Keanu Reeves Cyberpunk Movies Triple Feature Review

[00:00:00] This podcast is a production of Unfiltered Studios. If you would like to know more about joining Unfiltered Studios, please visit our website at unfpod.com for more information. The year is 2021. The last hope for mankind has been entrusted to a lone courier known as Johnny Mnemonic. Johnny, who are you?

[00:00:25] Now, he's a threat to the powerful, a target to be eliminated, and this summer, he's the future's most wanted fugitive. Keanu Reeves is Johnny Mnemonic. Rated R. At Theaters Friday. Cool it, you guys. Step back. Frack and frack. Ernie's on the attack. I'm desperately afraid. Deranged, trippy, and extremely funny. Gentlemen, you are about to witness the perfect homemade silencer.

[00:00:56] That sure is some silencer. A pitch-perfect portrait of life in deadbeat slacker dome. Kidney, kidney. Richard Linklater's funniest movie in years. Yes, but no. But yes. A scanner darkly. Rated R. At Theaters July 7th. There is a reason human cloning is banned. Initiate.

[00:01:20] We stole millions of dollars worth of bionine equipment. I didn't define everything natural law there is. Just to lose you again. Those three subjects are our property. How could you do this? Replicas. Rated PG-13. In Theaters January 11th. We missed. We loaded.

[00:01:50] We edited. Sometimes we get so deep into conversation that we have separate segments worthy of their own place in the sun. Here is a reshuffled mini-episode. I mean, I've tried reading As Canary Darkly. And that's... There's a lot of stuff going on in that.

[00:02:18] Because I was a big fan of that movie with Cameron Reeves. That Rose Grove animated movie. You beat me to the segue. That's... Yeah, that's... But it's true. Yeah. Trying to, like, understand Philip K. gets text in As Canary Darkly is just a lie. Because he goes back and forth so much. And it's very complicated. It's a very difficult read to do. So I don't know if anyone's read that. It's kind of like Asimov, kind of, in a way. He's got this premise. And you're just trying to make sense of it all.

[00:02:46] Because, like you say, you've got to put your imagination to the test. And much like Lord of the Rings or Dune, you've got to make sense of all the way. The dialects and how everyone's talking. How did the animated movie for Scanner Darkly compare to the book? I like the animated movie very much. Because they took that plot and they made it more cohesive. They made it understandable. The book, there's just, like, a lot of stuff going on.

[00:03:14] And I just, in my mind, I could just not follow all the storylines that were going on in that book. The movie, I think Richard Licklater. And he got the honors of his daughters to make that movie. He wanted to be fair. And I think the movie does a good adaptation of the book. Because there's just so much stuff in that book.

[00:03:37] And the way that Licklater was able to streamline it into a cohesive storyline was actually very, very good. And I think they all have a homage to respect to Licklater and that one. So, yeah. Because that story is about, late to later, you know, was how he did at his house where he had a whole bunch of people in that house. Experimented with drugs and everything. And, you know, he was part of that lifestyle.

[00:04:06] And he wanted to create a story about how these people... He's got personal experience. So, it's basically his exploits, you know. Yeah. With his acting friends, you know, reenacting it. You know. And it forms that perfect cyberpunk trilogy with Keanu Reeves. And we're not talking The Matrix. We're talking, you know. Giant Monarch. Giant Monarch. For the game. Scanner Darkly. And then, have you guys seen Replicas? Yes. Really? Okay, perfect.

[00:04:35] So, that one just flew under the radar. What about... Well, Soldier, too. Soldier is another late. It's all the same deal. You're Soldier. So, they're all in the same universe, huh? Yeah. Basically. And... But, I mean, I truly recommend Replicas. Because, like, Keanu was playing a straight face. Jekri Necmanoff, who had worked on a lot of different thriller movies and TV,

[00:04:58] just had a really decent script of just a mad scientist realizing that this corporation is going to probably threaten his family. So, he... They do a good job of just having some suspense. You don't know what he's going to do in that lab. And they reveal it when it needs to be revealed. But, I mean, mnemonic, yeah. Same deal. I know, Vern, you love it uncut. I kind of had a love-hate relationship with it growing up. I'm like, there's some cool ideas. It's kind of junky.

[00:05:26] But then I see the uncut Japanese-German cut. I'm like, that's the version everyone should have seen. Now we know why everyone's shooting at him. Now we... Totally different narration. You know, the theatrical felt like a total recall knockoff. The uncut version definitely felt closer to Blade Runner. And nowadays, Altered Carbon. You know, that whole... Here's the city. Here's where he lives. He's not a nice guy, but he doesn't mean anything ill will.

[00:05:54] But he's a career criminal, so the people he's doing business with, you know, are going to try and kill him. But, you know, what would you do if you had all this info downloaded into your head? And what a cool catchphrase. Yeah. You gotta offload it, otherwise your brain is toast. Your head could literally explode. I'm very curious. And I'm curious, too, when they made the black and white version of Giant Emonic. I think it was more recent. Like, it just was them testing out Blu-ray. Okay.

[00:06:22] I mean, why did they put the director's cut version of that into there? I think they're still working on it. They're working on it? Okay. But you guys did mention some other cool points. I mean, Philip K. Dick, it's kind of like Outer Limits. It does make you wonder, you know, why did it take a while for Hollywood to fall in love with his material? You know? Well, that's why every director takes time because they bring out something new.

[00:06:52] And look at the time frame. Like, it took years for William Gibson to be adapted to Amazon, you know? Yeah. But it was the 80s, too. And the 80s was focused on shrooms and trends. But still, yeah. A lot of it is ahead of its time. Like, Hollywood doesn't know how to adapt to certain things. Word. Let's use teenagers that are 30 years old. Well, to Vern's point, I mean, any other filmmaker probably would have goofed up Scanner Darkly.

[00:07:20] They would have probably overthought it. And the fact that he said, this has to be animated. You know, we got to have all these characters look like they're talking to the viewer. You know? Robert Downey, he'll bring his type of snarge. You know? Marie Cochrane, Winona Ryder will be their usual quirky selves. And yeah, Keanu's stretching himself a bit by, you know, doing his usual kind of deep narration. You know? And I think Ethan Hawke was in there also.

[00:07:50] I don't think, not Ethan Hawke. Surprisingly, he was. I know. Roy Cochrane, Willie Harrelson was in there. Harrelson, yes. Harrelson was definitely the same stuff. The whole thing with the bike, the missing wheels of the bike, or the missing gears on the bike was great. Yes. They can't put the simplest things that we could put together back together.

[00:08:12] And being the fact that it is set in the future of, like, I think it was, like, a few years ahead of us. But using that rotoscope animation technique makes it feel like it's in a different world, like a different environment. That's what I couldn't remember either. If Sin City had tried that? No, Sin City was black and white. Yeah, that was just, okay. It's a digital overlay. But, yeah, rotoscoping would be cool to look at the history of that.

[00:08:41] Like, when did that start being a thing? Ralph Bakshi, I imagine, was a good. Oh. I think it went back even further than that. Even with Disney, maybe even. I think a lot of the, like, Flesher cartoons used, like, rotoscoping. Oh, sure. A lot of, like, Disney stuff used rotoscoping. The animation of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White was a lot of it. And Lord of the Rings. Yep, Lord of the Rings. Yep. The Ralph Bakshis, yep.

[00:09:06] But he was the, sort of like the, Ralph Bakshis was the person that sort of, like, made rotoscoping a big technical aspect. Mm. Feature length. Feature length, yeah. Yeah. A lot of people were using rotoscoping as a way to, like, test stuff. So I know that Disney used rotoscoping as a way to, like, test movement out for animation. And then the animators actually used hand-dry animation. But they used rotoscoping as, like, a guide.

[00:09:33] So they had sequences where they were scoped over a woman dancing for Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. But then they used that, or so, made a template to do the hand-drawn animation. Mike and I were, and Gil were even hitting on Nick Park and some of the other stop motion. Mm-hmm. It seemed like sometimes they would do that, too. In those behind-the-scenes documentaries, they would have directors and actors on stage reenacting stuff.

[00:10:00] And they'd take the dailies and the animators would try and animate around that. Which is interesting. You know, it's not the same as, here's a green dot, you know, follow the dot. You know, look at it. Yeah. And, Will, you got some great, great trivia here. Philip K. Dick is the Ezra Pound of science fiction. I have never heard it worded that way, but I will take your word for that.

[00:10:28] That piece of knowledge cost me $600 in 1995 for my intro to English, for my intro to American literature. That's where I learned who he was. Ezra Pound, for those who don't know, a poet and critic. Right. You know, he was in jail a few times during the Second World War. Anyway, but, yeah, he's one of those authors that is definitely of his time and definitely not an author that, you know, definitely grew up in the 60s and 70s in a literary sense. I mean, he's older than that. But Philip K. Dick is deep.

[00:10:57] And, unfortunately, I think Minority Report, Total Recall, Screamers to a small degree, Blade Runner, of course. They're better movies than books. Oh, and Skinner Darkly. I've tried to read most of his books, and I did do that. I apparently didn't take enough pharmaceuticals in order to enjoy them. But, you know. We'll return after these messages.

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[00:12:54] She was teasing this guy with the sword, and she accidentally cut his dick. Oh my god, I'm dying. And then he started to enjoy it. I started going down the phone sex rabbit hole. You've got the wankers, and you jerk off in five seconds, and then they're done because A, they don't want to spend money, and B, they're quick. My stepfather had mania. If I'm yelling at one of my kids, that fear, that rigid fear. Mom even said to me, I hope you have a kid just like you. There are lots of people that are being bought and sold right now for profit.

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