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We know sequels are often tricky to pull off because not every movie indicates from the start that they plan on making a sequel, or it’s left ambiguous on purpose. Ridley Scott’s Alien was always intended to be a self-contained science fiction horror film. Then, after a James Cameron sequel, it became a science fiction action story, and it became easier for anticipation of a trilogy, and then a franchise, which began to have inconsistencies from its prior rules. The same occurred to The Exorcist and Saw movies as well, which got progressively more ridiculous with every film.
I raise the issue of single movies versus serials because the Lawnmower Man from 1992 was produced as a single self-sufficient movie with an open interpretation to Jobe’s ending: in the end he is going out of Cyberspace via an access backdoor, after which he leaves his body behind to become a digitized life form with capabilities to rule the world, The one thing that was cut and dry is, Jobe’s body and the lab was destroyed. To my amazement, Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace was created as… the first thing they did was retcon Jobe’s death. Considering how crazy the last movie was, this probably means it’s going to be a race to the bottom like my thesis at the beginning whithout this rejoinder table.
As the people winning the race to the bottom display a happiness which is astonishing to me, CEO of Virtual Light Institute Jonathan Walker and his personal assistant Jennifer evilly laugh on the Chiron chip while being surrounded by items which have probably been stolen from UNESCO.
VLI collaborated scientists to develop the tetrahedral computer chip “Chiron,” which had the capability of transforming the world. After the downfall of VSI Labs, Dr. Benjamin Trace emerged as the lead developer and envisioned a world where “Chiron,” could be used in a positive way. But the VLI had other plans and sought to sue him. As a result of this, Dr. Trace found himself voting among the legal system and suffering a loss. After seeing where humanity was headed, he retreated to a desolate desert in hopes to escape the evils surrounding him. In the period where Dr. Trace was emerging as a recluse, humanity had morphed into a dystopian civilization with the emergence of poverty. Cyber Los Angeles is where Dr. Trace’s son, Peter Parkette bee, emerges as a grown man. His character was played by Austin Taylor O’Brien, who was also featured in other movies such as ” Promised Land.”
Peter spends his time in the company of fun-loving vagrant computer hackers from the 1990s who are his age. These friends manipulate decent people to obtain digital currency and VR codes to access virtual cyberspace. Along with his girlfriend Jade (singer/actress Crystal Celeste Grant, Kids in America [2005]), her brother Travis (Sean P. Young, The Brothers [2001]), and their chunky friend Shawn (Patrick LaBrecque, Beethoven [1992], Backfield in Motion [1991], Heavyweights [1996]), they have great fun evading corporate spies and real policemen. This all changes with Jobe’s (now performed by Matt Frewer, who is recognizable from numerous sci-fi productions including “Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future” [TV-Channel 4], “Mutant X” [TV movie-FOX], “The Stand” [TV miniseries-ABC]) sudden emergence from Cyberspace. He looks as though he has risen back from the dead and appeals to his former bullish friend for assistance in locating Dr. Trace – before Jobe and Cyberspace are doomed.
Jobe in Cyberspace can’t stop marveling at the large-scale representation of the Chiron chip, the MacGuffin of this movie.
In this first role he plays, Jobe is an unconsenting, passive slave of VLI. The CEO, Jonathan Walker (Kevin Conway, Black Knight [2001], Slaughterhouse-Five [1972], “Gettysburg” [1993, TV miniseries-TNT]) is in need of the last piece of info missing in the Chiron chip and hopes that he could use Jobe to obtain it from Dr. Trace. VLI spent billions in Jobe’s return to cyberspace – reconstructing his cybernetic interface and face, healing his wounds, and even going so far as to keeping and feeding him after he was left a double amputee from his body going through near destruction. When that strategy fails, the CEO employs Dr. Cori Platt (Ely Pouget, Death Machine [1994], Curly Sue [1991], “Red Shoe Diaries” [TV-SHO]), a neuro- scientist sympathetic to losing causes like Jobe, to try to redirect the efforts of the crippled cyber-hacker to physically look for Dr. Trace. The intention is to use the Chiron chip to put VLI in total control of cyberspace and make every other online system useless, which would in turn give VLI a monopoly on world data management.
In his other position, Jobe is constructing a digital empire from which to wage war on mankind in this universe. The Chiron chip is the true centerpiece of his plan, exploiting the greed of VLI to centralize the world’s data under HIS authority. Jobe plans to return and decimate the world along with VLI. Our rag tag band of heroes must stop him within twelve hours.
Out of nowhere, minidiscs were manufactured as sophisticated storage of data. They were simply smaller, more vulnerable versions of CDs. It is obvious they looked awesome but lets face it, who uses them?
This was the third time I attempted to watch Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace, but I kept falling asleep because I was so bored. As I wrap up this review, I couldn’t help but speculate about what could have been. Most of the movie was horrible: the final sword-fight was badly choreographed, the sexual tension between the adult leads was non-existent, the visual effect compositing was awful (even for 1995) and the child actors in the last segment of the movie were severely mismanaged, so this movie definitely had room for great improvement. When Jobe talked about how people where being reborn “in the womb of Cyberspace”, his performance was lacking, but somehow perfect hopeful. The best phrase Frewer delivered was his line “let the material world fade away until only Cyberspace remained,” which was chilling when compared to his imagery where the material world, his actions…the world was crumbling apart.
In my honest opinion, Lawnmower Man 2 could’ve been way better if Jobe had to deal with a copy of his digital self floating in cyberspace, because let’s be real that concept is super cool and has endless potential to make a great sequel. This movie, however, is known to be terrible, and extremely hard to watch. It’s indeed a shame that many actors had to go through this nightmare of a film, so if any of you wish to watch it, do so on a registered platform so the actors can receive at least something for their work.
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