[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00:01.46 Jala & Dave Hello, world, and welcome to Jala-chan's Place. I'm your host, Jala Prendes (she/her), and today my guests and I are hanging around in the living room with some popcorn, watching our massive pillar of TVs. I am joined today by Case (he/him) and Dave (he/him), and we are talking about Johnny Mnemonic. 00:00:22.72 Case (he/him) Woo! Ah, ah, ah, me being the dolphin. 00:00:29.33 Jala & Dave So, Case, yes, how are you doing today, sir? 00:00:33.04 Case (he/him) I'm doing pretty good. we're We were talking off mic that there's been a lot of travel between myself and my wife recently. So a lot of like solo parenting or just being on the road and thus like kind of tired. But aside from that, like no real complaints. 00:00:47.32 Jala & Dave That is good. As for me, hell month is over. So I am just kind of like in the the kind of reverb of, you know, the shock waves of trying to calm back down after a real rough month. 00:01:00.18 Case (he/him) Nice, good. 00:01:00.30 Jala & Dave So yeah. Yeah. So I was tearing my hair out all last month. And so now it's growing back. Dave, how are you doing? Well, I work retail and the kids are finally back to school. 00:01:12.20 Jala & Dave So it's calming down again, except for traffic is now bad. Yeah, yeah, there's always that. So yeah, um for sure. 00:01:21.77 Case (he/him) It's the trade offs, the gives and takes, you know, 00:01:25.54 Jala & Dave so ah 00:01:25.84 Case (he/him) Some people might want to have this thing, other people might not want to have this thing, you know, whatever it is. 00:01:30.76 Jala & Dave Right, right. So um as for today's topic of Johnny Mnemonic, this 1995 movie that was supposed to be something totally different and ended up being a weird cult classic to kind of segue into what y'all do, since I always try to kick to the guests and let you talk about the things that you do um case. This would be a movie that I really feel if you have not done it on another pass would be really good for another pass. 00:01:58.96 Case (he/him) Yeah, it's remarkable that we haven't actually done it. It's it's on our list of like suggested episodes that that we have internally. 00:02:03.92 Jala & Dave Ah. 00:02:05.81 Case (he/him) um But it it it hasn't actually come up yet. And it's I'm going to be honest, it's kind of wild. It's been on this list and I'm relatively certain that I had seen this movie before. 00:02:14.48 Jala & Dave Mm-hmm. 00:02:16.89 Case (he/him) Uh, and I'd heard like, there was no surprises because I'd heard like plenty of podcasts talking about it. And then I'm watching it and I'm like, I don't remember most of these shots. Uh, but, but yeah, it's a, it, this is a movie that is fascinating, but flawed and is exactly the type of movie we talk about on another pass, which is the podcast I host where we talk about movies and speculate at what, what could have been done at the time of production to have made it a a better movie. 00:02:44.97 Case (he/him) And better is the nebulous term, because sometimes it's a good movie that had bad critical response or bad box office or or whatever. um But but, yeah, that's the basic premise of the show. um And then I am also the the host of the Men of Steel podcast, which is a Superman and Superman adjacent appreciation show. ah So we talk about the fantasy of being Superman or a character like Superman. You know, like we talk about like like Invincible, for example, or The Boys. um But we'll we'll talk about a lot of like Superman material as well. 00:03:12.25 Case (he/him) And so but both of those are shows that are podcasts that you can find anywhere where you get your podcasts. So yeah, that those are the big things I do. 00:03:20.91 Jala & Dave Yeah, and I really enjoyed the Superman board game episode that y'all did recently. 00:03:25.46 Case (he/him) Oh yeah. 00:03:26.07 Jala & Dave That was a lot of fun. And especially since Dave and I have been doing a lot of board games and stuff lately, um I was just like, oh, oh, this makes me excited. I like this a lot. 00:03:36.30 Case (he/him) Yeah, it was a ah wild one because I had no idea what that episode was going to be when we hit the button on the recorder, because I i hadn't looked at the rules for this board game. It was just I was just certain that there was a Superman board game and I found it ah from the fifties and I bought it. And then I had friends over and we like opened it up together to actually like experience this thing. ah But Again, like, is that a podcast episode? I had no idea. And so I'm i'm really glad that we were able to like sort of put something together that, you know, seemed to be fairly interesting. And ah like ah the feedback I've gotten has been really good for that one. 00:04:13.24 Jala & Dave Yeah. Well, I mean, it stands out because it's different, right? So that's cool. 00:04:17.89 Case (he/him) Yeah. 00:04:18.63 Jala & Dave Very good. So Dave, segueing over to other types of games, how about you talk about Monster, Dear Monster and the current stuff you're doing? Yeah. So I host the podcast Monster, Dear Monster, where we tentatively and in the past have taken a look at monsters from their folkloric inception to their current pop culture incarnations. We bounce around a lot. We kind of turned more into a horror movie podcast and we swerved back into the video game arena. We are currently covering all of the Elden Ring DLC at the moment 00:04:54.44 Jala & Dave And on the topic of board games, the Superman game, just hearing about it for in those few seconds, it sounds a lot better than the time we tried to play the Mega Man game. 00:05:06.24 Jala & Dave Yeah. We, we opened that up. We looked at it and we looked at the rules and we tried to read it and we were like, so confused that we put it back in the box and returned it. And I was like, okay, I don't usually do this, but wow. 00:05:18.74 Jala & Dave Uh, no, none of this. 00:05:19.43 Case (he/him) Wait, so it they had a Mega Man game and it wasn't just rock, paper, scissors. 00:05:20.18 Jala & Dave So. 00:05:23.30 Case (he/him) like 00:05:23.93 Jala & Dave Yeah, like they had so like little stages and you could pick like Roll or Rush or Mega Man or Proto Man or whatever and like whatever. they're they i don't yeah I don't even know how to play because... 00:05:33.39 Case (he/him) It was too complicated. 00:05:36.27 Jala & Dave Oh, you never figured it out. 00:05:36.84 Case (he/him) Yeah. 00:05:37.50 Jala & Dave The rules were very weird and opaque in that in that instruction manual. So ah we returned it. It looked very cool. And then it wasn't as cool as it looked. ah you know you You get that sometimes with board games. 00:05:49.91 Jala & Dave They look very neat. And then you're like, oh, actually, this this doesn't do. 00:05:53.94 Case (he/him) Yeah. Right after we finished recording the Superman board game episode, we cracked open. I had also purchased the Planet of the Apes board game, and that's a more recent one. 00:06:01.53 Jala & Dave Hmm. 00:06:02.84 Case (he/him) ah ah This is not there. 00:06:02.85 Jala & Dave who 00:06:05.17 Case (he/him) There's like a TTRPG that's coming out that is not the one I'm talking about. This is like legitimately the Planet of the Apes board game, like and it's like based on the 60s Planet of the Apes, like original movie. 00:06:14.46 Jala & Dave Mm 00:06:14.60 Case (he/him) um And we were excited and obviously I'm excited because the Planet of the Apes series is like starting to become one of my brands. It's like one of those movies that ah People associate with me now ah because we covered all of the Planet of the Apes movies on my podcast. 00:06:27.44 Case (he/him) um But anyway, so that board game, we cracked it open. We tried to read the rules. It has four versions of Charlton Heston's character ah that you play as your as your different characters. 00:06:35.34 Jala & Dave -hmm. 00:06:37.55 Case (he/him) um like facets of his personality. So it's like his grim determination, his cynicism. We were like, well, this doesn't make any sense. And we had to like look up a YouTube video and then it was like a 25 minute explainer video that we watched and we watched it twice. 00:06:51.05 Jala & Dave Oh, well. 00:06:53.06 Case (he/him) And we both are myself, my co-host and then our friend Keith were all looked at each other and were like, we can't do this. 00:06:59.12 Jala & Dave No. Yeah, yeah. When you've got that high of a barrier to entry, it's like, you know your brain kind of goes off into outer space. Ain't nobody got no time for that. I'm sorry. So so yeah. But yeah, so that's what y'all do. um And of course, ah our show and well, our shows, Dave's Monster, Dear Monster and my Jell-O Transplates are available on ko-fi.com slash Fireheart Media. We have extra stuff including bonus episodes of our shows. um And when I say that, I mean like there's some a related 00:07:37.37 Jala & Dave episode that's called ah Cutting Room Floor, and that kind of picks a topic from one of our shows on the network and and you know kind of digs in a little deeper than we were able to do during the proper episode. There is also a bonus episode that is called Omake Box, which is a bunch of random stories about whatever. Very often, it's the weird things that Dave says and how he doesn't sound like a human being. And um sometimes it's things that he does or sometimes it's little stories that I tell about my childhood or something like that, um little memories and things like that. So it's very off the wall, very short form, um little like 30 second snippets or whatever of of just little stories and anecdotes ah because I've been doing that kind of thing without any prompting for so long that it's it's one of my things. 00:08:27.56 Jala & Dave And then we also have a Glass Darkly, which is a podcast where we read our fiction. So that would be anything that Dave and I have written. We take turns as to who is reading that month. 00:08:39.44 Jala & Dave So those are all available, as well as some reviews and other stuff like show notes on the coffee. So ah without further ado, let's get into this fun movie. 00:08:49.94 Case (he/him) Yeah. 00:08:51.24 Jala & Dave Yay. So talking about our histories with the movie, I want to kick to Dave first. Dave, what is your history with the Johnny Mnemonic movie? Or ah we we can also talk about the short story from William Gibson or whatever. 00:09:11.01 Jala & Dave Okay. Yeah. So I saw the movie, not in theaters. I don't even know if it went to our local news. I saw it as it like a home rental when it came out. Um, and I don't like, I don't have super strong memories other than I, I didn't have the sort of thing where you mentioned case that. 00:09:30.54 Jala & Dave You didn't remember shots. Like I, I maybe like 5% of the movie I had kind of forgotten over time. Um, I've seen this a few times since then, of course, but it's not something I made a concerted effort to like, I'm going to watch this annually or something. Uh, maybe every, I don't know, 10 years, I'll, I'll take a look at it. And I, um, I was interested in watching the, um, the black and white version that was released into the 2021. 00:09:59.77 Jala & Dave I didn't get around to that, unfortunately, but um this was as good as a time as any to revisit it. 00:10:08.63 Jala & Dave Right, in case. So you said that you didn't remember a ding-dang thing, most more or less. 00:10:12.87 Case (he/him) Well, i don not a ding-dang thing, ah more of a ah gosh darn small amount of it. and So frankly, um I am positive that I have seen the trailer a lot. 00:10:26.81 Case (he/him) It's like one of those trailers that was at the start of some VHS tape that I loved when I was like high school age. 00:10:32.93 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 00:10:33.05 Case (he/him) um and I don't remember which, but I know I've seen that trailer a lot of times because it was like in the era before DVDs when when it was like, OK, well, you can either fast forward through it, but it's like like fast forwarding on a VHS was kind of a pain in the ass. 00:10:46.55 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 00:10:47.12 Case (he/him) So like you could fast forward it or you could just watch the trailer. And so like I I definitely watched this trailer a bunch and and I'm into thinking that I may have only watched the movie once and been distracted when I watched it at some point in high school because I remember all the shots from the trailer. 00:11:03.52 Case (he/him) And I like I said, I I would have told you, yeah, I've seen this movie ah like if you'd ask. 00:11:08.27 Jala & Dave Mm-hmm. 00:11:09.35 Case (he/him) But the only things I remember were the things that were in the trailer is until I did this rewatch um out. 00:11:15.24 Jala & Dave Right. 00:11:15.91 Case (he/him) not Not that I was spoiled on anything. Again, I have listened to many people discuss this movie because it's a fascinatingly weird movie that that people want to talk about because like I'm having a hard time not just dropping like, these are funny weird things that are in the movie, right? 00:11:31.95 Jala & Dave Right. I know. I know. We will we will definitely get there for real though. So as for me, um I never watched it at the time. 00:11:36.86 Case (he/him) Yeah. 00:11:39.40 Jala & Dave I remember I saw the trailers for it and I was like this CG ah where they show him and they show him like all all like elongated and warped and like looks like a tube man. 00:11:50.07 Jala & Dave I was like, this looks like crap. I don't want to watch this movie. And like that was my attitude at the time, especially since at that time um when i was I was a young person. So 95, what was that? 00:12:01.22 Jala & Dave That was like the end of middle school for me. So at that time, I really deeply identified with I am a fantasy girl. I like D and&D and I like fantasy stories don't give me no space operas, even though I watched Star Trek and things like that but like I didn't, I didn't like Star Wars and I was very selective about the types of sci fi that I liked and I was like I don't know about the cyberpunk business so I didn't want to get into that. 00:12:11.64 Case (he/him) Mm hmm. 00:12:23.85 Case (he/him) Mm. 00:12:26.32 Jala & Dave And I didn't like the CG. It looks stupid to me. So I didn't ah watch the movie until I want to say maybe 15 years ago. But then when I watched it, I'm like, this is very fun. This is weird. This is pretty notable because it feels like. 00:12:41.64 Jala & Dave um it's It's not the genesis of a lot of things to come, but it feels like it's kind of like one of the first things that um I was aware of that came out that was like really in the public spotlight for some you know to some degree because Sony backed this and Sony put it out in theaters and tried to turn it into a blockbuster. 00:13:03.16 Jala & Dave You know where it it kind of covers some of these topics and then like you end up with Keanu Reeves playing a lot of characters that are very much like Johnny mnemonic and like a lot of other things like that like where these these themes and these ideas just kind of roll forward into a lot of stuff that came after it. 00:13:22.42 Jala & Dave So it's it's real kind of weird, especially when I looked it up and I was like, wow, this film reviewed so poorly apparently on the internet where it's like 20% on Rotten Tomatoes and 5.6 out of 10 stars on IMDB. 00:13:33.20 Case (he/him) Yeah. 00:13:36.82 Jala & Dave And I'm like, wow, people really don't like this movie. It's it's interesting because most of the people that I know, if I mentioned the movie and they have seen it, they're like, oh yeah, like that's a cult classic. like Everybody's like, 00:13:47.73 Jala & Dave No, that's a pretty good movie. I mean, it's not a magnum opus or anything like that, let's say, but you know it is a fun time. 00:13:58.57 Case (he/him) Yeah, it's surprising that it rates so poorly, although I understand, I guess, from the perspective of like, if you're trying to come from it purely from a quality standpoint, as opposed to a fun standpoint, like there's there's certainly ah a lot of questionable choices in this movie. 00:14:17.19 Case (he/him) Again, like it's a movie that was like, like handmade for another pass, like 00:14:17.29 Jala & Dave this 00:14:21.27 Case (he/him) But like you could certainly imagine tons of things being done to to make it a ah tighter, more interesting movie. 00:14:21.25 Jala & Dave mm hmm. 00:14:26.76 Case (he/him) And it was also kind of, you know, du jour at the time to hate on Keanu Reeves, like and Keanu Reeves led movie where he's a fairly stoic character who has no like no memory of his past is definitely going to be, you know. 00:14:31.99 Jala & Dave yeah. 00:14:44.39 Case (he/him) Just the kind of thing that that's going to play to all the things that people point to with Keanu Reeves, or they did in the 90s back when everyone kind of hated him, um of like, he's so wooden, he's so stoic, he you know he doesn't like emote when it's the character. 00:14:57.56 Case (he/him) And it's the the it's the movie that, like he's doing a lot with it, but you know it's just, he was kind of typecast at this time, and that was sort of what he was, but this is the part he was playing. 00:14:58.56 Jala & Dave Great. 00:15:09.48 Jala & Dave Right. And what's funny is that um I was telling Dave, I was like, look at his face. but If you notice, when you watch Keanu Reeves in this movie, his eyes almost never move. they don't He doesn't do much with his eyes at this time in his acting. 00:15:23.42 Jala & Dave It's all his mouth and his voice, what he's doing with his voice. 00:15:26.80 Case (he/him) Mm hmm. 00:15:26.91 Jala & Dave And you know there there are some some body language things, but in this particular movie, not as many, because again, this character is meant to be kind of robotic. And Keanu Reeves had said that this was actually really taking a toll on him to make this movie because he had to be so straight laced in this way. So um that's why when you get to the wonderful fun scene, ah the room service rant, which we will get to, and that's going to be our our little spoiler wall, by the way, that's going to be the audio for that. 00:15:57.55 Jala & Dave um He really lets loose. And if you want to talk about like, oh, he doesn't act. OK, go look at that scene and come back to me and tell me again. 00:16:06.98 Case (he/him) Right, but this is also the 90s, and the idea of camp in the 90s felt so anathema to everyone. 00:16:08.50 Jala & Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:16:12.39 Case (he/him) like And that um yeah like that speech is so over the top and performative in a way that, like again, just was not the not the style of the time. 00:16:23.47 Jala & Dave Yeah, go ahead. 00:16:29.14 Jala & Dave I didn't have any of it. That's why you were leaning forward. No, I was just leaning into the window. um Edit for me. No, it's fine. Just throw a thing in there. I'll come up with something. 00:16:44.83 Jala & Dave Yeah. So he leading up to this, a lot of his roles were that thing. And part of that's his agents. And part of that was him. I mean, he picked things that he liked the script or he, like this looks like a fun movie. 00:17:00.89 Jala & Dave When you look at probably what the original script was versus what happened, just because this thing, uh, if you want to talk about like having, it's not even needing a second pass. It's it's like not preventing the producers and everyone from sticking their hands in this. 00:17:18.62 Jala & Dave was what would have made it the the original movie. this is like This is a highly compromised version of the director and what he was trying to even do. And he was working alongside William Gibson and doing the script. so Like they knew, they had a vision that they wanted to do. This isn't it. This is Sony and everyone else jumping in and going, we have to cash in on the internet and ah we got to get there before virtuosity. Cause you know, that has Denzel and it's going to be way better than this. 00:17:52.02 Jala & Dave Oh, man. Well, um on that note, I suppose we should probably give a few facts about this movie for folks listening just in case they have no idea what this is and are listening to it to find out. um This is a 1995 cyberpunk action film directed by Robert Longo. The screenplay was written by William Gibson and ah This is also the author of the 1981 short story upon which this movie is based. 00:18:18.75 Jala & Dave So ah this film also draws heavily on the his later novel, Virtual Light. I have not read that. Have anybody else read that book? 00:18:27.86 Case (he/him) Nope. 00:18:28.56 Jala & Dave OK, OK, so we have no context for what it references in Virtual Light, but some In either case, ah this was distributed by TriStar. It was backed by Sony. And we will get into a little bit more on the production a little bit later. But this is ah ah this is um the length that movies were in the 90s. That is to say about an hour and a half. So I miss those times because it feels like the only thing that's that length anymore are like horror movies. ah You don't really get a lot of other types of movies that are are that tight anymore, it feels like. 00:19:04.86 Jala & Dave So, um but yeah, like it it reviewed pretty poorly, which is kind of wild. But again, like when people have been coming back to this movie later on, then they've been a lot kinder to it in general. So ah in terms of legacy, though, the. 00:19:20.49 Jala & Dave um Johnny Memmonic was basically a template for ah describing The Matrix to investors and the 2011 video game Deus Ex Human Revolution was influenced by this movie. 00:19:32.83 Jala & Dave And ah the props from the film were transformed into sculptures by artist Dora Boudoir for her 2015 solo exhibition Spring. Of course, there's also Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077, who is played by Keanu Reeves as well. 00:19:47.66 Case (he/him) Wait, wait, wait, we can't just gloss over this whole 2015 solo art but exhibition. 00:19:48.76 Jala & Dave no 00:19:52.50 Case (he/him) Do you have any information about like why, ah oh, god damn it, 20 years later, this happened? 00:19:58.18 Jala & Dave No, i did know but so I have no idea. 00:20:00.15 Case (he/him) Or it's like, oh, the prop. And I'm assuming that it had props from other movies as well, if like, because that would be a ah really strange scenario. 00:20:06.10 Jala & Dave no idea. Let's don't know. Yeah. Magic of editing. Oh, we can find out and then we'll, we'll magically have learned when it pops back on. 00:20:22.29 Jala & Dave Yeah. Okay. Um, all right. I don't. OK, hold on. i'll I'll send you a link in a second here. 00:20:39.58 Jala & Dave I don't even see how this is related to much of anything. There you go. Here's a ah link for your case. 00:20:46.17 Case (he/him) Yep. 00:20:48.80 Jala & Dave So this artist exhibition is a bunch of little, I guess it's um that's not even it's circuit boards, like husks of things that were from the movie that have little, I guess they're supposed to be nerves or synapses or I don't know, something connecting them. 00:21:09.86 Jala & Dave And they're just kind of in in a gallery together with pipes. 00:21:11.89 Case (he/him) Oh, wait, I'm guessing that this is something like was there a macro where you could see the chip implant in Johnny? Because like this kind of looks like that. 00:21:20.40 Jala & Dave Hmm. 00:21:21.58 Case (he/him) And I'm like, oh, maybe that. 00:21:25.22 Jala & Dave I don't know. 00:21:26.45 Case (he/him) Oh, it's it's very interesting. um that 00:21:28.79 Jala & Dave Yeah. That's what that looks like. But there's like a spigot. There's a lot going on. 00:21:32.44 Case (he/him) Yeah, there's there's a lot going on in this for the all the all the people who can see this audio medium. 00:21:36.75 Jala & Dave Yeah. 00:21:36.97 Case (he/him) um 00:21:37.39 Jala & Dave I'll put the link in the show notes for folks. 00:21:40.41 Case (he/him) Yeah, ah so listeners, if you're at all curious the way I was when the the phrase, but the props were transformed into sculptures and the in a solo art exhibition, um check this out because it it is weird and interesting and strangely more actually related to Johnny Mnemonic than I thought. 00:21:41.60 Jala & Dave Oh. 00:21:58.28 Jala & Dave Yeah, I don't know. It's something. ah So, yeah, um the main cast in this film, you've got Johnny Mnemonic played by Keanu Reeves. There's ah Jane played by Dina Meyer. There is Ralphie played by Udo Kier. J-Bone by Ice-T. Takahashi by Takeshi Kitano, who plays apparently all kinds of Yakuza and all kinds of movies in To This Day, Dave. Yes, he's he's still out there making his movies. He may have retired now, but he's 00:22:31.23 Jala & Dave He's still, I think they restarted Takeshi's castle, which is like the obstacle course that he was like a judge of. It's, it's bonkers. And now he's a giant computerized floating head. So look that up. 00:22:44.70 Jala & Dave Well, that just is really related to Johnny Mnemonic as well for that and giant floating head, digital floating head. That's also a thing we see in this movie. ah Dennis Akiyama is Shinji and Dolph Lundgren is the street preacher. 00:22:59.61 Jala & Dave that 00:22:59.72 Case (he/him) Hey, according to the movie, this should be the second person on your list. 00:23:04.69 Jala & Dave Yeah, right. Well, Dolph Lundgren, his part was written in, they didn't originally have that character and it was written in just for him because the um Sony like forced them to put Dolph Lundgren in it just so they had like this big action actor in the movie somewhere. 00:23:10.81 Case (he/him) I know. 00:23:23.21 Jala & Dave so 00:23:24.15 Case (he/him) Yeah, it's just wild because they also forced him to be second build, which like he it even in a scenario where you're like, oh, well they force this character to be inserted in like he is like a minor character in this movie. 00:23:26.89 Jala & Dave Yeah. 00:23:33.97 Case (he/him) Like the second billing status for him is insane. 00:23:34.10 Jala & Dave and 00:23:36.77 Jala & Dave Yeah, it is. 00:23:37.52 Case (he/him) It should be the end like like and Dolph Lundgren at the end. 00:23:41.13 Jala & Dave Yeah, exactly. 00:23:41.88 Case (he/him) But but for some reason, they did it that way. 00:23:42.67 Jala & Dave For real. 00:23:46.03 Jala & Dave Right. Well, yeah you know, you you you leave them on guest starring until season three and then they become part of the regular cast. Right, right. so 00:23:54.33 Case (he/him) a friend of. 00:23:55.44 Jala & Dave yeah Yeah, pretty much. So Dave, how about you kick us off with the spoiler free summary of this because ah we will talk about the summary. We will talk about the film in the short story, some production tidbits and things and about the releases. And then we will get into the movie proper where we will have our spoiler wall. 00:24:16.82 Jala & Dave Alright, well, I will just read this verbatim, but I will probably tack on some things. In 2021, we face a dystopian future wracked by a tech induced plague, a wash with conspiracies and dominated by mega corporations and organized crime. 00:24:32.16 Jala & Dave Keanu Reeves plays Johnny, a data courier with an overloaded brain implant designed to securely store confidential information. Takeshi Kitano portrays a Yakuza affiliated with a megacorporation attempting to suppress the data. He hires a psychopath assassin, played by Dolph Lundgren, to do so. Ice-T and Dina Meyer co-star as Johnny's allies, a freedom fighter and a bodyguard, respectively. I didn't have anything else to add on that, actually. That was that was pretty good. 00:25:00.45 Jala & Dave Like I'm waiting for the additions and there's no additions. Like got my hopes all worked up. Wow. Wow. Do you have anything to add Case? 00:25:10.10 Case (he/him) I mean, if I was editing editing the Wikipedia page, I would put, we face a dystopian future, parentheses now the past. 00:25:16.15 Jala & Dave Right, right. I'm just like, I'm sitting here and like, nobody could see me except for y'all. But you know, the people recording with me at this moment, but I'm sitting here like with my little head bobbling around, you know, when he's reading that I'm like 2021 mega corporations virus. 00:25:26.27 Case (he/him) Mm hmm. 00:25:30.85 Jala & Dave Okay, yeah. 00:25:32.16 Case (he/him) Yeah, yeah, we should mention this movie is remarkably prescient. 00:25:35.68 Jala & Dave Yeah, it it actually is. So so yeah, and um as mentioned, it was based on a short story by William Gibson. Dave's got something to say though. 00:25:46.35 Jala & Dave Oh, it's prescient in the way that things start to become like a retro future because there's a lot of stuff in here that they had to assume would be still be extant in 2021 and are definitely not, but that's okay. 00:25:57.12 Case (he/him) Mm hmm. 00:26:00.82 Jala & Dave Oh my God, the corded phones and the pay phones, the pay phones, man, those took me back. 00:26:07.17 Case (he/him) Yeah, fax machines. 00:26:07.42 Jala & Dave you know And the fax machines, the fax machines just sent me into space. I need a computer, log me in. 00:26:17.41 Jala & Dave the 00:26:20.18 Jala & Dave Oh my gosh, yes. But then also, like I have to say the little VR helmets look pretty close to a VR helmet, but 00:26:26.13 Case (he/him) The VR helmets that are called iPhones. 00:26:28.11 Jala & Dave i doubt that are called iphones but they're thompson iphones they're not 00:26:31.02 Case (he/him) Right. 00:26:31.47 Jala & Dave yeah so but either way yeah they're iphones 00:26:34.77 Case (he/him) Well, to be fair, in 1995, Apple was not doing that great. 00:26:34.80 Jala & Dave and 00:26:38.18 Jala & Dave Right. Right. So, but yeah, there's all of that. But like, even the fact that they have basically what looks like a little, little cutting grid thing and that's where he's doing his thing. But like to get into the internet, you have to use your hands and do all this like weird puzzle stuff. Like you're solving a very large Rubik's cube. It's the silliest stuff. Oh my goodness. Thompson iPhones. 00:26:58.56 Jala & Dave But we we will we will talk more about that when we get into the actual um film itself. In the meantime, so um the film versus the short story case, do you want to tell us a little bit about that? 00:27:11.93 Case (he/him) Sure, again, reading fairly verbatim from the notes. ah the filmif who The film significantly deviates from the short stories, such as turning Johnny, not his bodyguard, into the the primary action figure. 00:27:14.53 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. Try again. 00:27:24.43 Case (he/him) Molly Millions is replaced with Jane, as the film rights to Molly had been sold. Gibson did not want Molly in the film, though, and thought it would be best to reserve her for a different franchise. Nerve attention. 00:27:34.31 Jala & Dave which never happened 00:27:35.60 Case (he/him) Yeah, this feels very red Sonia right there. 00:27:36.57 Jala & Dave yeah 00:27:38.45 Case (he/him) um 00:27:38.53 Jala & Dave hey 00:27:39.80 Case (he/him) nerve attenuation syndrome, NAS, is a fictional disease that is not present in the short story. NAS, also called the black shakes, is caused by an overexposure to electromagnetic radiation from the omnipresent technological devices and is presented as a raging epidemic. 00:27:54.44 Case (he/him) And honestly, again, kind of prescient for the way that people are. 00:27:56.43 Jala & Dave which never happened. 00:27:57.88 Case (he/him) i It's a little bit subtler in the way that we're all having neurological issues because we are so overstimulated all the time. 00:28:02.01 Jala & Dave Yeah. Right. 00:28:05.55 Case (he/him) But, yeah yeah you know, it's fairly surprisingly accurate there. 00:28:09.77 Jala & Dave Well, not only that, but there's also, um for the woo-woo people, to to use the woo-woo term, um the woo-woo people have stuff that are like EMF grounding. 00:28:10.18 Case (he/him) ah 00:28:19.52 Jala & Dave like yeah Have you even seen like the EMF grounding sheets? I saw this on Instagram. 00:28:22.95 Case (he/him) Oh, yeah, no, I have. And I've seen stuff where it's like, don't put your plans near your Wi-Fi router because they'll die. and like 00:28:27.81 Jala & Dave all different kinds of stuff like that. 00:28:27.85 Case (he/him) yeah 00:28:29.33 Jala & Dave And so like, there's a lot of woo woo science, quote unquote, science out there about that. um 00:28:35.74 Case (he/him) and And I need to be very clear that I'm not coming down saying like anyone who's afraid of the vast amount of radiation that is around us is is crazy because I think that those are completely rational fears. 00:28:42.58 Jala & Dave who 00:28:47.29 Jala & Dave Right. 00:28:49.32 Case (he/him) Just that like. where the science falls on this one, I'm not entirely sure and I'm not really commenting on that one, ah but no one is getting like a, there isn't an outbreak of a pandemic that is because of the technology. 00:28:53.58 Jala & Dave Right. right 00:29:01.26 Case (he/him) ah that that it's It's just to a lesser tier is is what I'm getting at. 00:29:01.28 Jala & Dave Right. 00:29:06.03 Jala & Dave Right, right, exactly. And, you know, like part of part of that, I don't even know how much that's even being studied, you know, like as a thing. So, um but yeah, anyway, moving on. 00:29:15.94 Case (he/him) Anyway, Lungren's Street Preacher was added to accommodate the actor, as mentioned in our conversation already. 00:29:16.52 Jala & Dave So. 00:29:22.35 Case (he/him) ah References to Jones the Dolphin's heroine addiction was cut from the movie. Probably a good choice there. 00:29:27.84 Jala & Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. So ah we will talk and sit with the the street preacher a little bit more later. But one of the things is, some so one of the things that I took away from it when we were watching the movie together was, you know, the street preacher character would have been a lot better if they had actually used the implants and the technology as like, you know, the the sub in for God, like God is in the technology or this is how I find God is through the technology. 00:29:55.64 Case (he/him) Literally the deus ex machina 00:29:55.76 Jala & Dave But instead, Right. Right. And except like that's not what they do. Instead, he's just talking Jesus and it's Jesus time, which, okay, a great line. but like you know And then he just coincidentally happens to have some implants and stuff. so And he just um takes hit man jobs so that he can he can fund having more implants, which Okay, but like, you know, and and part of the reason for that is, again, production company stuff, they were worried about upsetting religious, you know, communities and stuff like that with this big blockbuster film they were trying to make. So they didn't want to go there, I guess. 00:30:32.90 Jala & Dave um 00:30:33.08 Case (he/him) that's so weird considering that that's the character that shoehorned into this movie 00:30:36.66 Jala & Dave I know, I know. 00:30:36.78 Case (he/him) like 00:30:38.08 Jala & Dave So 00:30:41.59 Jala & Dave Yeah. And it's like, yeah if you're going to take someone and like, we have this techno priest and say, and you have characters doing the world building of like, of making this guy seem far, I mean, he's tough on, it's a large man. 00:30:56.03 Jala & Dave He's already kind of scary. But if everyone in the movies reacting, like don't mess with this dude, you don't want a piece of that. 00:30:59.79 Case (he/him) That's so weird considering that that's the character that is shoehorned into this movie. 00:31:04.19 Jala & Dave And He got hit with the truck and just kept getting up. You don't have any other overt like signs of him having these augments really. Although a lot of the characters are saying he's the most augmented guy we know. 00:31:18.00 Case (he/him) Yeah, he should really look posthuman. 00:31:19.98 Jala & Dave Yeah. And he had some nodes on him that you only saw when he was kind of like later in the the culmination of the movie. 00:31:26.53 Case (he/him) Yeah, he should be full on like Darth Vader combined with like one of those like women who'd like to do too much like body surgery to look like Barbie. 00:31:36.27 Jala & Dave right Uh, yeah, they, they could have done some more with that. if They just threw a robe on him and like, okay, go ahead, do, do your stuff. And he just got to like chew scenery for a little while, but I, yeah, I really feel like they, if that that's one area where they really missed the mark, if they wanted this to sell and they're like, Oh, it's this augmented guy, show that show us that thing like that, that was on rewatch. 00:31:56.61 Case (he/him) Yeah. 00:31:59.62 Jala & Dave I'm like, Oh, I wish when his robes got torn and he could just gave him a little terminator body, something, you know, 00:32:04.52 Case (he/him) Yeah, yeah, exactly. Show, don't tell. They tell us he's cyberpunk. They don't show us he's cyberpunk. 00:32:09.00 Jala & Dave Yeah. There was no, there was very little, there's some punk in this movie. There's very little cyber. Right. Right. And that's kind of the funniest thing about it for me is that, you know, like I look at this movie and then I look at stuff like, Oh, I don't know. Just like the shadow run video game and things like that. And I'm like, shadow run is much more cyber punky than whatever this is doing right now. 00:32:30.74 Jala & Dave Yeah, if for for the era, if you wanted to look at something cyberpunk or a director that's really just was able to put his vision out there, any of the Albert Pion films, so that's like cyborg um nemesis though, that series, that will give you what I thought this should have done. ah Those just have a lot more like explosions, but that's not always a bad thing. 00:32:56.15 Jala & Dave Right. So here's this kind of like segues into talking about production stuff a little bit. So um William Gibson, the writer and Robert Longo, who wasn't an artist originally, who just started dabbling in doing a little bit of directing for like a couple of TV episodes and doing some filmmaking, like art film type stuff. 00:33:19.59 Jala & Dave ah They got together and they decided they wanted to make an art film based on the short story from William Gibson that he wrote in 1981. Well, they tried to get funding and they tried to get funding and then like they got funded and then the company was bought out by a bigger company and then the project got shelved so the rights were sold back to them again. And then they couldn't find anybody else to do the thing. And so they eventually had to like remarket the whole thing and then ended up having to ask for more money because a lot of studios didn't want to put in 1.5 million. You know, they were looking for a blockbuster. And so eventually Sony decided that they would green line it, but only because, you know, they were going to turn it into this big blockbuster film and they forced a bunch of like 00:34:07.09 Jala & Dave Cast changes and things like that and added stuff in and then they basically um Just to kind of summarize some of the stuff that happened ended up taking the film away from Robert Longo ah The director and then he didn't even have anything to do with the final cutting and editing of this movie so like he left and Like the production staff or whatever, they decided that they were going to do the cut. 00:34:32.59 Jala & Dave So the movie that we have is the cut that the studio made because they were trying to turn it into some kind of summer action movie. And um so this is. 00:34:40.97 Case (he/him) You know, this is wildly similar to the late 90s Island of Dr. Moreau movie, where the original director had a vision, was shoot shot a bunch of stuff, was kicked off. 00:34:46.68 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 00:34:52.55 Case (he/him) Now, in this case, that director kind of went insane and then like snuck back on set, disguised as an ape, or pardon me, disguised, I think, as a pig man. um But either way, and in in animal human makeup, ah in order to like spy on the movie that he had been fired from. 00:35:06.69 Jala & Dave Yeah. And if you want to play the Kevin Bacon game, that one stars Val Kilmer and this was supposed to star Val Kilmer. 00:35:12.26 Case (he/him) There we go. 00:35:13.04 Jala & Dave Yep. Yep. And I mean, Val Kilmer could have done it, but it's, it's kind of wild trying to think of anybody else doing it because like Keanu Reeves has played characters like this character, uh, in other films. 00:35:26.59 Jala & Dave And so, you know, um, he's just kind of like, uh, feels like they're the best fit for me personally. 00:35:33.28 Case (he/him) Yeah, although now i I've never really thought about it before. But yeah, actually, Val Kilmer and Canada Reeves are kind of going for the same kind of slightly smarmy. Straight man type a lot of times, and now I'm kind of seeing like, oh, yeah, they actually would be like really good, like like any movie swap out and I'm like, oh, like I could kind of see that actually. 00:35:46.73 Jala & Dave mhm. 00:35:55.17 Jala & Dave mhm, mhm. So um sony when Sony did decide to do this movie, part of the reason they pulled the trigger on it is because of the dot-com internet craze in the early 90s. 00:36:07.79 Jala & Dave So ah the dot-coms and the internet turned into a thing. AOL was a thing. And suddenly, with the tech boom that was happening, which um we do talk about quite a bit in the internet and identity episode of this podcast, I will put it in the show notes for folks. 00:36:22.68 Jala & Dave Anyway, so during that phase, um that's when they decided 00:36:25.78 Case (he/him) Someone call it a bubble, by the way. 00:36:27.47 Jala & Dave Yeah, indeed. So um yeah, like between that and then the fact that Keanu recently did speed and had a pretty good success with doing that movie, ah they decided to retool this low budget adaptation into what it turned into. So Yeah, um kind of interesting. 00:36:45.92 Jala & Dave But they ended up, part of the reason why they decided to cast Keanu Reeves is actually because he's Canadian and they shot this in Canada. And then his involvement meant that they could get some like discounts and like so you know stipends and whatever. 00:36:59.89 Jala & Dave So it was, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:37:00.29 Case (he/him) Oh, so this is technically CanCon. 00:37:03.81 Jala & Dave So that's that's what happened there. So yeah, um, but yeah, Robert Longo, uh, he has said that the that like, so, so in this movie, and we'll get into it a little bit more, there are some deleted scenes that were released in a Japanese version of the film. 00:37:20.71 Jala & Dave I cannot find it on the internet to save my soul. Um, I tried, I found it in Russian, didn't help us much. 00:37:28.11 Case (he/him) right 00:37:28.15 Jala & Dave Um, so yeah. 00:37:28.88 Case (he/him) yeah i tried to watch it in the russian and i was like no i can't do this this 00:37:31.54 Jala & Dave yeah yeah so there's like eight extra minutes and it's mostly stuff involving the yakuza assassin shinji and um i don't know any more than that about it but those additional eight minutes the only place you can find it there's like a collector's edition that's overseas it's um I think it's ah what, a UK release or something? 00:37:51.62 Jala & Dave Yeah, it's a UK release ah that has a bunch of extra documentaries and this, that, and the other, and it's a Blu-ray. 00:37:54.00 Case (he/him) Yeah, I tried to watch it in the Russian and I was like, no, I can't do this. 00:37:58.03 Jala & Dave I don't have an international Blu-ray player to be able to watch it, so I could not get a hold of it because that would have been prohibitively expensive for me to buy a new Blu-ray player to do that and or whatever, and then that or the time tax of trying to figure out how to get it to work on my something or another. 00:38:14.90 Jala & Dave So um didn't end up getting that, but they there that version is available in UK release. um There's also the 2021 release that was black and white and that was for, what was it? the ah That was the 25th anniversary edition that Robert Longo himself decided that he was going to recut the film in black and white because that's one of the things he originally wanted to do was to have the entire film black and white. So he did it himself. He took the film 00:38:48.42 Jala & Dave And he did it himself. And then he'd like, one of his friends said, Hey, how about you approach Sony about an official release? And then it was officially released as a 25th anniversary edition in 2021. 00:39:01.92 Jala & Dave So, um, yeah. 00:39:03.41 Case (he/him) That's very cool. I'm surprised that it's totally black and white. Like you would think that he would do like black and white real world in like in color, like cyber, you know, what does the World Wide Web Internet? 00:39:16.22 Jala & Dave Right. Right, right. I don't know, but right. 00:39:18.76 Case (he/him) Cyber space, that's that's the cyberpunk term I was looking for. 00:39:22.65 Jala & Dave Well, um and then too, the black and white version was taken to Tribeca and Rockaway Film Festivals in 2021 when it dropped and the ticket sold out. So a lot of people were really interested in seeing this. So um although those things exist at the same time, 00:39:39.59 Jala & Dave Robert Longo says there is no director's cut version of this film because his version of the film was going to be some completely different animal than what we ended up getting because of all the constant things that were forced on them, the script rewrites and things like that that were done throughout the entire process. So, um you know, unfortunately, and the you know, you're we're never going to get that director's cut version. 00:40:06.47 Jala & Dave And also apparently we're never going to get the cut or the the the version that had, um, the street preacher delivering a lengthy monologue. But naked about transhumanism. right And that was, that was cut out. And that was what Lundgren had intended to use or the role really, um, as his vehicle to get like more acting roles and not just like action roles. 00:40:32.35 Case (he/him) That is wild. 00:40:34.23 Jala & Dave Yeah, so ah we didn't get butt naked Dolph Langer and have it a monologue either. So yeah, thank you for adding that in there. That is correct. That's in my notes too. I just missed that part. so 00:40:44.74 Case (he/him) And you see, that would be the perfect spot for like a wildly transhuman version of Dolph Lundgren to be shown off, like just show off all all of the robot parts. 00:40:48.74 Jala & Dave Right. 00:40:52.50 Jala & Dave Yeah, exactly. But um simultaneous with the release of the film, there was a CD-ROM game for Mac, DOS, and Windows. And boy, is that a nightmare. Dave literally just fell over and put his head in his hand. So how about you narrate and tell people about that wonderful thing that exists? 00:41:12.71 Jala & Dave Yeah, it looked like something. I don't know if it was, it looked like a Phillips CDI game. It was bad. So it's a re scripting of the film. It's like, I guess it's it's verbatim of the script actually. It's a re adaptation, but it looks like a fan adaptation that you'd maybe find on YouTube. 00:41:34.79 Jala & Dave ah with no budget and a lot of green screen and the gameplay apparently consists of, I almost said Neo, of Johnny just walking confusedly through the the internet and it's just like a jungle or a desert and he's just walking and he looks left and right and then he looks puzzledly like at the viewer or the player and he his body is just TV static. it's Really weird because that section went on for I think like 15 minutes ah because we were just skimming like a long play of it and then there's a fight scene there's a fight scene and terrible It's really it's really bad and everyone's I Don't know that they look like anyone wants to be there Also, and yeah, it's just it's a lot. um It's worth it to watch the few segments with um 00:42:33.57 Jala & Dave It's not specs. What's his name? Spider. Spider. 00:42:36.16 Case (he/him) Spider. 00:42:36.80 Jala & Dave I don't know what specs. Well, he's, these specs in this. the biggest It's the largest glasses on a little man and he's not very angry. So it's him delivering the spiders monologue. It's just like, it's not inspiring me to do much of anything other than turn this thing off. 00:42:56.13 Jala & Dave Right. It is pretty wild looking. And I mean, like, that's what passed for video games sometimes back then, especially if they were like, you know, shovelware on the the PC or whatever. 00:43:07.52 Jala & Dave I remember playing several other games that were kind of like that. But yeah, like FMV junk, FMV junk with like total recasting with nobody, actors that nobody knows, um you know, that don't really look like the characters are supposed to be portraying at all. 00:43:14.24 Case (he/him) yeah 00:43:23.06 Jala & Dave And they're not even trying. And the action scenes are just like, it it feels like the equivalent of somebody with their cell phone trying to do an action scene, but they don't know anything about cinematography um is is what it feels like. 00:43:36.24 Case (he/him) Yep. That's a shame. It could have been more like the ah the Lawn Mower Man ah video game adaptation, which was a side-scrolling action game and then had like 3D flying segments where you were inside cyberspace. 00:43:49.54 Jala & Dave Right, right. 00:43:49.63 Case (he/him) like 00:43:51.71 Jala & Dave For a property that had $30 million dollars thrown at it, and then they just get like this kind of garbage, it's, it's mind boggling other than knowing that it did not make its return back at all immediately and just flopped in the theater. So. 00:44:06.37 Jala & Dave Yeah, there was this game. There was also a Johnny Mnemonic pinball cabinet, which I imagine the pinball cabinet was fine. ah And then there was also a novelization. And I read a bit of the novelization. I didn't get real far into it, admittedly, because like when you open the book, the the front cover of it gives praise for William Gibson, the author of the original short story upon which the movie was based. 00:44:34.89 Jala & Dave upon which the novelization was based. So it's like the original thing that this is two times derived from was great, you know? 00:44:45.74 Case (he/him) wait but if gibson wrote the screenplay also like this is sort of making me be like well why didn't he just write 00:44:45.76 Jala & Dave And it's like, okay. 00:44:48.92 Jala & Dave Yeah. 00:44:51.46 Jala & Dave I know he should have just written the novelization, but he they had somebody else do it. 00:44:52.01 Case (he/him) oh 00:44:56.03 Jala & Dave And um yeah, like I posted some little shots of it with some circles and stuff of like pages and my little commentary um on Blue Sky and I think maybe also Twitter. 00:45:08.82 Jala & Dave Well, it sounds like um Gibson and Longo are like old time buddies. 00:45:13.03 Case (he/him) Wait, but if Gibson wrote the screenplay also, like, this is sort of making me be like, well, why didn't he just write the- 00:45:13.08 Jala & Dave And when Longo bounced while, I mean, Gibson probably was like, yeah, I can't be here either. If even, i you know, I don't know that he was assisting on set. I think he just did the script stuff. So he probably just was like, yeah, peace. 00:45:23.84 Jala & Dave Give me my money. Well, and his experiences and Robert Longo's experiences with Sony is possibly also part of the reason why we never saw anything. 00:45:33.98 Jala & Dave I don't, I don't think any any of his other work got adapted for film. Did it? No, I don't think so. I mean, he's had, he's been putting out, um, work since then. And I'm not aware of anything else being adapted. 00:45:48.31 Jala & Dave Yeah, because like he had those plans for Molly Millions, which is a recurring character in his writing, ah to be like in in a franchise or something. Because he was thinking, oh, we can do more with this. And we can do films and things. And then just nothing ever happened after this movie, ah possibly because of the experiences with Sony and the changes and the flop of the reception and all of that. Not sure. 00:46:11.02 Jala & Dave So yeah, Case, do you have any other thoughts about just like general stuff um having to do with the troubled production on this film or anything, the author? Have you read anything else by William Gibson? 00:46:24.63 Case (he/him) Uh, he did neuromancer, right? 00:46:26.57 Jala & Dave Yes. 00:46:27.20 Case (he/him) Yes. Uh, so yes. 00:46:28.77 Jala & Dave Cool. Cool. So how does this feel compared to reading the novels? 00:46:35.37 Case (he/him) I mean, this feels like a 90s kind of surfacey adaptation of it all, you know? like it's it's It's fun and popcorny and cheesy. And it's like, you know, it's sticking its toe in the genre. You know, there's cyber and there's punk, but they're never at the same time in this movie. And it. Yeah, it like like I said, it feel it feels very surface and I appreciate it because it's not like we were getting movies like that all the time. You know, like beggars can't be choosers at at certain points in history. You know, and this is the mid 90s. It's before we had The Matrix. It's before we had that sort of 00:47:14.20 Case (he/him) ah you know, semi cyberpunk revolution that happened ah with all the Matrix impersonators. 00:47:19.12 Jala & Dave Mm-hmm. 00:47:19.81 Case (he/him) So like this, this was a precursor to that kind of era. um And so it it felt like an appetizer. ah And in that regard, it doesn't need to be super sophisticated or or deep or or or any of that. 00:47:32.27 Case (he/him) It can just it can just sort of live as being like, oh, well, yeah. Well, but we got calamari for the table. Like I know we're all getting like other things, but like this is This is fried and breaded, and like it's delicious in that regard. 00:47:45.04 Jala & Dave Right, right. 00:47:46.12 Case (he/him) You know like you can you can get something more like specific to your palate, but this is probably good for everyone. um 00:47:52.94 Jala & Dave Mmhmm. 00:47:53.73 Case (he/him) And this is more like that. Now, it's weird and it's it's muddled and like, you know, you can see that it wasn't like a well-made movie ultimately ah because there's so much like, you know, impositions of things on it all. ah but But it's fun. And like the the hate for it was was not really deserved at the time. And it's, you know, it's good that it has its cult status. 00:48:13.75 Jala & Dave Right. um I wouldn't say that this is just like, oh, this is one of my favorite movies of all time. But I wanted to bring it to the show because it is a really interesting movie. And for me, it's kind of like indicative of a lot of of things that, um you know, were in the offing in the early mid 90s in the first place. 00:48:33.03 Jala & Dave um And then, of course, you know, um it is also weirdly prescient in a lot of ways. So Dave, what are your thoughts? but So, um, I sidetracked, I was like, wait, there are and adapt adaptations. Um, New Rose hotel, uh, and that had Willem Dafoe in it. That is good. Um, and there was another one, which, um, is escaping me, but it was something else in the mid nineties that it's 94, I think. So there there's been, I want to say four adaptations. Um, but three of them were off of his sci-fi. One of them was like a drama. 00:49:12.32 Jala & Dave And your thoughts about that. And my, yeah. ah Bring me back to, because I had. Tangent, it's fine. Yeah. No, I mean, I tangented, so. 00:49:26.00 Case (he/him) but let's keep casting this pod 00:49:26.09 Jala & Dave Your thoughts. Yeah. 00:49:27.96 Case (he/him) yeah 00:49:29.09 Jala & Dave Were those your then, your end thoughts about Johnny Mnemonic then? No. OK, well then. Hang on. OK, OK. So. Hang on. 00:49:41.96 Jala & Dave Yeah, so um overall with Johnny Mnemonic, I think that had it not had... um Well, really it's because people have given it a chance and kind of gone back and reframed how to view this, like looking at this and then taking into accord Gibson's like his sprawl trilogy, his other fiction and... 00:49:50.08 Case (he/him) Well, let's keep casting this pod. 00:50:10.61 Jala & Dave Lining it up with those things can make watching this like a little more palatable. um I don't think that that's necessary. I've read the sprawl trilogy and a few other ah Gibson short stories. 00:50:25.89 Jala & Dave But I hadn't read the film, the the story that this was based off of, even though that was a very short one. And I don't think it's necessary to have had done so to kind of find some something to enjoy in this movie. It's, um, 00:50:43.39 Jala & Dave It's, it's quirky. It sits in the space that like tank girl and, um, Oh, there's, there's a few other really just kind of kitschy. yeah I think the mid nineties as a whole is this is a good slice of that pie. And, uh, like you, you mentioned lawnmower man. So. 00:51:08.60 Jala & Dave if you took away the horror that's in lawnmower man and then sort of sanitized it a little bit, you sort of get this and that does this a bit of a disservice because it is a little bit boiler plate. They did cut out like there's a whole, apparently a whole speech that we didn't get and on transhumanism. And we already understand that the, the, the movie itself is taking sort of this, um, uh, 00:51:37.40 Jala & Dave anti-capitalist stance, it's it's being critical of corporations and of the power they weld and looking at society ah from more than just a surface level. So you have the entire like the tribes of the low tech and that they're able to 00:51:58.88 Jala & Dave for the most part kind of act as a vector to send this cure out, um, into the world. And so they're, they're a beacon of hope, even though they're sort of downtrodden or that they've decided to go kind of a Luddite route and, and veer away from technology. Um, because obviously in this universe, technology is harming everyone. I mean, it's, it's, it's bringing out the NAS and they sit there with spiders monologue. 00:52:29.18 Jala & Dave speaking to that specifically like the the perils of technology but the the counterpoint to that or I guess the end bit of it is even though we know all of these things are really bad we can't live without it like that's that's the the double-edged sword that we're wielding and I think that those moments are where this movie shines And it's just a bit of a shame that you have to slog through some of the set dressing, not the actual set, the designs are kind of fun, but the the bits that don't really hold together too well. um I will say that because the movie is Svelte and it it moves forward at a good clip, ah you're not sitting through two hours and going, okay, that would have made this really hard. 00:53:14.14 Jala & Dave Um, but the, the shorter treatment of this, the 90 minutes is, it's easy to sit down and watch this. Um, and it's, it's fun. It's, it's, like it's inoffensive. And I think that that's probably the most like damning praises. It's not really going to offend anybody. 00:53:29.86 Jala & Dave Yeah, I have to agree with that. And definitely, like the the movie's paced well. like You don't feel at any point like, man, this is a slog. I can't believe they're sitting here and doing this for this long or whatever. like they they don't They don't dwell on anything for too, too long. But they do have some punchy parts that did manage to make it through all of the edits that Sony placed on this. So um it does make me wonder what in the world the art film was supposed to look like. um And I looked up just what Men in Cities, which was like the last piece that Robert Longo had done ah before doing Johnny Mnemonic. And you know like it's just a bunch of people in, I guess, dance poses in in suits and stuff like that ah who are just like, I guess, businessmen and business women. And you know ah the the johnny Johnny's suit is supposed to be like a reference to that because I think it's the same suit that was used for that that art project or whatever. 00:54:28.44 Jala & Dave um But like it's hard for me to imagine like what kind of an artsy film they could have done with this because when I think artsy film, the first thing I think about is from Ghost World when Thora Burch's character is in the art classes and then the art teacher like just shows everybody this video and it's like, 00:54:46.72 Case (he/him) oh god that goddamn video 00:54:48.21 Jala & Dave Yeah, like mother, father, mirror, bing. And then it's just like her throwing doll parts into the toilet. It's just like, okay. Like, I mean, I have no idea what the the art film version of this would be. um I'm sure it wouldn't be something like that, but I have no idea what that would have looked like because um ah Robert Longo never made another movie. 00:55:12.28 Case (he/him) Oh god, that goddamn video. 00:55:12.46 Jala & Dave after this movie. This was his one and only time doing a film um because he was probably soured on it after this. So. 00:55:19.22 Case (he/him) I yeah so you shared um like the Robert Longo like website, so I like actually like quickly looked through some of his ah his stuff um and it kind of makes a few things are so are snapping into into into focus here. 00:55:24.54 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 00:55:33.84 Case (he/him) ah So one, the black and white then makes a lot of sense, like a lot of his work is black and white. 00:55:37.50 Jala & Dave yeah 00:55:37.89 Case (he/him) Two, being fed up with the bullshit of making movies ah makes a lot of sense because, for example, one that I i clicked on for reasons that are my own reasons, ah the balcony, which is a series of photos that are just women's breasts. 00:55:52.64 Case (he/him) um 00:55:53.46 Jala & Dave Mmhmm. 00:55:53.64 Case (he/him) Like it's I could understand that if his entire career is like he can just take photos or and do like cool shots of whatever he chooses. 00:56:01.26 Jala & Dave Mmhmm. 00:56:02.70 Case (he/him) um And then in here has to like put up with all of the politics of Hollywood. um It makes perfect sense that he would just be like, nope, nope, I'm so much happier just like doing cool visual stuff and in but my very specific monochromatic palettes. 00:56:17.97 Case (he/him) Like I'm going to I'm going to go do that. And it makes it makes so much more sense now. 00:56:22.26 Jala & Dave Right. Now, if this was like an art film in terms of like, OK, we're going to have very specific dramatic shots in black and white, you know, and and the very specific lighting and things like that. 00:56:35.50 Jala & Dave I mean, then that would have been an interesting film. It would have been considerably shorter than what we ended up getting as well. So I think it probably would have been a very cool project. But um yeah, unfortunately, not not what we ended up getting. 00:56:49.16 Jala & Dave But um there are 00:56:50.06 Case (he/him) Yeah, and to be clear wouldn't have been a movie like it would have been a short film but like yeah Spoiler 00:56:51.48 Jala & Dave um Yeah, it wouldn't have been it would have been a short film. It would have been a short film for sure. So, um yeah, but with all of that said, let's go ahead and dig into the actual movie that we got. 00:57:03.81 Jala & Dave The spoiler wall is now going up. I'm putting up my hand. It's a spoiler wall. 00:57:10.39 Case (he/him) wall spoiler wall 00:57:10.56 Jala & Dave I want room service. We'll get that rant. 00:57:16.32 Jala & Dave So now we're back and let us talk about the movie that we got for this. In the 21st century, information is the ultimate commodity. The most valuable of information is transported in intercranial or intracranial implants in the heads of professional mnemonic couriers such as Johnny Keanu Reeves. 00:57:37.50 Jala & Dave who offer both security and confidentiality for the right price. But Johnny has paid a heavy price of his own. He's dumped his own memories to make room for the programs he smuggles. To buy them back, he agrees to deliver priceless data, the most important data of the 21st century, data that has already set an army of professional killers on his trail. But the massive upload is too much for his brain, and Johnny must find the secret codes to download the information or die. 00:58:07.39 Jala & Dave So that's a little, um, summary. I like that summary better than I like the other summary. We read pre-spoiler wall. Oh well. Uh, so, so it goes. So yeah. 00:58:17.40 Case (he/him) Yeah, that that's a good logline right there. like Yeah. 00:58:19.78 Jala & Dave Yeah. Yeah. So, so case. Carry on. Tell us more. 00:58:27.56 Case (he/him) Intro, pre-title, second decade of 21st century. Scrolling script sets up the story, low-text versus corporations, and elite agents who smuggle data by wet-wired brain implants. A new disease, N.A.S. nerve attenuation syndrome, commonly called the Black Shakes, has infected much of the world's population. N.A.S. is fatal and no cure has been found. 00:58:52.30 Case (he/him) A man, Keanu Reeves, awakes at 10.30 a.m. Thursday, thursday thursday the of January 2021, an attractive woman dresses as he scans through the TV channels. After she leaves, he uses the TV to dial a man, Ralphie Udo-Kir. They have a video conversation. Johnny needs 1.5 million to remove the implant device and return to normal, but he has to do one more career run. 00:59:16.91 Jala & Dave Right, because he has dumped his long term memory in order to get these implants, in order to make money. And so that means he doesn't have any of his childhood. He's missing his childhood. And so when he wakes up in this hotel room, he's having like a flashback, like little snippets of of a dream where he's recalling little bits of a birthday party, it looks like. 00:59:40.60 Jala & Dave And, um you know, we don't know who the girl is. She she knows his name, but doesn't, you know, like looks like, you know, just somebody he paid to sleep with or something. And, um you know, she disappears. You never see her again. You don't ever know who she is. 00:59:55.10 Jala & Dave ah So what this intro does right here with, with Johnny and the woman is it's, it does a weird riff on like total recall. 01:00:06.56 Jala & Dave And the the lady as she's leaving, and she's excusing herself and she's like, I have to go get ice. And he's like, he looks over at the, like a wine bucket and was like, no, we have ice. 01:00:16.94 Jala & Dave And she leaves it. It feels like at that point, people would come in to kill him. Like that's what that seemed like. 01:00:22.72 Case (he/him) Mm hmm. 01:00:23.18 Jala & Dave It was a setup. It was not. So it was just kind of a weird, like. deflating moment like, okay, well, and then the movie keeps rolling. But I still was thinking, well, while you left this thread going, like, why did she just leave? 01:00:38.91 Jala & Dave Well, for me, it just kind of feels like a especially with the way that Keanu Reeves is acting or Johnny, the the character of Johnny is acting in this part, he's just he's and distant and he's not really like there there. And so like she isn't interested in hanging around with him because he's he's just a blank slate in a lot of ways. And um Not only that, but again, like to me, she appeared to be someone whom he had paid to spend the night with and therefore like when the job's over. 01:01:15.51 Jala & Dave See you. I'm out, you know. 01:01:17.02 Case (he/him) Yeah, that's kind of how I took it to that that she was a higher and so like this was just a gig for her. 01:01:18.70 Jala & Dave ah 01:01:22.41 Case (he/him) And so the second that it wasn't necessary, she was like, yep, peace. 01:01:27.16 Jala & Dave Yeah. Yeah. Just kind of show that not only does Johnny have no memories, but he also has no like close connections with people. I mean, he has to pay somebody to be close to him because he doesn't know anybody and he doesn't have relationships, like real relationships with people. 01:01:44.06 Jala & Dave you know This isn't ah a loving scenario where he wakes up and it's his wife or something. you know like This is a totally different situation. and Then as soon as she's out the door, he just immediately gets up and then calls Ralphie to talk to him about, well, I need to get this out of my head and Ralphie's like, one more job. You just got to do this one more job. 01:02:03.96 Jala & Dave you know cause some he you know They have an argument back and forth where Johnny's like, well, you said 800K would do it. No, well, the price has gone up and now it's 1.5 mil. 01:02:15.09 Jala & Dave So you need to do one job as long as it pays. So I've got one lined up for you. You've got to do this. Did you get that ah memory expansion? Yeah, yeah, I did. 01:02:25.31 Jala & Dave I got that expansion. And that's where this is setting everything up. 01:02:26.72 Case (he/him) Mm hmm. 01:02:30.50 Case (he/him) Yeah, it feels like this movie should have opened with not the opening crawl, um but him finishing admission ah to to get the money and then smash cut to him like in at the hotel, ah like with the hooker kind of scene, you know, like that would have allowed us to get this exposition out of the way 01:02:50.04 Jala & Dave Right. Without the exposition. ah Yeah. 01:02:52.00 Case (he/him) Right. And you could have even had like some cool action about like why the couriers are so like good. You know, like he's you know, you know, he could parkour his way into like like past some like Yakuza or something, you know. 01:03:02.73 Case (he/him) ah 01:03:03.96 Jala & Dave Well, for me, I think what this is really doing, this is a William Gibson moment where William Gibson is doing his thing because a lot of his writing is very like film noir style. So, um you know, he wants to have Johnny tough talking with Ralphie and talking business and, you know, like the lady leaves and and this, that and the other is kind of my feeling about it. How about you, Dave? 01:03:30.14 Jala & Dave Yeah, i I definitely think it could have done without the opening crawl. It wasn't adding anything to the movie and it was very slow. So you're, you're sitting there and getting this buildup, getting this buildup. And then it, it switches from like doing that to like, well, now it's even slower because you now he's just sitting, doing more exposition and telling us what's going on and what he's going to be doing. You could have just shown that yeah again. 01:03:56.39 Jala & Dave Yeah, i what I mean is like, to me it just feels like it's because it's an author who writes novels, who's writing the screenplay that it starts out this way because that's kind of more of the thing you would do in a novel than in a film is is really what I think I'm trying to say there. 01:04:14.15 Jala & Dave so um Yeah, in central Beijing, Johnny gets out of a cab in the midst of a riot. There are a lot of people who are very mad about NAS. You see people holding signs and they have masks on their faces and coming 01:04:27.59 Case (he/him) Again, incredibly prescient movie. 01:04:29.40 Jala & Dave I know. I mean, like coming back to this movie and watching it now ah post COVID and everything was kind of wild because you know like I forgot that they were wearing masks and all of that. And so I was like, oh yeah, this this is real familiar. um But yeah, he ends up entering a posh hotel, goes up an elevator, taking a small device from his pocket. He inserts a wired tether into a socket in his head and watches as the progress bar formats his head with a memory doubler. So he's expanding his capacity from the original 80 gigs to 160 gigs. And the device tells him you can only carry that much. Do not exceed your capacity. 01:05:11.91 Case (he/him) So this is a spot that it's it's it's wild because it's it's showing us him doing the upgrade, but it seems so weird that he did the upgrade there um that I could have used a little bit more exposition and as like a little more tell and not show at this moment like um than than what we got here, which which is a wild inverse of what just happened. 01:05:21.69 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:05:34.37 Jala & Dave I think it's like relying on you remembering that Ralphie was like, did you get the upgrade? And he's like, yeah, I got the upgrade. And then he's got the upgrade in his hand and he just has to install it in his head while he's going up the elevator. 01:05:48.70 Jala & Dave But yeah, like that shouldn't have been a thing he should be doing in the elevator going up to the suite. This is something that he should have done like ahead of time would be my imagine. 01:05:56.88 Case (he/him) Yeah, like he got out in the middle of a riot. Like, like what happened if his jacket got ripped off of him or, you know, like something happened to him, like he wouldn't have been able to do the job at all for a thing that he could have just done in the hotel room. 01:05:59.15 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:06:07.77 Jala & Dave Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like there's parts of like the not the script, but like the film missing like transitory scenes. I mean, they're they're obviously yeah they cut out a lot of stuff. um But it reads ah to me that he didn't have the money to pay for the actual like upgrades. And so this this is what he was able to do was get this like artificial doubler And that looks like a last minute and he grabs something and he's like, okay, I gotta, you know, do this before I get up to the, to the job site. 01:06:45.54 Jala & Dave And I mean, that, that's just me like speculating, but the there's a lot of points where he doesn't have money. 01:06:52.91 Case (he/him) I think that works very well. I just i just feel like that's like they we needed that text. 01:06:59.00 Jala & Dave Yeah, I mean, for sure. Like you have, I'm not to be reading into it, but that's what that seems like. Um, also because of what happens a little bit later on where they're trying to deal with money. He doesn't have any with him. It's like, he has to go through accounts and routing and all kinds of stuff. And the the procedure for the removal is so expensive and it, it jumped up so much. I think that he was just like, this was a temporary, like a stopgap measure, which that doesn't even work. We find out. 01:07:31.03 Jala & Dave Absolutely. So after he doubles his memory, he moves on and he goes to the suite and ah there are a bunch of folks in there. And as soon as he knocks on the door, everybody's like pointing guns and just pointy things at him and things like that. And this is one of the weird moments where he has like these little sarcastic one liners that every once in a while come up in this movie. 01:07:55.64 Jala & Dave And so he takes his briefcase and he holds it up on one hand and goes, pizza or whatever. And just is acting like a doof out of nowhere, which seems like real out of character for him because otherwise he's very, very professional and closeted and whatever um the rest of the time. So it seems kind of weird that he's doing this. But then again, ah maybe this is kind of a setup for some of his later outbursts in the film. 01:08:22.73 Case (he/him) Yeah, it's like a little bit of snark for the character um just to just to be that kind of like 90s like Gen X kind of like, you know. 01:08:24.99 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 01:08:33.46 Case (he/him) I don't want to say antihero, but yeah, kind of an antihero. 01:08:36.89 Jala & Dave Pretty much so um So from there, he talks to the two guys who hired him. They are not people who usually smuggle information. And so he's confused. He looks at them and he's like, you don't look like the type of people I usually work with. And he's like, you know, the the two people are like, well, 01:08:57.70 Jala & Dave We went through all the proper channels. We got you the stuff you needed. Here's the money. Here's your ticket, blah, blah, blah. We just need to get this information to Newark. So um you know they just just kind of roll with it. And um you know then he asks as he's setting up all of his stuff, Johnny, that is. So how much am I carrying? And they say 360 gigs. Well, that's way, way beyond what he's got the capacity for. 160 is what he's got capacity for, and and they've got you know but so much more ah you know that they're going to need to upload. And so rather than at that point stopping and saying, 01:09:37.78 Jala & Dave i I need to go do some stuff before we can carry on. He says, no, no, i've I've got plenty of space. More than adequate space is what he tells them. And so, you know, they go ahead and jack him in. he They have this whole show of him taking all these things out of the briefcase and all of his equipment is disguised as stuff like a lifesaver's roll and a pack of cigarettes and stuff. This is from the original ah short story as well. 01:10:04.70 Jala & Dave that everything you know looks like just a basic item. And you know for me, I'm sitting here looking at this this and going like, if this is so cyberpunk and they've got scanners that can check your blurring implants and stuff, they could tell that that's not cigarettes, but whatever. We're just going to suspend disbelief for this. 01:10:24.14 Case (he/him) Haha. 01:10:24.88 Jala & Dave so um So, yeah, they end up um doing the upload and everything, and as soon as that happens, like he's he's screaming, he's doing whatever. and Meanwhile, while this is going on, we have the Yakuza coming, and they are coming to the building, they are going to the elevator, they are coming up because they are coming after the data that he's got in his head. 01:10:46.67 Jala & Dave and So we have some scenes with the Yakuza coming through and then just like the numbers on the equipment, you know, going down while he's getting closer and closer to having uploaded everything. So Dave, tell us a little bit more from there. I've been talking for a minute. 01:11:07.07 Jala & Dave yeah So yeah, he finishes the upload. They have to do like a little coded sequence where they're taking snippets from, uh, he's, it doesn't matter what it is, but he's using the TV signal to to grab like three little image clips that they're going to use at the, the, the password and the facts that to new work, uh, the Yakuza show up, it becomes a giant brawl, a big firefight. 01:11:31.00 Jala & Dave oh But before that, I wanted to mention um when the download finishes, because Johnny is unable to hold that much information in his head, his eyes are like twitching, twitching, blinking, blinking. He's like, where's the toilet? And he goes in there and he has to have like a whole, you know, breathing, you know, control his breathing thing and dab the blood out of his nose because he just messed himself up real bad. Yeah. And he's trying to hide that from his um his employers at this moment. 01:11:59.79 Jala & Dave So they don't, they don't know that he obviously doesn't have that space and he's, he's going to be leaking, but yeah. So the, the yakuza show up pretty much kill almost everybody there aside from one of the employers. And I think one of the lady bodyguards, um, 01:12:23.74 Jala & Dave it's It's a pretty, of the action scenes in this movie, this one, it's it's ah it's a firefight. It's a bunch of guns going off in ah in a small space. um But it's it's choreographed pretty well. like i ah You could appreciate this and you get a good sense of space and you can see who's doing what you know most of the time. 01:12:44.16 Jala & Dave um and we do have the intro of our um lead crony Yakuza which is Shinji and when he makes his entrance and lets the the rest of his crew into the room all we see is like a little loop of red and then like a a hole falls out of the door and then he comes in and it it turns out he has a laser thumb which is very interested. 01:13:10.42 Jala & Dave So it's a garote made out of like um a monofilament wire that's superheated or something. Right. And you know like he's got this weird claw thumb thing going on. 01:13:23.47 Jala & Dave Like the the nail on that finger is is real wild and it's just kind of like a a metal cap on that thumb. And he just 01:13:29.82 Case (he/him) Yeah, it's like a cocaine pinky, but now it's gonna be for murder. 01:13:31.49 Jala & Dave Right? Yes, it's your cocaine murder pinky, but it's your thumb. so So yeah, and we get to see him not just slice through the door, but also slice through a statue and some people and you know like slices off. ah so So like all of this has happened while the fax is going through. And because it's a fax machine and it takes time, one of the three images for the download code gets faxed. And the other two end up getting sliced off because one of the the guys that employed Johnny grabs that the download codes out of the fax machine, tries to rip them out. And when that happens, the Shinji comes over, slices off his hand and takes the download codes away. So he's got two of the three download codes in his hand at that time. So yeah, Case, tell us more. 01:14:23.57 Case (he/him) Uh, yeah, so, uh, at the airport, a security scanner detects Johnny's implant, but it's listed as an improved dyslexia device by the federal government. The scanner also detects a potential medical problem, synaptic leakage, and issues of verbal warning. 01:14:36.96 Case (he/him) I feel like this is where, like, yes, this is just more expository bits of like, yes, your brain's exploding and we need to tell the audience that because we don't trust them. 01:14:37.02 Jala & Dave Mhm. Right. 01:14:44.84 Case (he/him) Um, but I feel like, uh, this, this just goes into this whole world of like, doesn't, shouldn't this just be super obvious? And how, how bad? is this whole problem of putting in so much more and information in there. 01:14:57.18 Case (he/him) like I needed a scene earlier in the movie that actually showed like more of the rules for for this thing, because it gets real vague for for how long he has at this point. 01:14:57.17 Jala & Dave Right. 01:15:00.22 Jala & Dave That's it. 01:15:08.84 Jala & Dave Oh, it's very, very hand wavy about like, how long does he have? 01:15:09.16 Case (he/him) ah 01:15:12.00 Jala & Dave I mean, like the, the, the. 01:15:13.29 Case (he/him) They say it's like one to two days, and it's very much like a Frieza in Dragon Ball Z, like, this planet will blow up in five minutes. 01:15:19.40 Jala & Dave Yeah, yeah, I think it's yeah, I think it says 24 hours or something like that. 01:15:21.36 Case (he/him) Six episodes later. 01:15:26.08 Jala & Dave But like I there's no concept of time in this movie. And there's not like anybody checking a watch. There's just a couple of times where Johnny's like, you know, you let me sleep and I'm i'm in a hurry or whatever. 01:15:37.44 Jala & Dave But like, I have no concept of time for this movie overall. Um, so, so yeah, but, um, they do say when the scanner goes through, it says that it's a, um, and a a neural chip that is supposed to help with dyslexia. 01:15:41.46 Case (he/him) Yeah. 01:15:52.89 Jala & Dave And that's actually a nod to Keona Reeves himself who has dyslexia. 01:15:57.46 Case (he/him) Okay. 01:15:57.68 Jala & Dave So, uh, but anyway, that's just a little, little tidbit. 01:15:59.53 Case (he/him) Nice. Yeah, I like that that it sort of reminded me of in like the comics with like Wolverine when he goes through metal detectors at airports. He has like passes that indicate that he's like has like, you know, an artificial hip and stuff like that to sort of like get away with it. 01:16:11.77 Jala & Dave All right. 01:16:14.53 Case (he/him) um Anyway, ah in in an office in Newark, Shinji greets a syndicate head Takahashi and tells the courier that Johnny has escaped ah Takahashi accepts the partial photo key and dismisses the Yakuza. 01:16:24.15 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:16:28.22 Case (he/him) In a cab, Johnny calls Ralphie. He is furious at the blown deal and demands to know what is going on. um So yeah, but this but this gets into my whole thing with Ralphie. 01:16:41.37 Case (he/him) What's his goal in this whole movie? 01:16:43.37 Jala & Dave Right, right. um especially since so So in the original story, Ralphie is a guy that um Johnny, I think, is is trying to do business with. He's not like a business partner or like a guy sending him jobs or anything like it is here. So he got retooled from the original story. 01:17:03.33 Jala & Dave um Ralphie just seems like somebody who just is in the underworld and does some stuff. I don't know. um how how he really relates to you know like all of the the overall scene though. What are your thoughts, Dave? It's super nebulous because of his particular fate. He didn't seem to he seems to be working potentially with the Yakuza. 01:17:32.35 Jala & Dave But I don't know what he's getting out of it. And I don't know why he's handing his like, he's, he's basically like the information broker for Johnny, but he, he's putting Johnny in like a trap that he knows is fatal. Like regardless of how this goes, either he has too much data or. 01:17:57.47 Jala & Dave there because of how you can take data out of like a, like you can still read the data of a dead person, like whatever's in their head. It doesn't matter ultimately if he's alive or dead, which ends up also being a little weird. 01:18:12.57 Case (he/him) Yeah, it just seemed like the plan doesn't make a lot of sense, like in terms of like, well, so if Ralph is working with the Yakuza and he's working for the Yakuza in this scenario where the Yakuza's goal is to get the cure and like to have it, not to lose it, like otherwise it would just kill everyone without worried about the data. But their goal is to get the data back. um It feels like this is just a lot of extra steps to like, yeah, we have a sacrificial lamb courier that we're going to put in here that you can just like take his head, like just have an unscrupulous courier who just like goes and takes her money and then like goes to the Yakuza directly. 01:18:50.12 Case (he/him) Like, doesn't that seem like an easier thing to sell? 01:18:51.74 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:18:53.81 Case (he/him) And in this like world of the underworld and like, you know, ah you know, just unscrupulous people, like, backstabbing each other anyway. Like, I'm sure they can find someone. 01:19:05.05 Case (he/him) Even if Ralphie's goal is to backstab Johnny, it seems like just like there's just too many steps in this whole thing. 01:19:10.22 Jala & Dave There's a lot, he could have like just said it, if he was going to backstab him, he could set it up or he was delivering the thing like immediately, like without all these hoops that has to be jumped through. Like it's, it's a lot of weird cat and mouse things that did not need to happen at all. Uh, and it ends up being really strange trying to figure out like the Yakuza aren't, they don't feel like they're in it specifically for themselves. 01:19:39.64 Jala & Dave But they're also potentially working with the company that was making the cure in the first place. There's it's very weird. 01:19:49.68 Jala & Dave So I can see like where some of the plot like there's holes, there's a lot of holes in the plots in this movie. 01:19:53.92 Case (he/him) Yeah, holes as big as the one in Johnny's brain at this point in the movie. 01:19:59.33 Jala & Dave Right. So. 01:20:00.91 Case (he/him) Anyway, so we're then at a busy nightclub, and we see a man named Spider, who's played by Henry Rollins, and he meets a woman, Jane Deenemeyer, and they discuss her medical condition. 01:20:03.24 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 01:20:10.10 Case (he/him) They also talk about the implants that he installed in her, ah which I guess are as much to suppress some of the symptoms of the medical condition of an illness. 01:20:13.10 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:20:19.38 Case (he/him) We find out, but as as it is to augment her, to make her like tougher. um And she wants to be if she's a want to be bodyguard and she she approaches Ralphie sitting at a table with his hench women and Jane attempts to show her ability as a bodyguard and Ralphie makes her show her like a steady hand to show her to show her how steady her hand is because that's like a symptom of the black shakes. 01:20:42.60 Jala & Dave ah Right, right. 01:20:43.78 Case (he/him) And she fails at that. ah 01:20:45.33 Jala & Dave And um so the characters of the bodyguards that Ralphie has are um a black lady and a white lady and they're called like the dog sisters or something in the original story or maybe it's the novelization and they are actually given a little bit more backstory and then like um I think it must have been the original ah short story because Molly Millions knows them and is friends with them and talks to them. So it's a little bit different of a scenario. 01:21:14.22 Jala & Dave and the original work, but they have a little bit more story to them than what they give here. 01:21:17.48 Case (he/him) Mm hmm. 01:21:19.59 Jala & Dave But um yeah, here they're just MOOCs, they're just there to be just like flavoring and like, here's some weird makeup things going on, you know, with that that one lady with the high, you know, high, um I don't know, Edwardian bun thing going on on the top of her head that looks like a big powdered wig, um but then like the drastic face makeup. 01:21:20.40 Case (he/him) Yeah, I hear they're just mooks. 01:21:36.48 Case (he/him) Mm hmm. 01:21:42.39 Jala & Dave But um yeah, so right about then the cab drops Johnny off in a dark alley and ah Jay bone and his friend who are both low techs are above and they happen to see the memory implant with their little scanners and stuff, but they leave him alone. Johnny ends up meeting with a couple of armed men. This is the setup from Ralphie. Like, you know, he's getting, getting met at Ralphie. And then Ralphie says, I've got some guys that'll help you with that implant. And then. 01:22:12.34 Jala & Dave He walks into these two guys who are there to basically kill him and take his head. 01:22:17.34 Case (he/him) Right. I get that. But like he's also would be compliant in the scenario. 01:22:18.14 Jala & Dave So. 01:22:20.14 Case (he/him) Like it just seems like it's just like, again, just extra steps for no apparent reason. 01:22:21.10 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:22:23.42 Jala & Dave Yeah, well, this this whole part doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense, because again, like you said, ah if Ralphie really wanted the the info out of Johnny's head, he could have just handed him to the Yakuza and said, hey, here's where he is. 01:22:36.89 Jala & Dave the end and and moved on. so But in either case, while Johnny is trying to fight with these two men, ah one of the men that he's fighting with ends up killing J-Bone's low tech friend. And so J-Bone comes down and he's trying to check on his friend and then Johnny saves J-Bone. And then J-Bone kills the other guy and says, we're even, I don't owe you anything. 01:23:03.73 Jala & Dave You know, so they, they both basically, they just have a meeting and they show that both people are capable and they can do a thing. And then after that, like, um, you know, he goes, uh, let's see. Johnny then goes to confront Ralphie after that and goes to the club after this whole part goes is over. I guess, uh, Jaybone just takes his friend and leaves. I'm not sure at that point. 01:23:27.03 Jala & Dave But um yeah, he's mad. He gets you know pissed off that he was set up and everything, but he ends up getting taken out from behind because he gets stabbed in the neck with a knockout drug of some sort. 01:23:39.50 Jala & Dave so Jane ends up seeing the henchmen carrying the unconscious Johnny away. That would be the quote unquote dog sisters that I mentioned earlier. ah And then in a room Johnny is strapped to a bed as Ralphie is there with Shinji and they are preparing to remove the head head of Johnny to get that memory device out. 01:24:02.19 Jala & Dave And Jane is in like the air vents. She's up in the air vents for some reason. 01:24:07.55 Case (he/him) Yeah. 01:24:08.08 Jala & Dave She's just spying on him because she's just mad at Ralphie and she wants to know what the hell just happened with this guy. Like why is Ralphie knocking this dude out and everything? So she's just spying on them. 01:24:19.66 Jala & Dave And um right about the time that um And Shinji is about to cut Johnny's head off. Then Jane falls down from the ceiling and then starts beating people up and has this like um thing where you know she's like, how much money are you going to get for this, Ralphie? And then Johnny like wakes up and is like, I'll give you more money if you help me. And then she's like, 01:24:43.93 Jala & Dave Sold and then they end up fighting and then escaping um this in this whole scene includes the death of Ralphie he gets sliced up by Shinji um There is also like the um one of the two dog sisters gets like her hand cut off or something there's still one more dog sister left and then Shinji and they are running after the pair and So this was the part that led to the most, most of my confusion with what Ralphie's game plan possibly was because Shinji has a short temper. He only has, uh, zero more chances because his boss is like, you failed me one more time and you know, um just kill you. So this is his last like attempt. And so he's upset. He just flippantly, uh, queasy and arts, um, Ralphie. Yeah. 01:25:35.90 Jala & Dave And then the dog sister that was Ralphie's guard still is helping Shinji. Yeah. So it's weird. Uh, other than maybe she thought he, she'd be cut up too, but I don't, there was not like a threat of that. She just kept going. She just really wanted to catch Johnny, I guess, or, or, um, Jane. Jane. Yeah. 01:26:02.41 Jala & Dave Yeah, that's a very good point. Cause the, um, the one that looks like she has a big, I don't know, Victorian wig on her head is still alive at the end of that whole scenario. And it's just helping Shinji for no particular reason, even though her boss just got sliced up by this guy. 01:26:17.41 Jala & Dave So I guess, yeah right. 01:26:17.90 Case (he/him) You know, it it's henchmen transference. that when When you are the vassal, you get popped up to the Lord of the Lord. 01:26:26.10 Jala & Dave You just follow the next strongest person yeah and the man with the laser thumb is the next strongest person. That's right. That's right. So ah yeah, like ah Johnny and Jane are running away and then the other dog sister and Shinji are following. And right about then Johnny and Jane happened to see J-Bone and a bunch of the low techs who then basically stare down Shinji and the Yakuza and the dog sister and are just like, 01:26:53.26 Jala & Dave you know, back up office, you know, and then, you know, Shinji swears vengeance and then leaves at that point because there are too many low techs for him and his Yakuza to take out at that time. And I think that's the end of the dog sister. We don't see her after that. So whatever. 01:27:11.49 Jala & Dave Dave, what happens next? Uh, so this is when Johnny and Jane go on there. Um, subway yeah, the subway tunnel, uh, and Johnny takes a nap. 01:27:24.42 Jala & Dave yeah um because he has his his c he gets um ah epileptic seizures because Jane starts flashing a light in his face and it it sets off the leakage. well um that's because this is so So this is something else that it doesn't make any sense to me is the fact that Jane has no idea that Johnny is a smuggler and that you can put information in your head, even though she's friends with low techs and other stuff like that, who should know about these things. 01:27:55.75 Jala & Dave And the low techs are familiar for some reason. Jane doesn't know what any of this is, even though she's also friends with spider. 01:28:00.29 Case (he/him) Yeah, it seems to be just a thing in the world. 01:28:02.92 Jala & Dave Yeah, it should be a thing that people know about, but she's the cipher for the people watching the movie. And so she's like, wait, you store information in your head. You put that data in your head and then she flashes the light in his eyes and then he um has a whole seizure moment. And then she just like, you know, helps him to lay down and then he goes to sleep. And then when he wakes up, he's very mad that she let him sleep because he only has so much longer to live. And we don't know exactly how long that was. 01:28:33.61 Jala & Dave Not only that, but she's like, you put it in your head, but they, how does it fit? Do you think, Oh, I had to get rid of stuff to like make it fit. It's like, what, what do you mean get rid of stuff? My childhood's gone. 01:28:44.14 Jala & Dave Your childhood's gone. It's, it's like, wow. Stellar writing there. That's just okay. 01:28:51.90 Case (he/him) Yeah, and she seems like a character who wouldn't miss her childhood, frankly. 01:28:55.13 Jala & Dave Well, exactly. And that's kind of the thing. It's like this is a dystopia. I don't think anybody's holding on to their precious memories of their childhood in this particular place. ah You know, so like that that to me kind of feels like that was ah Sony doing something because I do not feel that that is something William Gibson would have written himself. 01:29:16.73 Jala & Dave Yeah, it was, it was a little strange. Um, so let's see, when yeah as they're doing that, it's doing an interlude with, um, Takahashi and, um, he is watching a video of a young girl, which turns out to be his daughter. Um, yes. Who died of an AS and, uh, his video feed is like hacked into by a, 01:29:45.35 Jala & Dave avatar head, um who who tells him that the courier's data that he's searching for can give him a new purpose in life. And he keeps ignoring the floating avatar head. 01:30:00.57 Jala & Dave That is correct. He keeps on ignoring it every time ah and that will be a running thing throughout the movie. And you don't really know why, like he knows what the Savitar head is. 01:30:11.77 Jala & Dave um Like he's not surprised when he sees it, but he just doesn't pay it any and one damn bit of mind. So. 01:30:18.50 Case (he/him) Yeah, the the fact that they're just like ghosts living in the machines ah in the in this world and and that that that just sort of like a fine and normal thing is wild the way that everyone treats this all. 01:30:29.19 Case (he/him) And the fact that we only get one in this movie, um she just like pops up and it's just like no click and turns off the screen. 01:30:33.24 Jala & Dave sir 01:30:38.04 Jala & Dave Yeah, exactly. Ghosts? Nope. That's what they should have done in Poltergeist. That would have been a different movie. Right, right. So, yeah, back in the tunnel, um Johnny and Jane are having a falling out. 01:30:51.99 Jala & Dave Johnny is pissed and Jane's like, what do you mean? You lost it, blah, blah, blah. And she's just like, I can't believe you did that. And he's like, well, what about you? And then she's like, yeah, I didn't have a great childhood either or whatever. 01:31:04.00 Jala & Dave They just I don't know. They have a whole thing. And then Johnny just gets fed up with the whole thing because this is this is him having his snarky moments, because remember, we already had that set up earlier when he's like pizza or whatever, doing the 01:31:15.09 Case (he/him) Mm hmm. 01:31:15.60 Jala & Dave You know, I'm Sonic the Hedgehog in this movie. And so then he's like, I need to get online. I need a computer because he's trying to figure out ah where the information was being sent so he can find the other like the key, the other key download key so he can hopefully get the data out of his head. He's trying to find where he needs to deliver the data is his thing. 01:31:41.37 Jala & Dave So ah they break into an electronics store and then Johnny gears up with his VR advisor and his, which is again, his iPhone, his Thompson iPhones and his little gloves that he's got in his little 3D display where like the way that you interact with the internet is you Rubik's cubit, you know, and and act like you have a massive tome in front of you. um So Case, what is your opinion of the way that the internet is presented in this movie? 01:32:11.21 Case (he/him) you know You know, it's so funny this like concept of like having tactile relationships with the internet as opposed to like, you know, I, I was thinking about this in relation to like when this movie came out. And so this is only about 10 years after like the the widespread adoption of like the GUI, um like this different paradigm of interacting with files. And so like, 01:32:31.22 Case (he/him) I feel like there's ah this like lag for people who like probably got into computer stuff either like were familiar with it as code and then hadn't you know hadn't really experienced the GUI or hadn't really like clocked that that's like how we were kind of like moving into GUI by the way is graphics or graphics user interface uh for anyone who wasn't uh on that one um but so the like that's like keyboard and mouse kind of interaction with everything where you the the mouse in particular is the the big interactive like sort of paradigm that was introduced there. um So like the idea of trying to represent data in these sort of like like as a tactile ah components that you have to sort of like look around in like a 3D environment um is, you know, just this very strange, very alluring ah like presentation of of the Internet that was popular 01:33:21.05 Case (he/him) leading up until this period. And I feel like right after this is when we kind of like i sort of like catch up to where like technology was really going and that the the language, you know, it it kind of feels like Esperanto, if you'll follow me on this one, which is that what it what it was was an attempt at sort of articulating what like whole cloth inventing a language, in this case, a a filmic language of expressing how you would interact with the Internet um and putting it out there or and not just film, but, you know, like 01:33:28.82 Jala & Dave right 01:33:34.73 Jala & Dave right ah 01:33:51.20 Case (he/him) yeah Even the source material for the for this like the Gibson novels like cyberpunk in general is like loaded with this sort of like concept um And they're they're trying to put a way of like here's what the future of technology is going to look like but it is completely a different direction because we invent literally a different language of interacting with data and articulating um like how how we think and move in a digital space um and like I said, this movie is 01:33:55.68 Jala & Dave Right. Right? 01:34:17.87 Case (he/him) part of that legacy. it's It's sort of on the tail end of it. And it just is, um like I said, it's speaking Esperanto when very quietly like, ah you know, like, like Spanish became the second language of around the world or something like that. 01:34:30.27 Jala & Dave Right. Right. Right. So I like that comparison. It's kind of like um this little half step in between, you know, trying to to get to the next place. So um when he's in cyberspace in this weird little way that he goes, ah he ends up tracking down the number that was called from the Beijing hotel room where he first downloaded the data. And it turns out that it was in New York real like to that exact same shop for a doctor all come. But the information never got through on that fact. So that other download key never came through. um So he's frustrated and then the Yakuza are coming. um So like an IT tech guy notices that this hack is going on where he's hacking into the the computer mainframes to get this information and stuff. So ah Shinji is heading there. And while this is happening, Johnny ends up trying to pull up a hacker that he knows locally 01:35:27.56 Jala & Dave to Ask him for some help to get some information who is dr. All come you know like what is going on like what what do you know about this situation and um you know he basically is told at this point that his head has pharma com data in it he's got some big big information for this massive corporation. 01:35:47.73 Jala & Dave And then ah right about that time, um there's a virus that's let loose on the internet. And so Johnny is forced to log off and then who knows what happened to the hacker he was talking to. 01:35:59.50 Jala & Dave So ah Johnny and Jane then escape and run away from there. So from your case, how about you tell us about pharma.com and what's going on with Takahashi? 01:36:09.29 Case (he/him) Yeah, at the Farmercon skyscraper, Takahashi makes a video call to a street preacher played by Dolph Lundgren, a cross and candle pseudo cleric, and offers him a contract to get Johnny's head. 01:36:21.07 Case (he/him) ah Yeah, so we've talked a bit about Dolph Lundgren in this movie and like, yeah, it's such a weird addition. 01:36:24.43 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 01:36:27.31 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. It is it is because, like, as as I mentioned, like, I really wish that his his character would have been more into the whole transhumanism thing ah and not talk about Jesus, but talk about like, or if he's talking about Jesus, talk about it in terms of like finding Jesus through the the medium of these these implants in this this technology and stuff, you know, so. 01:36:46.67 Case (he/him) Yeah. 01:36:51.95 Case (he/him) Yeah, Christ through circuitry. 01:36:53.59 Jala & Dave Right, exactly. So, um, Dave, what were your initial thoughts on this character? ah So like the the their original presentation was fine. It con confused me when Takahashi is like, this is your like last day. Don't fail me with this chance. Like, I don't know that you can stop him if he failed. I think he'll kill you. but It's the wrong guy to make threats to when you're paying him. So that, that was a little weird. Um, 01:37:24.07 Jala & Dave but just the introduction of him and how he has like the video screen is ah is a screen cut out of his bible was like Great because that that's your, that's your, um, Jesus in technology. 01:37:41.23 Jala & Dave You've just like inverted it. 01:37:42.99 Case (he/him) Mm hmm. 01:37:43.53 Jala & Dave Um, so that, that's a fun little like jab. Um, but the egg and they don't do anything with that. So it's like, okay, this, this could go places. You're, you're hopeful. You're cautiously hopeful when he shows up. 01:37:55.40 Case (he/him) Yeah, this movie has actually has a love for like hidden props, like or or like props disguised as other things, like we were talking about the all all of Johnny's gear being like disguised as like a pack of cigarettes and stuff. 01:38:00.52 Jala & Dave Mm-hmm. 01:38:05.65 Case (he/him) And it's like, here's a cross. Actually, it's a Bowie knife. 01:38:08.36 Jala & Dave Yeah. And like, I was thinking about that and I'm like, you know, I wish that they had done something, put like some effect on it or something to make it like a cyber knife or something, because then that would tie in more to being a techno priest, you know, than just a regular ass knife on the end of this cross. You know, I mean, it's still funny that it is, um, you know, a, a cross that's been turned into this giant knife or whatever, but like, I wish that they would have and added the technology to it. 01:38:34.87 Jala & Dave He, he went, like he augmented himself allegedly. And then he just has, he has a, it's not, it's not a cross that like you unsheathen it's, it's just a knife. 01:38:46.83 Jala & Dave The bottom of the cross is a knife. And then he carries around like an arm sleeve of nails because he's going to do the thing. 01:38:57.76 Jala & Dave And that's, that's his m MO like every every, every time. 01:38:58.12 Case (he/him) Yeah. 01:39:01.85 Jala & Dave And he has a shepherd's crook. Let us not forget the shepherd's crook that he takes, too, because he is the the shepherd of all the sheep or something. I don't know. So, yeah, continuing on, Case. 01:39:13.28 Case (he/him) Yeah, so at a phone booth, Johnny hacks into the phone system with a repairman's device and offers the 320 gigabytes of info to pharma come hoping that they will negotiate again. Johnny seems like a very compliant person when it comes to the situation. 01:39:26.29 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 01:39:26.59 Case (he/him) Like why this has to be a fight it does not make sense. 01:39:29.67 Jala & Dave Right. 01:39:31.64 Case (he/him) ah they They ultimately screwed themselves by like trying to like kill him in the deal. 01:39:32.13 Jala & Dave Well. Oh, but you know, um actually they do mention this in there and they do mention it in the original short story. um the The data scrubbers that they have that can pull the did the data out of a dead person can also pull the remnants of it out of the container within which the data is there. So there's like ah echoes or or ghost images or whatever of that data in anything that the data has been stored in that can be used 01:40:02.64 Jala & Dave to pull some of that data back out again and that's yeah because of seepage and 01:40:05.09 Case (he/him) Oh, because of the seepage, it's like, oh, it's actually, but it's actually more efficient to kill you than to, than to like download it. 01:40:10.11 Jala & Dave Well, and it's safer because you know it's kind of like, you know regardless of what you delete on your hard drive, your hard drive still has that information in there somewhere and you can still pull that data out if you know what you're doing with it or whatever. It's that kind of a concept where it's like, no, the data can still in some ways at least partially be pulled out and the Yakuza don't want any missteps. They don't want any of this information out. so they want to make sure that they get all of it, which will mean taking Johnny's head. like They can't leave him alive. They have to take him and then burn the head, basically. 01:40:42.23 Case (he/him) Yeah. 01:40:42.36 Jala & Dave so 01:40:44.64 Case (he/him) Yeah, it' it's one word just like it. I guess it just feels sloppy, like even if you could like but like it's so hard to like really like get your handle on it, but like it there is an internal logic to it all. 01:40:56.98 Case (he/him) Just it, you know, like I said, it's just like not easy to to grasp um anyway. ah 01:41:03.63 Jala & Dave Yeah, I was in a, um, just interject there. So the, the, the terminology of download up loving is literally they just use download for everything. But also if you have any, any object that's holding data. So even when this came out, like commercially available, you could get, um, like zip drives and those were at the time, like a hundred megabytes. So that's still pretty big. It was huge then, but if I took. 01:41:31.58 Jala & Dave Like if I installed something from a disc, it doesn't take the thing off the desk. If I copy something over it, but you don't lose the original one. So anyone downloading the the data from Johnny's head, it's not removing it. It's just making a copy of it. So then he's still full of all that data unless they erased it as they were doing it. So he should just be able to erase it in. 01:41:55.99 Case (he/him) in In a real computer sense, yes, but in a in a this world of everything, like I get that that's what we're saying here. 01:42:03.89 Jala & Dave Yeah yeah. 01:42:04.01 Case (he/him) Like, yeah, like it just it for one thing, like it doesn't make any sense how the whole like he can store this amount of of stuff in his brain, ah like how that system kind of works is is is it's supposed to be like, don't don't worry too much about it. 01:42:20.13 Case (he/him) Like, don't don't think about it too much. 01:42:20.25 Jala & Dave Yeah yeah. 01:42:21.73 Case (he/him) um You know, the fact that he's able to put in way more than his supposed limit and it doesn't just like kill him outright or, you know, not not copy over because there's only you know, because that that's what would happen if this was like actually an external hard drive or something. 01:42:35.08 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:42:35.47 Case (he/him) um Like, though it again, it's just. Oh, like where it actually works with computer, like how computers actually work and versus how it doesn't actually work. 01:42:48.09 Case (he/him) um Again, this is all a very surface cyberpunk movie. 01:42:50.75 Jala & Dave Oh, yeah, for sure. 01:42:51.01 Case (he/him) like Yeah, I'm just saying that like the movie feels messy when it comes to the plot. 01:42:52.42 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:42:55.80 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:42:56.28 Case (he/him) And like, even if you can, like, OK, well, I guess you can wrap your head around it if you do this, this and this. 01:42:56.67 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:43:01.24 Case (he/him) um like Still, I'm just saying, like you know why why is Johnny in this situation when he could lake at at all, like if it was a setup in the in the first place and like why not just like hire a guy who's who's cool with it and then kill him afterwards so that it doesn't get out? 01:43:08.66 Jala & Dave Mm 01:43:18.89 Case (he/him) And I haven't even even think, you full you've oh, I've downloaded the material. and and And then while he's downloaded, because he seems to be fairly incapacitated after that um and his guard is down, then you kill him. you know 01:43:28.80 Jala & Dave Yeah. So yeah, my, my comment was really direct kind of at Johnny because this isn't like his first rodeo. He's been doing this for some amount of time and he should know how the data removal process works. 01:43:42.16 Jala & Dave So when he, he keeps trying to do it like the way he normally would, he's like, well, I'll just go talk to pharma.com. I'll just go to them and go, Hey, take this out of my head. Like I don't want it anyway. 01:43:52.90 Jala & Dave No, I'll sell it back to you or whatever. And you know, stuff keeps getting in his way. But it's like they'll, they start, like they start introducing stuff as it goes. 01:44:04.95 Jala & Dave And it seems to be like new information to him. He's like, what do you mean that that would, they could take that off of a dead body or they're just going to kill me anyway. Like that's, it seems like you should know that step before you start that job. 01:44:17.47 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:44:17.57 Case (he/him) Yeah. 01:44:18.13 Jala & Dave yeah 01:44:18.55 Case (he/him) Also, if like the courier keeps a ah full record of it or or even if it was just something that you could kind of piece together it from like the the the remnants in their brain, then it doesn't feel like the couriers are actually that secure of a a means of of carrying data. 01:44:31.89 Jala & Dave Right. 01:44:33.18 Case (he/him) And so like the whole, it you know, it's again, and just like the whole thing kind of unravels when you really like get into it. 01:44:36.44 Jala & Dave yeahp Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. or Yeah. 01:44:39.33 Case (he/him) Anyway, so following following this whole thing, because I think we we should move on, Jane goes into spasms and has a seizure because of the black shakes. 01:44:41.05 Jala & Dave Go ahead. Yeah. yeah um 01:44:48.01 Case (he/him) And she but she manages to direct Johnny to spider, who is the person who likes to set her up. um They go to a dark, isolated warehouse and spider lets them in i and he rants about information overload but i examines Jane. 01:45:02.22 Case (he/him) ah Meanwhile, J-Bone and his cronies observe the street peaches strident down the street. 01:45:06.54 Jala & Dave And they're just like, don't mess with him, leave him alone. Cause the, some of the cronies were like, yeah, they were like, uh, should we? 01:45:10.73 Case (he/him) Omar's coming. 01:45:13.70 Jala & Dave And he's like, no, that guy is like, so, so there's nothing left human of him basically. So. so yeah ah From there, Takahashi gets a briefing about ah the woman woman's face in his video. like so He's got like a secretary or something that says, ah this is a lady. She ah was the head of pharma.com. She died in 2015 and has been imprinted into a computer in Switzerland where she has a citizenship. 01:45:42.00 Jala & Dave and is now a ghost in the machine that advises the company from her present state. So she is, at you know, on board for pharma.com as an advisor. She used to be a human. She is now just a a ghost in the machine. 01:45:55.01 Case (he/him) And I'm led to believe that that's not that weird in this world. 01:45:58.39 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 01:45:58.44 Case (he/him) Like, because you would think that the first person to have something like that would be a miracle. 01:46:04.25 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 01:46:04.35 Case (he/him) ah But, you know, as it's, you know, the the idea that you could just be surprised by a person who like it is, ah the you know. 01:46:05.86 Jala & Dave Right. 01:46:13.86 Jala & Dave A person just in the machine. 01:46:14.65 Case (he/him) I'm trying to avoid just saying yeah a ghost in the machine constantly, but like the fact that you could even be surprised by that ah would indicate that they are not 01:46:15.33 Jala & Dave Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 01:46:23.44 Case (he/him) um you know, that's strange, ah because they otherwise it would just be, here's the miracle that we're all talking about, the one person who who cheated death by by being in this world. 01:46:33.00 Jala & Dave Right, right. so ah From there, we skip back to Johnny and Spider. so At this point, Jane is passed out. He has worked on her and she's just there resting. and Johnny is trying to tell Spider about this implant. Can you do anything? and ah While this is all going on, um you know Spider's like, well, I don't know, man. you That's pretty messed up. you know blah, blah, blah. he's He's giving more backstory about NAS and what causes it and this, that and the other and talking about, you know, like the kinds of stuff he does for his work. And then we skip over to the street preacher who is looking for Johnny. He starts at the bar and he talks to the bartender hooky. 01:47:15.47 Jala & Dave and ends up freezing Hooky's prosthetic hand in ah the little like liquid vat that they were going to put Johnny's head in, so cryo freezes it and like smashes it and everything. 01:47:26.38 Jala & Dave where like That was a pretty visceral scene because then like the the ends of the cybernetic hand have like blood and stuff on them where it looks like there's flesh intermingled with that cybernetic stuff. 01:47:33.71 Case (he/him) Yeah. 01:47:36.11 Case (he/him) Yeah, I was intrigued when that happened. It made me think that like, oh, is there like ah an underlying stump or even the full arm still in there? And it's more like cybernetic, over like, like, yeah. 01:47:44.59 Jala & Dave Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. um The hooky character is also a character that apparently shows up in several other of William Gibson's works. So ah that is a character that is recurring in the novels. ah But either way, ah he ends up being tortured and tells where Jane is at. So ah basically to go look for spiders. And so uh, spider skipping back to that because we're jumping back and forth throughout different scenes. Spider stabilizes Jane and scans Johnny. Uh, he is not very confident about, you know, Johnny's capacity to live. He's like, look, I can pull, you know, cause Johnny's like, can you pull it out of my head? And he's like, well, you know, I can pull it out of your head, but your survival rate would be about like, you know, it'd be pretty good, but like, you know, you might lose some fine motor skills. You won't remember anything for more than three minutes and stuff like that. 01:48:36.25 Jala & Dave um But anyway, um Johnny is like, listen, like where I just need to find Dr. Alkom. So Spider's like, okay, i'll I'll take you, I'll show you, I'll take you to Dr. Alkom. So um he drives Johnny and Jane away and takes them to this big overcrowded hospital that's like an underground, the NAS underground, in in fact, NAS underground. um And then he just slips on a lab coat and starts doing the doctoring thing. And Johnny's like, 01:49:04.96 Jala & Dave Stop fucking around. Where is Dr. Allcom? And so then Spyder tells him, look, all Dr. Allcom is a way that we say that there's a big mess up in the hospital. There's a big problem and we need all hands on deck. That's what that is. 01:49:19.92 Jala & Dave So Dr. Alcom, that's us. That fax was meant for us. The data in your head is meant for us. We are the people fighting this ah sickness and we need this data because the data in your head is all of pharmacomes, R and&D, about the cure and you know that it works. It has all the trials and everything. All of that information is stuff that's in your head right now. So we need all of that and we need to you know reveal it ah to like as soon as possible because that seepage is going to get worse and that data is corrupting as this is happening. So we need this to save millions and millions of people. 01:49:59.81 Jala & Dave So ah right about then, you know, he's trying to explain to Johnny, like we, you know, these are the ways that we can try to, to remove this data and you might lose some of these, you know, different parts, you know, like some functionality and stuff like that. And then Johnny's like, no, no, I just want this out of my head. I don't want to. And spiders like, look, you're going to die either way. Why don't you just let us take this data? At least that way you're doing some good with your death. 01:50:26.33 Jala & Dave and right about the time that they're having this argument, the street preacher arrives and wrecks shop. Dave, tell us about that. Yeah, he he just rolls in. And one thing I can so i can appreciate about his MO mostly is that so with Hooky, he didn't kill Hooky. He just like he got what needed and left. And that seems to be his thing. He's like, I'm going to ask you a question and you get like, 01:50:52.85 Jala & Dave You get the one attempt. You just answer me right then. Uh, if not, I'm basically just going to start crucifying you yeah because I like to do that. And I have a bunch of knives here that you are, you know, hopefully providing to me. And so, yeah, he, um, the, the Johnny and Jane get away. Um, but spider valiantly holds off the preacher by allowing himself to be pinned to a bunch of medical instruments. Um, until Yeah. Yeah. And, and not giving up on his peeps. So, um, that, that was one thing I remember. I do remember so specifically when watching this movie, the first time was that this is spiders played by Henry Rollins. And ah this isn't his first acting role, but it was his first, I think, major one. And all I could think of was the Henry Rollins band. So I was like, why is he in this movie? It was really like just hard to parse him like as an actor. And then. 01:51:52.52 Case (he/him) Yeah, it's a really random spot for him. 01:51:53.98 Jala & Dave It is, uh, all these years later, though, he's been doing a pretty good job, uh, doing a lot, a lot of cameos and roll like this. I will say that I really, really like him ah being the way that he is though. I love this the character of Spider and how angry Spider is and that he's like this big Jack dude and that he's just like you know um so like rough around the edges and cursing and you know so angry at the corporations and you know just like you know 01:52:25.02 Jala & Dave really, really just for the people in a lot of ways that you don't see you like you don't see doctors presented like this usually. And if you do like it's not quite this way, you know, um I really like this character. It's probably my favorite out of the whole movie. Yeah. And as far as I know, that's just Henry Rollins like that's just him being himself. um And he got to put like a lab coat and some glasses on. 01:52:50.89 Jala & Dave Right, right. 01:52:51.87 Case (he/him) Yep. 01:52:52.56 Jala & Dave So ah right after that, but Jane and Johnny are running away. And while they're in the vehicle and going towards low-tech headquarters, ah Johnny calls Farmacom again and offers to meet at the bridge uh and he's talking to takahashi who's using a white avatar to talk to johnny so like he's going like you know using his hand to make little mouth sounds and stuff to have the the little puppet ai puppet do its talking and it made me laugh a little bit because Uh, then like you see when he removes his hand from like the, the 3d space where he's supposed to be animating the puppet that, uh, you know, it kind of falls backwards and stuff. 01:53:30.87 Jala & Dave And it just kind of reminded me about Vtubers and how like we have AI avatars of things that have somebody else, you know, manipulating them and patting their voice these days. 01:53:36.82 Case (he/him) Yeah. 01:53:40.35 Jala & Dave It's not realistic, but it's it's a thing um for sure. And then especially with the advances in AI and things like that, that we have like a lot of videos and stuff are getting to the point where it's harder and harder to tell. 01:53:53.06 Jala & Dave whether or not it's a real person. So again, kind of prescient again. And, and as a weird side anecdote thing, they just, I think today had announcements of a new program that while you're doing a video call, the person on the other side of the call is able to, um, like copy your, your body and just twin the video. 01:54:16.81 Case (he/him) Yeah, I saw the article too. 01:54:16.90 Jala & Dave And then they could just be there. They're just you now. And that's just a thing that can happen. So that's great. 01:54:24.93 Jala & Dave case, don't you dare. Not anyway. so so yeah ah As Takahashi 01:54:30.34 Case (he/him) Are you joking? If I could have your looks, I would be unstoppable. 01:54:37.34 Jala & Dave hangs up, ah the face of the lady like the cyber ghost in the machine lady comes up and keeps on telling him, you're running out of time, and he keeps on ignoring her. so ah Johnny and Jane show up and then they're trying to get the attention of the low techs to get inside. 01:54:53.01 Jala & Dave And then you have these two bumbling guys who are the watchmen, the guards that are outside and they are just kind of shooting the shit and totally ignoring Johnny who's like banging on stuff, making all this noise. 01:55:05.02 Jala & Dave And eventually they finally turn and look over, but they accidentally drop a flaming car. And, um, with this, 01:55:13.93 Case (he/him) Yeah, when you say bumbling, like, like we were talking bumbling to a degree that is just like kind of shocking. 01:55:19.83 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:55:20.00 Case (he/him) Like they're supposed to be the watchman. They are not paying and any attention. And then they just like fuck up a thing completely by accident. 01:55:27.11 Jala & Dave Yeah, yeah. And they drop it right on Spider's van. And so the van blows up and Johnny and Jane just kind of dodge it. And then this is the point where Johnny does his I want room service rant, which is my favorite thing out of this entire movie, the entire movie. This is my favorite. It lives rent free in my head. I think about it rather often. Actually, there are some times where I feel very much like him in this moment. And I'm like, I want. 01:55:55.42 Jala & Dave Room service. 01:55:59.72 Jala & Dave So um since this was ah like, did you remember the the room service rant case? 01:56:04.93 Case (he/him) I mean, so it's a well known thing in pop culture. I'd definitely seen that clip ah plenty of times. 01:56:08.55 Jala & Dave Yeah. 01:56:10.80 Case (he/him) So like I said, I was pretty sure I'd seen the movie, but I think it would just like the the trailer I had seen so many times that that was the stuff that like I retained over the years. 01:56:10.94 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 01:56:20.30 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 01:56:21.48 Case (he/him) um But but yeah, I remember the room service rant like. And it's ah I mean, it's a lot of fun. Like it's it's a lot of fun. It's it's a moment like that where the movie like really shines. 01:56:32.93 Case (he/him) so um Like I can understand why some people, if you're primed to dislike Keanu Reeves, might be like this isn't, you know, some sort of like deep rant, but he's he's working with the lines he has. 01:56:43.84 Case (he/him) And it's not supposed to be some sort of deep thing. 01:56:45.47 Jala & Dave No. 01:56:46.00 Case (he/him) It's supposed to be a character who's like at wits in just like ah like giving up now. Is the rest of the movie supporting him getting to that point? That is a different story because like the whole rules of how his brain is breaking down aren't really well conveyed to us. ah But, you know, like it's still a great scene. 01:57:02.01 Jala & Dave Yeah. So Dave, what were your thoughts about room servicing? It's a lot of fun. And then this is the one moment where he gets to like fully emote and you, you can, 01:57:15.43 Jala & Dave In this moment here, you can fully empathize with this character. And regardless of the circumstances, you can go, okay, I understand that this is just a bunch of, ah was a bunch of crap and you don't want to be there. Like, I don't think anyone wants to be there. The people that are there, they might not want to be there either, but you know, this is what you got and you know keep moving forward and you just dodged the next like flaming car being chucked at you. 01:57:41.44 Jala & Dave Right. He's just super frustrated because like, you know, he is going directly to the people that he thinks wants this data. He just wants it out of his head. He just wants to finish this last job so he can retire from doing this at all. And nobody's letting him do it. And then now suddenly he has the entire fate of humanity in his head and he has to be the one to save everyone. And he's like, this is bullshit you know and that's what the whole thing is is I am the unwilling protagonist here I do not want this role I do not want it so he is super anti-heroing here for sure so um but yeah he gets his moment he has his tantrum and then he bucks up and like deals with it and then kind of turns a corner after that uh you know going forward so uh j-bone 01:58:09.85 Case (he/him) Right. 01:58:25.49 Case (he/him) Yeah. Just Vince. 01:58:26.77 Jala & Dave Yeah, he just has to get it out. 01:58:27.12 Case (he/him) Just Vince. 01:58:28.64 Jala & Dave So so then J-Bone drops down after all of this commotion and everything with the car dropping and all this other crap going on. 01:58:28.81 Case (he/him) Yeah. 01:58:35.42 Jala & Dave And um I think that's my other favorite part is J-Bone turning down and Jane's like spider's dead. And then so he just turns and looks at this at the exploded spider van and they're like, no, no, no. 01:58:49.85 Jala & Dave They that happened other time. 01:58:51.18 Case (he/him) earlier Yeah, yeah, that's a great, that is a good drill. 01:58:51.44 Jala & Dave It wasn't right now. And he's like, oh, OK. 01:58:53.67 Case (he/him) Yeah. This movie has some really good jokes in it. We haven't talked about that. 01:58:56.40 Jala & Dave Right. Right. Like that one's one of those, the most understated ones too, where he just, he, all he does is turns and looks at the vehicle and then they're like, no, it happened earlier. You know, and it's like that, that was actually pretty good for sure. So, uh, but yeah, so anyway, uh, Johnny begins to have flash episodes and then ends up collapsing. And so, um, he ends up getting pulled up into heaven, which is the name of this low tech headquarters that they're in. 01:59:24.81 Jala & Dave And so ah he's being dragged up to see Jones, who is. um He's told that he needs to go see Jones because Jones was in the Navy. And the Navy jacked him up real good. And he's he's this ah you know veteran of the war. And so that is all that he is told about Jones. um I never read the story before I watched this movie. So the first time I saw Jones, I was mighty surprised as well. 01:59:52.04 Case (he/him) Yeah, it's, man, oh god, the cybernetic dolphin. Here's here's my question. For Monster, Dear Monster, does a cybernetic naval dolphin hacker count? 02:00:03.06 Jala & Dave We, we've made other things that definitely aren't monsters count. So yeah, I think, I think that it could, it could work. He, he, he, he can be in the Pantheon. 02:00:12.73 Case (he/him) Yeah. 02:00:14.77 Jala & Dave Um, he's also heroin addicted. Yeah. He's heroin addicted and he has a microwave weapons. Yeah, he does. So yeah, I mean, that's that if we can have a Frankenstein, you can have a robotic dolphin or a cybernetic dolphin. 02:00:22.53 Case (he/him) Yes. that 02:00:31.14 Jala & Dave That's right, that's right. So we flash over to Takahashi at Farmicom and he is preparing his katana and his pistol and then um he tells Shinji to meet him at the bridge and then Jane ah tries to comfort Johnny when Johnny's down at the dumps and whatever and You can tell from her body language when she goes over there and he's like waking up and he's all like you know just barely keeping it together. you know Her body language is real. like you know She's giving him fuck you eyes or fuck me eyes. you know Although like you can't see her eyes in that moment. do You just see her body language and when she's slinking up on him and getting real close. 02:01:08.86 Jala & Dave um But anyway, they have a kiss. So like, you know, this is ceiling. OK, well, Johnny has the cure that can save this girl that now he's kind of invested in in this way. um So from there, Jaybone ends up taking them. 02:01:25.16 Jala & Dave to Jones and Jones is again, the cybernetic dolphin. So ah he's in a big glass tank. He's got like a cyber eye thing and a little helmet thing and, you know, making dolphin cute little dolphin noises and stuff. And so ah Johnny loses his shit because he's like, I cannot believe you're telling me that the thing that can help me is this fish. 02:01:49.42 Case (he/him) Yeah, I they're one of the best lines is like, you're not sure is like, or ah like, you you don't know what to do. Does the fish. well 02:01:57.46 Jala & Dave Yeah. but Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah. Um, the, the low techs end up, um, like from this headquarters, this is where they send out all of the data to everywhere in the world. So the whole idea is that if they can crack the code on the thing inside Johnny's head and loop it through Jones, they can broadcast it out to the world and then have the cure for NAS, which I think it's hilarious that it's like, all you have to do is watch this video ah and don't forget to hit record on your VHS. 02:02:28.51 Jala & Dave They thought VHS was going to be a thing in 2021. That's cute. And, um you know, from there, like you could just play the video back. And I guess it would be like those brainwave videos they were selling in their early nineties that would just like heal your brain or whatever. 02:02:44.29 Jala & Dave um So, so either way, ah you find out that Jones is a code breaker. That's what he's wired to do. And right about this time, Shinji and a bunch of Yakuza show up at the bridge and start wreaking havoc. They are busting in and killing folks left and right. 02:03:00.48 Jala & Dave um Eventually, Johnny is talked into trying to hook up to this device to ah loop through Jones to see if Jones can break the code you know and and get this data out of his head. So while that's happening, Takahashi flies in on a helicopter, because remember, he's separate from from Shinji. 02:03:21.45 Jala & Dave So um all of this is going on and ah Johnny is starting to have his painful, like, you know, like you see a lot of Keanu Reeves front teeth in this movie. 02:03:33.68 Case (he/him) Yep. 02:03:33.92 Jala & Dave A lot of his front teeth. 02:03:35.98 Case (he/him) Isn't that the movie or the poster for the movie? 02:03:38.75 Jala & Dave ah 02:03:39.01 Case (he/him) Like him grimacing? 02:03:40.12 Jala & Dave yeah With the metal with the metal headgear on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 02:03:43.26 Case (he/him) Yeah. 02:03:45.13 Jala & Dave I've been talking for a while. Tell us more, Dave. Oh. ah 02:03:52.05 Jala & Dave Okay, um yep so the code breaking is interrupted when the fighting, they only get one picture out of it. Takahashi confronts Johnny with his pistol and sword, and at this point um Anna Kalman appears on the monitors, which um makes Shinji angry he's no that's not Shinji that's Takashi Takashi becomes angry and then cuts through the bundle of wires powering like the giant pyramid of TVs and then he gets shot in the back by Shinji who I guess just was tired of having a boss I 02:04:29.46 Jala & Dave Well, um, several different people had said that, Oh, he's going to betray you. He wants your spot and this, that, and the other. So it's just like in fighting with the Yakuza. Yeah. Anyway, he, he shoots him in the back. Um, and then he comes after Johnny and they, they have like, 02:04:48.22 Jala & Dave a terminator fight where they're on a catwalk and it's just very slow. And Johnny's just kind of going backwards, backwards, and she's like one step at a time. And then she's just like, maybe I can pull my laser thumb out, but there's a bunch of chains, which would get his little wires all caught up, which is weird because it's also ambiguous what his wire thumb can cut through and what it can't. Um, 02:05:14.37 Jala & Dave And they end up ah fall falling. ah yeah So Shinji cuts like a a restraining piece and it opens up like a cargo because the whole um heaven headquarters is assembled piece by piece from like vehicles and pieces of building. And this one was part of like a cargo plane and it opens up and they're hanging from like a little cargo net and And Johnny's like, you can't let me go. 02:05:42.15 Jala & Dave you Like you, if I fall, I'll just like data's gone. Cause I'm going to fall into like the river and die. And so they're kind of just trying to decide if they're going to try to pull each other up. 02:05:53.76 Jala & Dave And then they have the most magnificent thumb wars game game of thumb wars ever with ah Johnny grabbing for Shinji's thumb. 02:05:59.37 Case (he/him) Yeah. 02:06:04.39 Jala & Dave And then he should just trying to fight, but he's only has one hand to hold on to. And instead, um, Johnny ends up pulling us. He pulls his thumb off and then ropes is the girl around his neck. Uh, this is sending the decapitated Shinji down another river. Um, it's, it's pretty great. Right. So case, how does it go from here? 02:06:27.95 Case (he/him) Well, back on top, Johnny meets a dying Takahashi who gives him the half of the photo strip key. Street future arrives and in a wild fight, Jane and Johnny managed to defeat the big man, burning him alive. 02:06:39.97 Case (he/him) um This is about the point where the mood it fully clicked for me that the movie is a gender flip of like more like pulp fiction kind of stories um with where like because it felt it felt like they were trying to make Johnny more of an action character. 02:06:47.21 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. 02:06:53.70 Case (he/him) And I think we had a note about that earlier and in the episode. 02:06:55.41 Jala & Dave Yeah. 02:06:56.67 Case (he/him) um And it seems like it feels like she should it he should be the damsel in distress kind of thing. she He like I smuggled these this data and like I've gone to a big strong burly man to be my protector to get me through this whole whole kind of thing feels very film noir right there. 02:07:06.23 Jala & Dave Mm hmm. Mm hmm. 02:07:12.44 Case (he/him) And this is like the inverse of that where ah we're we're dealing with that all. 02:07:13.76 Jala & Dave yeah 02:07:16.33 Case (he/him) um And, you know, Street Preacher is just sort of like the ultimate example of this because Johnny actually like participates in this. 02:07:22.58 Jala & Dave Yeah. 02:07:22.75 Case (he/him) um 02:07:22.86 Jala & Dave Well, and then too, like ah when they burn the street preacher alive, Jane is angling the like ah dishes and stuff, but it's actually Jones that burns them, burns them down with the, the microwaves that he's got that Dave mentioned earlier. 02:07:33.25 Case (he/him) Yeah. 02:07:37.34 Case (he/him) Yeah, which is fucking dope. 02:07:38.47 Jala & Dave Yeah. Yeah. 02:07:40.21 Case (he/him) ah Anyway, Johnny gives J-Bone the pictures and prepares to link with the dolphin again, and a callman comes on again and appeals to Johnny, J-Bone broadcasts to the world the cure is coming, and the final painful data download commences. 02:07:53.12 Case (he/him) At the end of the data stream, Johnny faints, but he recovers quickly. J-Bone, Johnny, and Jane, wow, they're all Js, 02:07:59.49 Jala & Dave Yeah, they're all changed. 02:08:01.09 Case (he/him) look out onto the city of the- or look out onto the lights of the city with the pharma comm towers and flames in the distance. 02:08:06.38 Jala & Dave Why does it get up? 02:08:06.69 Case (he/him) And then we get- Wasn't that like ah terrorist stuff or like riot stuff? 02:08:07.88 Jala & Dave Why is it on fire? Sorry. 02:08:16.32 Case (he/him) I forget. 02:08:16.37 Jala & Dave Was it the riots? Did the riots get up there? 02:08:17.91 Case (he/him) No, no, no, it it wasn't. 02:08:18.64 Jala & Dave They never showed that. 02:08:19.35 Case (he/him) It was- no, nevermind. I forget what it was, exactly. not Not the point because the point is we have the best goddamn joke at the end where the where it looks like Dolph Lundgren is going to get up again. 02:08:29.67 Case (he/him) And then it's like, nope, we're actually just hauling the body away. 02:08:29.93 Jala & Dave Oh yeah. Get that trash away. Yeah. Take that trash out of here or whatever. Cause yeah, it looks like his, his skeleton is coming back. Resident evil style. Like some of the several resident evil villains that seem to show up. 02:08:39.90 Case (he/him) Right. 02:08:43.18 Jala & Dave And, uh, a little, um, part that we skipped over. So, um, the, the ghost in the machine, she does succeed earlier in telling, um, Tagashi that his, his, his, his daughter had died, um, from the black, I want to call it the black scroll, the black shakes. 02:08:59.04 Case (he/him) from NAS, yeah. 02:09:03.29 Jala & Dave And, um, at that time, pharma comma had the cure already, and they didn't give it to him. because the the treatments that that they were doling out was more profitable than if they just cured it all at once. So at that moment, Takashi, he could have just like dropped the whole thing, but he was already like invested in it, I think just emotionally into what he was doing. um But that's what prompts the switch at the end when he does in fact give Johnny the the other part of the code. 02:09:37.87 Jala & Dave and Right. Right. So he does you know like the honorable thing you know in memory of his daughter or whatnot and decides to give the codes to Johnny. So in the hope that nobody else has to go through the loss that he had to go through with his daughter. 02:09:51.78 Jala & Dave So um yeah, like ah the only person with any kind of real invested stakes is Takahashi in this whole movie. 02:09:59.60 Case (he/him) Yeah. 02:10:01.69 Jala & Dave So yeah. um Yeah. 02:10:03.72 Case (he/him) Well, Jane kind of has stakes in it because she's a victim of an ass, but yeah. 02:10:03.96 Jala & Dave that that 02:10:07.59 Jala & Dave Yeah, yeah, that's true. So, so, yeah, um that's what we got. That is the end of Johnny mnemonics. So, yeah, overall, this movie is a fun movie. There's lots of plot holes to it. It does have some really great movie like moments, movie moments in it that make it fun. But, um yeah, like you have to turn your brain off for chunks of it and and just kind of accept whatever is happening and let it wash over you. 02:10:38.86 Jala & Dave in a rolling wave and ah corn flick you know that's it's That's what it boils down to. 02:10:42.70 Case (he/him) Yeah. 02:10:45.10 Jala & Dave Yeah, just put on your iPhone and enjoy the ride. 02:10:47.79 Case (he/him) Yeah. 02:10:50.08 Case (he/him) And just remember, like whatever weird scene happens earlier in the movie, you're ultimately leading up to a cybernetic hacker dolphin with heat beams. 02:10:58.72 Jala & Dave Yes, who may or may not be a, you know, a Herod and addict as well, which I'm going to keep on mentioning because that was in the original story. 02:11:03.64 Case (he/him) Yes. 02:11:06.40 Jala & Dave So they had to take that out. 02:11:07.94 Case (he/him) that That feels like such a ah perfect like book detailed too for a character. 02:11:12.36 Jala & Dave Yeah. 02:11:12.59 Case (he/him) It's just like, oh, and also incidentally addicted to heroin. 02:11:15.80 Jala & Dave Well, I mean, like they they use that in the the little short story as well. Like that's that's part of um like Johnny's way of enticing the dolphin to help him is like giving him his fix. So. 02:11:27.84 Case (he/him) Fair enough. 02:11:28.14 Jala & Dave So, ah yeah, anyway, ah we've already kind of talked about our summary of thoughts and stuff. So I feel at this time, it is a good time to let people know where you can be found on the Internet if you were to be around anywhere. 02:11:40.72 Jala & Dave So case, where might you be? 02:11:43.93 Case (he/him) ah Most of the platforms that have at symbols you can find me at Case Aiken, except for on Instagram where I am going by my aim screen name from high school, ah which is Quetzalcoatl5 because I both was pretentious at the time and also was making things deliberately hard for people to spell. ah And so yeah, that's Q-U-E-T-Z-A-L-C-O-A-T-L-5 because I realized that that's a hard one. um And again, you can find me on on podcast stuff. ah You can find me at Another Pass, which is a movie analysis show. 02:12:13.84 Case (he/him) and Men of Steel, which is a Superman and Superman adjacent appreciation show. ah You can also find my YouTube series, Superman Analogues at the Certain POV Media ah YouTube channel. Certain POV is the podcast network that my shows are a part of. And I put on these little like five minute-ish breakdowns on why Superman type characters are interesting on there. So if you're looking for something like that, check that out too. 02:12:35.15 Jala & Dave Yeah, absolutely do that. We will have links in the show notes and Dave, where can you be found on the internet? Uh, you can find me pretty much through, um, either the Fireheart Media website or through, um, monsterdear.monster. I am otherwise for social media, pretty much only on Bluesky now. So I'm at, uh, senplus@bluesky.social. Yeah. Where you retweet stuff? 02:13:06.83 Jala & Dave I believe it's called reskeeting, which sounds always bad. So we're not doing that. We're we're not calling it that. So, uh, as for me, you can find me anywhere that I may be found at jalachan, including jalachan.place where you found this episode and all of the others. So until next time y'all take care of yourself. Remember to smile and keep on watching your pillar of CR TVs. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/fireheartmedia. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]