It's it's
such a fun time and such a snapshot of what
cyberpunk would eventually become and eventually what you would play
in games like Cyberpunk twenty seventy seven.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
I'm gonna say this fun little fact, Originally it wasn't
Keano that was gonna star.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Ooh who was it?

Speaker 2 (26:31):
It was Val Kilmer.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
I can see that he dropped out when he accepted Batman. Oh,
so it would have been a different kind of film.
But I almost feel like Keano's this is Keano is
much more comfortable now when he makes movies.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
You can tell.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Yeah, he still had a bit of stiff awkwardness here.
Not that it wasn't bad acting, just he was a
little stiff for the scene, maybe needed a little more coaxing.
I wonder if having Val would have changed the tone
of the film too much.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
I think it would have been more serious and I
wouldn't see the chemistry between him and Diana Meyer.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
But he could also be very silly. But he's also
somebody who could like at that time, he might have
felt the movie was going to be silly and then
just hammed it up too much. So I almost feel
like like Keanu gave the right tone for what the
film ended up.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Being, because didn't Heat come out in and around this.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Time, Yeah, he had I think he filmed that beforehand,
and he was like, apparently he was signed on for this,
and then Batman offered him, ah shit ton of money
and he was like, of course you did well. He
was offered like Batman and The Saint and he's like,
I'll do those instead of this movie that may or
may not do well with a director that nobody's really
heard of. And this movie had like a twenty six

(27:52):
million dollar budget versus you know, he was pretty much
guaranteed to be in a movie that was like fifty
or one hundred million dollars when it's Batman and we
all know The Saintan didn't do well eventually, but still,
you know, Batman was basically at that point it was
a surefire hit, right, So I can see why he
took it. But at the same time, I could also

(28:13):
see him in this role. So I'm like, you know,
whoever was doing the casting for it, you know, they
had had the right idea with him. And then when
Keanu became free, because this is like you said, Mike,
it's right after he did Speed. Speed became a huge hit.
He's a good second, you know choice.

Speaker 3 (28:27):
Yeah, like it very much fits his vibe and he
just had the right amount of chemistry and likability. But yeah,
you could tell he was starting to loosen up here. Yeah, definitely,
Early Kean.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
And special effects were really good, as you mentioned with
like being able to some of the stuff in there.
It's not too gory, and when people do get sliced up,
you could tell that there's probably a director's cut that
they there's some stuff that looks like it was zoomed
in on to avoid watching the dismemberment. Yeah, especially with
Udo Kiir's character where he gets basically not even bisected.

(29:00):
He's it's three pieces he gets cut into I think yea.
And the way it's it's it's very clear, but the
way it's done you don't see the head or anything,
and you're like, whoa. It was an abrupt cut and
you're like, whoa, that's the NPA saying you're going to
get an X rating.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
So the next movie we're going to talk about this
is one that often gets mentioned in the same sentence
as Gianna Monic and definitely in that cyberpunk feel that
the nineteen nineties was really trying to go for with
movies like Gianna Monic, like Hackers. I could even maybe
make an argument for Your Dark City and Judge Dread
as well, which we talked about a while ago here

(29:40):
on the show. But so strange days it stars, Ralph Fines,
Juliet Lewis, Angela Bassett which I completely forgot about her.
The casus is stat William Fincher, Vincent Dinofrio. I'm sure
there's other big actors that I'm missing in this, but
it's a real oh Tom size More.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, there's it's sort of a who's who, and even
like the character actors are are pretty much a who's
who of people.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Yeah, like the main guy he thinks gonna be the
bad guy, Michael Waldorf, the guy who play Top Dollar
from The Crow.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
They wanted that character to be Bono.

Speaker 3 (30:18):
Yeah, Michael Winclark. They wanted that to be Bono, but
he wouldn't do it for whatever reason. So the story
of Strange Days is there's a basically a cyber drug dealer,
Lenny Nero, and he deals in to borrow another shadow
run term is simsense and what that is recorded memories
and sensations. You would wear something that would record your

(30:40):
sensation might be someone having a shower, is a really
attractive young lady, people having sex, people going skydiving, or
people doing something more dangerous, robbing a liquor store, an assassination,
could be any number of different things, but Lenny has
one rule. He won't deal in blackjack and what that
means if someone dies during their recording session, he doesn't

(31:04):
want you to feel that.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
So yeah, he says, films. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
So he finds out he gets a hold of a
recording of a murder and that's a friend of his
that he knows, and that opens up into a whole
new conspiracy that involves around racial lines or someone from
the black community named Jericho One is murdered by the
lapd and we have the crime being recorded through the

(31:32):
eyes of one of the witnesses that he knew, and
it's Lenny over the course of one, one or two
days experiencing this entire conspiracy unraveling him around him, and
he runs to do his old girlfriend named Faith played
by Juliet Lewis, and his best friend Tom Sizemore. I'm
not gonna spoil how this movie ends, but it's it's

(31:54):
a trip. And this movie was directed by Catherine Bigelow,
who's the hurt Lockers where I most know her from,
but very famous director has done a lot of big
stuff since then. This was a lot more violent than
I remember, a lot of sexual violence. I didn't expect.
I didn't remember because the last time I saw this
movie was like nineteen ninety something or maybe early two

(32:16):
thousand something. It was the last time that I saw this,
And I remember renting this because I remember reading a
magazine article that mentioned Johnny Mnemonic. So I was like, oh,
it's in the same vein. I'm like, okay, cool, And again,
being a Shatter Run player, I was like, Hey, this
is simsense and what this reminds me of. There was

(32:37):
an adventure, an adventure for Shadow Run second edition. I
can't remember what the adventure was called, but the idea
was in Shadow Run, you could have cyber eyes basically
cameras where your eyes used to be, and someone recorded
a murder and you were you as the player. Characters
were recovering the cyber eyes to either exonerate someone or

(32:59):
give the to the cops, but someone was trying to
track you down to stop this information from getting out.
And that's what really attracted me to this movie. So
while I was watching this the other night with my
friend Liam, they one of the lines of dialogue that
I caught. I think they the technology in the movie

(33:20):
was designed to be the full body wire so law
enforcement could use this technology if they were tailing a
witness or trying to get testimony from someone, they could
literally hear and feel everything, or to get more information
out of informants. But obviously the black market for something
like this is pretty obvious, basically low rent version of

(33:42):
the Holi deck, because again, you could experience anything you
want as long as someone was recording it. And I
had some pretty dark thoughts with this, I'm going to
admit that straight out, and it made me very uncomfortable.
But I could also see how people in the world
of Strange Days would become addicted to this. And there's
something that I completely forgot about and it really took

(34:05):
me by surprise. One of the characters that Lenny Neer
runs into is an amputee. He's a guy in winter,
he's a double amputee, and he's a hacker, like Johnny
was kind of like just a guy who knows tech.
And Lenny goes up to him in this club and goes, hey,
I got a birthday present for you, and he's like, okay,

(34:25):
what is it? So he puts on his sim rig
and it's him running down the beach with this attractive
lady running past him, and I got to say, this
should be really good for certain forms of therapy. I
could see this being incredibly useful. But again with the
look at the technology and just how dark the world

(34:46):
is right now, incredibly dangerous at the same time. So yeah,
revisiting this was certainly a trip. I really enjoyed my
time with it. I really liked Ray Fines in this
because originally they wanted, like other people for this role.
I know he wasn't the first choice, but they fought
for him because they liked his charisma and the energy

(35:07):
he brought to the role. And I mostly know Ray
Fines from this movie and fucking Voldemort are the two
things I can think of that he's done so quite
the leap in characters.

Speaker 5 (35:21):
Well, I mean, yeah, this is this is a tough
This is a tough one to talk about. I think, Yeah,
it's like it's it's wild.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
I mean, you probably know him from Schindler's List.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
I've actually never seen that.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Oh, surprisingly, that's something you're gonna happen time. I don't
know if I want to talk about that movie. I hear.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
I'm not going to talk about it on a review.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
It's very important it's one of those ones you really
really need to watch and turn off your phone, do
everything and just want watch. Yes, you have to pay attention,
like it's it's it's almost offensive to me if you
don't pay attention on your watching it. But yeah, like
he's that and more recently he's done other.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Other work as well, in the New or James Bond movies.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Yeah, I forgot about that as well as the I
didn't he get an oscar for the English Patient or something?

Speaker 3 (36:25):
I think so, yeah, because that was like within like
a year or two of this.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, and just he's one of those sort of you know,
big time guys that can sort of mold into different
characters pretty much on the fly. I in watching it again,
this is one that I had never seen. I had
seen the like box for it, never seen a trailer anything.

(36:50):
I had sort of avoided. I didn't know it was
a sci fi movie because they were incredibly bad at
advertising it.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yes, very much.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
The box doesn't tell you anything about it, It doesn't
even intrigue you, like the box art or anything. So
in watching it, I was pleasantly surprised, Like there's parts
of this movie that I don't like. Parts of it
that I do like, it's worth a watch again. Great cast,
you know, well acted amongst everybody involved in watching it,

(37:20):
though seeing Ray Fines do play Lenny. All I could
think of was this movie probably two things. One should
not have been set in nineteen ninety nine. They shouldn't
have said it four years ahead of when it came out,
because it was too it was too unbelievable. Not the riots,
because that was obviously to do with like it was very,

(37:41):
very influenced by the La Riots. They openly said it was.
The script actually changed a few times. Originally there wasn't
anything political involved. It was just like love story stuff
when Jim Cameron originally wrote the script and then Catherine
Bigelow altered it to include Rodney King's stuff and then
include oj simps and stuff because they were like getting

(38:02):
ready to film this right after the Oja chase and
everything that was going on with that, so you know,
taking that stuff out of it, you know, nineteen eighty
nine it was not far enough ahead for it to
be believable to have that tech m It's you know,
if they had said it in like twenty fifteen, maybe
twenty twenty nine at that time you know, if they

(38:24):
had set themselves like thirty five years in the future,
it would have been a believable thing. Yeah, So I
think that was a big mistake, and I think.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
That wig on Tom Sizemore was certainly a character.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
And the other thing is I almost feel like the
movie shouldn't have been made in ninety five. I feel
like they should have made it in two thousand and
five to make it, to make some of the effects
a little better. But also I wouldn't have cast Ray Fines.
I would have waited ten years, not now, okay, you
know hindsight's twenty twenty. But I would have not made
this movie and then waited till the on two thousand

(39:00):
and five to make the movie. And then I would
have cast Bradley Cooper.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
I can see that.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
I can see that.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
I feel that the problem with Ray is he is
never truly mastered an American accent, so it always sounds
like he's forcing an accent. It kind of bothered me
a little bit. But beyond that he was everybody else
was pretty good. I understand why it was as visceral

(39:33):
as it was, and the crimes involved were what they were. Yeah,
the other things are for a movie written and produced
by James Cameron and you know, directed by his I
think I think they were still married at that time.

Speaker 1 (39:51):
They were still married at the time.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
There are some glaring special effects errors in it, you know,
spoiler when somebody gets thrown off a roof, you can
see a bungee cord the whole way down.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Yeah, I've never noticed.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Oh yeah, it's clear as day. And I was like,
is that just because it's on Blu ray now? And
I was searching online for like, what's the lowest quality
copy I could find and watch?

Speaker 1 (40:16):
And I watched.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
I watched the founder copy that somebody was a VHS rip.
You could still see it there, And I was like, oh,
you didn't even digitally erase that, And you had like
forty million dollar budget and you couldn't erase one bungee.
There is that a few other moments. The other thing is,
interestingly enough, they went with using like high end cameras
like Ari Alexa production, like regular thirty five millimeter cameras,

(40:41):
and they had to alter them and make all these
rigs so people could wear them to get the first
person perspective stuff. And I feel that was a compromise
because they didn't want to use camquarders or handheld things
because people would immediately be taken out and think, oh,
it doesn't look real because it looks like a camcorder
versus like something hyper realistic. When I think the path
that they should have chosen was if you're gonna, if

(41:04):
you were going to use film cameras, they should have
shot those segments at like sixty frames per second instead
of twenty four. You should have shot them faster so
that anything that they were experiencing would look like a
soap opera.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
Yeah, so it looked a little bit otherworldly.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Because there was no real delineation between you know, the
real world and what they were experiencing in their memories,
and not necessarily in a good way. And that's something
that if they had waited ten years, you know, if
they were like, well, we don't have the tech now,
but we have this idea, and we know James Cameron
was working on high speed camera stuff for digital so
because around this time is when he used to helping

(41:41):
develop it with his companies for the Titanic stuff that
would come a few years later. Right, So, if any
movie really deserved having the ability, especially in the digital
age to switch like the main movie being in twenty four,
and then because of the way modern cameras work, you
could then flip it to sixty, you know, like that
Aglee movies that he was, the one he did with

(42:03):
it was it. It wasn't After Earth, it was it
was the Gemini Man or Gemini something that the really
bad movie with Will Smith say, yeah, the way that
was That movie was filmed entirely in sixty which was terrible.

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Wasn't the Habit also filmed in sixty forty eight?

Speaker 2 (42:17):
It was double forty eight. Okay, And again it looks odd,
but it's weird. It would look great if the whole
thing is you're supposed to be getting like a sensory
overload of memories and emotions. So I feel like it's
a little out of time.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
It was.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
This movie came out a little before it should have.
And for all the script edits that they did, why
said it ninety nine? Other than to capitalize on the
millennium thing.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
That's the only reason why, which is really unfortunate, because
you're right, like this movie it's weird because Gianna Monic,
for example, takes place in twenty twenty one. Yeah, I
would have set this, yeah, around twenty twenty nine, two thousand,
something like that. But there's something else that I noticed,
and you'll probably this is it's a it's such a
weird nitpick, but I was thinking about this. You know

(43:01):
how they're recording all the kind of simsense shit right
and they can just immediately have a disc. I remember
looking at Liam, my next door neighbor and one of
my best friends. I said, you know what, these things
have incredible read write speeds.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Well, it's it's because both these films a connection, I
could say, because of the time period. They're both using
Sony's mini discs, yes, which which for like Canada, never
became a thing outside of some data storage. In the States,
they were like five percent of the market when it

(43:35):
came to music by the early two thousands.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
I was one of the few people that used a
mini disc player almost exclusively exactly, and you were literally
like one in one hundred Canadians had one.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
It was like nothing.

Speaker 1 (43:47):
I just thought it was cool. But if you a
huge nynamonic But if you go.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
To Japan and you go to Europe, Europe, especially like
England and that there were more people using mini discs
than CD players, and when it came to cortable media legitimately,
and the market stayed alive well into like two thousand
and five, two thousand and six when MP three players
were taking over.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Oh wow, So.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
It still looked futuristic because I think mini disc only
came out in like ninety one or ninety two. So
they stripped out some pieces to give it the mini
disc look. In Johnnymonic when they're setting up his rig
to get his brain downloaded and all that. It is
literally you can actually look up their exact sony models,
modular models that they just stripped the pain off and

(44:30):
then they did like some stuff to remove pieces to
make it look more bespoken original. But you know it's
mini discs. They don't write that fast. But at the
same time, you know, me knowing it, they only store
a few hundred megabytes of data.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
Say, yeah, you're not storing that much stuff on Although,
fun thing that I was listening to when I was
listening to the dialogue in Giant Numon just to go
back to that for like a couple of seconds, they
mentioned the iPhone. They say yeah, I think, yeah, I
was like, I need a Thompson iPhone. I'm like, okay,
well that's kind of funny, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (45:07):
It's supposed to be like I E y E, yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
And I'll give you one more. I don't know if
either of you guys noticed it, but I had I
have to double check it. But remember when he burned
his passport. You know what his passport was? What sake?
A game gear cart.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
That's cool.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
At first I thought it was an Atari Jaguar, but
then I looked at small it's it's literally a game
gear cart with a label put on it with his passport,
and that's that's what. He just inserts it probably into
a cartridge slot, and then they pretended that it was,
you know, a digital passport.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
That that is funny.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
One of the things that works, I think in strange
days is the tech. It's important, but it's not the
entire focus that I've I've heard me described as tech noir,
which again, this movie is written by camera and yeah,
that vibes.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah in our in our chat before, I think I
said that you could totally remove every piece of cyberpunk
ish technology from this movie and it would not change
the plot because you could just say, instead of having
a brain scan. Uh, main character finds a security cam
footage or main character interviews somebody and he gets the story.

Speaker 2 (46:25):
It's it's basically like enemy of the State, some guys
filming filming birds and then and then ends up recording,
you know, something illegal and and you could you could
do that with this. Uh, you could splice that out.
There's a few other inspirations here and there that are
with it.

Speaker 3 (46:40):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
You know, there's some fem fetals kind of stuff involved,
so you could totally have adapted it into something like
that and or and the police corruption thing. There's a
lot of movies around this era that we're making very
similar statements. I feel, you know, I like what Catherine
was going for. I think she shoehorned too much in.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Yeah, for two and a half hours, there's way too well,
there's still too much stuff in here in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (47:10):
Yeah, I gets a little long, I think.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
But like, if you take every aspect of this film
by itself, go okay. The acting, acting's great, production great,
special effects in general are great, except for that fall, right, Like.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
You definitely clocked that when you were watching it. I
was like, Oh, Aaron's gonna write this down. Too.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
He saw it. I know he saw it. Yeah, Like
the the concepts in the movie great, but I think
I said that like when you put it all together
and it's two and a half hours, it's two and
a half hours of like relentless awfulness in like every
scene it's just this person is terrible, or this the

(47:51):
world sucks, or I feel really bad for this person,
and it's just it never lets up.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
You can tell the feeling of the filmmakers, you know,
having just come off of the Rodney King stuff and
it just come on off of OJ and civil unrest,
and you could see that when this was written, like
when it was the final script was written like a
year or two earlier, you can tell that those concepts
and just the dowurdness of everything was weighing heavy on
her and everybody evolved.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
And at the same time, the original script where it
was supposed to be like a love triangle thing that
was apparently the idea behind it, love triangle based in
sci fi. When James camer wrote this, he wrote this
in nineteen eighty five, right after Terminator, so him writing
at eighty five if he had originally thought to set
it in nineteen ninety nine. You know, you're looking at

(48:41):
a little bit far ahead, but it still should have
been farther than that. But I can understand, with how
fast technology was moving at the time, why he might
have thought that was a believable thing to achieve within
fifteen to twenty years. Yeah, but out of all the
things that they changed, they should have changed it so
that this movie should have been based in like twenty
twenty nine, and then Johnny Demonic should have been based

(49:02):
in like twenty forty something. Say, yeah, from when they
came out.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
Like, it's very funny that you guys mention that the
technology is moving so quick again to use the tabletop
role playing example, games like Cyberpunk twenty twenty, games like
shatter On. We're talking about in the future, someday you'll
be able to carry around music around on chips. They
predicted MP three's, they predicted cell phones, and like they

(49:28):
predicted all these things that we take for granted today,
and it's just it's kind of wild. I mean, even
now when it comes to simulated sense technology, there are
some experimental things that like it's we can't replicate your feelings,
but we're starting to figure out how senses work and
stuff like that. So practical cybernetics and process. We're starting

(49:52):
to figure that out. Now we have some terrible people
in charge of what that stuff is.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
I'm looking at you, you Elon, Well, welcome to iberpunk.
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
Yeah, And that's what this movie I think really nails.
You guys mentioned this movie is really dow it's really depressing.
That's cyberpunk, and it really nails that.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
So, I mean, it doesn't mean that it's bad. It
just means it not isn't necessarily always for us, or
that it's something you'd want to watch over again. I'm
happy with what I saw in that. It's an experience
that I wish I had seen earlier. It might have
actually shaped some of my visions of what I saw
the future being like with tech. I can say one
thing we didn't touch upon in both films is the

(50:33):
soundtracks are great. Yes, in both this one, especially at
the end the closing theme. You know, it's got that
you know, early nineties techno house sound. And then I
was like, is that Peter Gabriel mumbling you know, you know,
different languages over top of it and chanting? It is
Peter Gabriel, and I was like, how did they get
Peter Gabriel? They paid Peter Gabriel to make the music? Yeah,

(50:57):
like it went all in and I was like, oh man,
and then obviously you know Strange Days you're gonna have
the doors in there. But what's funny is, for whatever reason,
every single time I saw the box art for this
in a store and I walked by, you know what
would start playing in my head? Michael what Matt goodband?

Speaker 3 (51:14):
Interesting choice?

Speaker 2 (51:16):
Uh? Like you know he had a Strange Days music, Yeah,
and apparitions the song. For whatever reason, That's what would
play in my head. So I'm like, they obviously didn't.
It wasn't evoking the emotion looking at the cover that
they probably wanted that it was. It made some kid
walk by and think of like late nineties alt rock.

Speaker 3 (51:35):
Yeah, like you really get the vibe of cyberpunk's again atmosphere.
And one thing that these too, these very much counterbounds.
You're very much yin and yang was with John and Mink.
You get the fast paced, high action cyberpunk action adventure.
With Strange Days, you're getting the more dour, more introspective,

(51:56):
darker side that literally tech Noir from Techno thriller.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
If I could close my closing thoughts on this is uh,
Johnny and Monic is, you know, the dystopian future and
Strange Days is the downfall happening around us?

Speaker 3 (52:13):
Yeah, it feels very relevant to what's happening now.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
Yeah, I'd say, like it's the dystopian now versus the
Dystopian tomorrow. Yeah, and yeah, yeah, it's just what what
do you want to watch?

Speaker 5 (52:26):
What?

Speaker 1 (52:27):
Yeah? Like, it's just that that that difference right there.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
These aren't feel good movies, but they are movies that
will make it well actually, wait, sorry, Johnny is a
feel good movie.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Yeah, it's fun.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
This is a movie that will make you think, and
it is one hundred percent in my opinion, worth watching
at least once. But I can see myself going and
watching Johnny you know, more just for fun, you know,
with friends again.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
Well yeah, no, I'm gonna watch Johnny Mamonic again. I
have no doubt because I do watch it every now
and then. But I don't think i'd watch Strange Days again.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
Strange Days is a movie I wouldn't come back to
you very often either.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
Like I think I think it's it's technically a better movie,
like have a he no doubt it's a better movie,
but it's just the tone and message of it is
just like, yeah, it's just more down. I feel like this.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
If you were going to remake a modern movie, this
one could be remade very well today mm hm. And
you could do a lot with it. You could make
it topical but you know not, and you could make
it darker than you could add a little to it
to give it. I don't know, it was missing spunk,
if that makes any sense.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
Yeah, like it needed a little bit of riz on it,
like a little bit of flash, whereas Johnny's very the
neon soaked future Strange Days is the grimy grit behind
the diner.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
So yeah, both both of these, Michael, Both of these movies,
the plot lines are almost one to one done as
side quests and cyberpunk so and all and probably better.
So if you have a you know, modern piec actually
you know, in five years, if you have any modern
consoles or PCs and you're you know interested, the topics
that are done here are done probably better in both

(54:13):
cases within the cyberpunk game.

Speaker 3 (54:15):
Yeah, like, ultimately these are both worth watching, and I
would definitely agree with like Aaron's Thing One is something
you should probably watch once, but you're probably not gonna
re revisit it over and over again, whereas Giant and
Monic it's fun. I mean, for my closing thoughts for this, yeah,
watch both, they're both fantastic. Maybe don't do a double bill,

(54:36):
maybe watch one one day, one the next.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
But to play videos, watch Strange Days first and then uh,
you know, clear your palette with the yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
If you want to play some video games that'll very
much get you into this vibe, I highly suggest Cyberpunk
twenty seventy seven. That's a fantastic game available for multiple platforms,
goat to run any of the older games and even
the in the newer ones that came out in the
last like five to ten years there. I think y'rewn
a Xbox Game Pass, so they are well worth playing, and.

Speaker 2 (55:07):
They run on basically anything that end of course, the
Diao Sex series.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Yes, and dis X if you want to play the
Syndicate games from way back when, they're good system shocks
and other good cyberpunky feel type game. And yeah, I
also might recommend you maybe wants the movie A Scanner
Darkly that's also often considered in cyberpunk conversations. Maybe Dark
City for sort of the same vibe. But yeah, maybe

(55:33):
those will be other movies that we talk about here
on the show. Sometime in the future.

Speaker 2 (55:38):
We're going to say, William Shatner's Tech War.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
Yeah, yeah, that is something else. But anyway, guys, so yeah,
we have had a lot of fun chatting about this
on Future Imperfect. So looking forward to chatting more with
you about hopefully a different type of future. So from
the BBS wasteland of Kitchener, Ontario, we have been the
producer from the data habit of Lansing, Michigan.

Speaker 1 (56:03):
I'm Aaron Polier from the Free.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
City of Guelph. I have been Mike the Birdman jacking out.
We'll catch you guys again next time, right here on
this weeking geek dot Net.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Listen you listen.

Speaker 5 (56:15):
You see that city over there, That's where I'm supposed
to be, not down here with the dogs in the garbage,
in the fucking last much newspapers going back and forth.

Speaker 3 (56:25):
I've how do with them?

Speaker 1 (56:27):
How dood you? I've had it with all this.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
I want run service, I want the club sandwich, I
want the.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
Cold Mexican beer. I want a ten thousand dollars a
night Huker. I want my shirts laundered like they do.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
At the Imperial Hotel.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
One shall stand, One shall fall. Why throw away your
life so recklessly, that's a question you should ask yourself, Megatron.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
We came, we saw, we kicked itself.

Speaker 1 (57:03):
That's right, mister p Buddy, Quiet you man. Game over, Man,
game over. You don't understand.

Speaker 4 (57:09):
I understood that reference

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Mission successful shutting down

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Future Imperfect - Johnny Mnemonic (1995) - Strange Days (1995)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Future Imperfect - Johnny Mnemonic (1995) - Strange Days (1995)