Movies - TV
Keanu Reeves' Johnny Mnemonic Predicted The Future With A '90s Take On '80s Cyberpunk
By DANIELLE RYAN
With the technological advancements made in the prior decade, science fiction films from the 1990s tried to predict the possible future for us after 2000. Unlike its contemporaries, “Johnny Mnemonic,” a film based on William Gibson’s 1981 short story, truly explored the science aspect of the genre and made some stunning predictions about life in 2021.
Johnny (Keanu Reeves), an information courier and internet expert, ends up with mysterious data in his brain implant that many are trying to claim for themselves. While the film inaccurately predicted the need for a metal device installed in our brains to access the internet, one theme of the movie has become a great truth of the 21st century: information is currency.
The movie shows people essentially signing their lives away to be connected to information at all times, as there are screens everywhere that are slowly killing their addicted users. This portrayal is fairly relevant to reality, as many free online services turn their users into products by selling their private information to third parties.
Though the film has other fun predictions, like VR headsets similar to the ones we have today, it also makes another unfortunately accurate guess with its villain: the pharmaceutical companies. Like “Judge Dredd’s” satire on law enforcement, “Johnny Mnemonic” uses its story to criticize pharmaceutical companies that value profit over lives in our modern world.