THE YEAR IS 2021. Yes, you say, we’re well aware of that, it’s nearly
summer… No, bear with me. What we mean is, the Keanu Reeves,
ahead-of-its time sci-fi action thriller Johnny Mnemonic is
set in 2021! Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, with a HD digital
release, the film made some pretty startling predictions at the time about
the internet, smartphones, virtual reality and social media. Some came to
fruition, others were way off the mark, and some were just plain
ridiculous.
It’s a great watch to see how Hollywood saw the ‘future’ back then - and
also to realise how fast things have changed. Here’s a look at the film
and exactly how close we are to the world of Johnny Mnemonic...
DATA STORAGE
In the film, Reeves plays a data courier, who transports important or top
secret information implanted into his head. The film was quite canny in
predicting hacking on a global and corporate level (the author of the
source novel, William Gibson, is regarded as a bit of a prophet in
this field). What it is not so spot on about is the amount of data that
these in-demand couriers can carry for their clients. Johnny boasts: “I
can store 80 GB in my brain”, but he must transport a whopping 320 GB!
About the size of a £25 external hard drive then!
CORPORATE RULE
At the start of the film, it ominously states that in the second decade of
the 21st century “corporations rule”…well, we now live in a world where a
small number of massively powerful companies gobble up profitable
independents, absorb or eradicate competition, and pretty much have a hold
on everything we buy or do - so Johnny Mnemonic was bang on
the money with this prediction.
SKYPE CALLS
Right off the bat we see Johnny using what appears to be a kind of clunky
Skype facility (Skype itself debuted in 2003). Back in 1995, someone
talking to their monitor might have seemed rather peculiar, but nowadays
we’re all at it.
INTERNET 2021
In Johnny Mnemonic, everyone seems to be doing everything through a single screen -
watching TV, shopping, computery stuff - what is going on? Bear in mind
the film was released before the real power of the internet had been
realised - and Google wasn’t even created until 1998… did this film invent
what we now know as the world wide web and how we use it!!? And for anyone
who grumbled in the '90s that the internet was a ‘fad’ - as someone in the
films says, “you low-techs will regret this!”
PASSPORT CONTROL
When Johnny enters the Free City of Newark, he has to go through a full
body scan at immigration control. It seems that the powers that be watched
this film, because they now have these at every airport!
SMARTPHONES
After Johnny has broken into a computer store, and is busy building his
own rig, Johnny asks his sidekick Jane (Dina Meyer) for what sounds
like some ‘Thompson iPhones’. Now, iPhones weren’t invented until 2007
(although it wasn’t Thompson that made them). Of course, he may have been
referring to ‘eyephones’, the silver wraparound goggles he wears to surf
the three dimensional web-world - in which case he was simply predicting
Virtual Reality headsets!
ONLINE BANKING
Johnny uses a little portable plastic key-pad device that is very similar
to the card readers we all use today to access our online bank accounts.
Of course, Johnny uses his to hack a shielded phone line, rather than to
check his direct debits.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Jane suffers an episode of the ‘black shakes’, and Johnny takes her to a
shady tech doctor called Spider (Henry Rollins), who informs Johnny
the dangerous condition is caused by “Information overload, all the
electronics around you poisoning the airwaves!” Sounds like he’s talking
about the ill-effects of ever-present, inescapable, all-consuming social
media, a quarter of a century ahead of the fact!
Johnny Mnemonic is on UK/ROI
Digital HD platforms now.