The 1980s were very worried that Satan was trying to get at their kids through nerd shit. Comic books, cartoons, and Dungeons and Dragons were all being influenced by the devil, because he needed dorks in hell to help invent the internet. The 1990s were very worried that our nerd shit would become Satan, and this mostly manifested as movies about the evils of virtual reality. None represented that extremely stupid genre as boldly and with their pants down as Lawnmower Man, a movie about your garden-variety idiot who becomes the digital devil thanks to video games. But weāre not here to talk about that.
The rogue video game scientist was played by Pierce Brosnan who brought a lot of class to this movie about evil polygons stealing our town dullards. The slow-witted Lawnmower Man was played by Jeff Fahey, and the movie handled mental disability with all the grace and subtlety one could expect of the ā90s.
Maybe thatās fine. The movie isnāt making fun of a specific birth defect or anything. They donāt specify whatās wrong with him, heās just medically dumb as shit. Exactly smart enough to mow lawns, no more, no less. Like thereās a whole breed of maintenance dummies who like the taste of paint and keep Americaās infrastructure sound. They call him the Lawnmower Man because he mows lawnsā¦ and also because he lives in a garden shed, and also because he prays to a cross he made out of lawnmowers, because this was originally a Stephen King joint and I love the man, I honestly do, but heās never met half an idea he didnāt think could be 47 pages.
But again, weāre not here to talk about that. Weāre also not going to discuss how Pierce Brosnanās character gets so excited about finding a largely unclaimed idiot that he immediately straps him into a VR rig and starts making him smarter by firing up the Make Smarter program, which consists of a brain and a hand that you use to grab Smart from the menu and drop it onto Brain.
Smart is the little red blotch. Be careful not to drag Grail onto the brain or youāll wind up with a deluded video game messiah, possibly even some kind of Cyberchrist. Oh, and obviously donāt drop Mantis on there. Honestly, I donāt know why Mantis is even still on that menu — how many fat-fingered video game scientists must be pincered in half before we move āForge Mantis Manā to its own menu?
Iām sorry. We arenāt going to talk about any of that. We certainly wonāt cover how all VR in the film has to take place while wearing a Tron suit in a spinning gyroscope.
The VR so complex it has to be run by military-grade supercomputers even though it looks like a screensaver that came pre-installed on a Ukrainian bootleg Dell.
āIs Doll computer; is just as good! You will be eight-tittied purple balloon in world of Peeps. You will love! $40. Follow to alley.ā
Oh man, we are definitely not going to talk about the bored housewife who canāt wait to molest a yard dope.
At this point enough Smart has been dropped in Lawnmower Manās brain that heās not getting lost in closets, but he is still way below the line of informed consent and the bored housewife knows this. She has to teach him how to kiss, even though sheās clearly still sticky from a threeway with Dunning and Kruger, because she thinks kissing is when one person sticks their tongue out like a curious earthworm and the other glomps it down like a hungry robin.
Then she stops sucking off his tongue like a frightened anime girl trying to placate a Decepticon and starts teaching him basic concepts:
And none of this is played for horror, or even laughs — itās supposed to show the audience how much heās grown: That he finally hit a maintenance groupieās low bar for molestation, the ultimate goal of all grass morons and pool dipshits. Hereās the very next scene!
Letās not talk about that.
I bet you think weāre going to talk about the VR sex scene, where Lawnmower Man lures his new girlfriend into the virtual world so he can segue out of real sex and into clumsy cybersex, the exact opposite dream of every computer engineer who worked on this film.
It looks like you wiggled the N64 cartridge while the intro was loading. Like something youād see rendered by a water-damaged demo 3DO in a shuttered K-Mart. It looks like you failed a puzzle in Myst, but I assure you thatās supposed to be hot. Even when they grind so hard they meld together into a sexual cyber-dragonfly…
The soaring and explorative soundtrack tells us: This right here, this is the beauty of love in the age of computers, and not an unpopular Moby video that even MTV2 wonāt play.
Then Lawnmower Man gets so carried away with gyro-boning that he turns into an Oddworld enemy and barfs stupidity on his girlfriend-
Until she turns into a bed idiot.
You know me pretty well. You almost certainly thought I was going to talk about that. I am not. Iām also not going to cover the way Lawnmower Man develops psychic powers by playing video games two hours a week:
And oh shit, I would love to talk about the time Pierce Brosnan says…
And Lawnmower Man ominously whispers…
But thereās no time to even mention it!
Because immediately afterward he turns fully evilā¦
And burns a priest in his church using the power of computer-fire.
Lawnmower Man gets revenge on his gas station bully — natural predator of the maintenance idiots — by mowing the manās brain with his VR powers, which canāt be exactly what it sounds like, surely, but it is.
It is.
Obviously Lawnmower Man turns into a floating virtual head.
Of course he kills a man by turning him into bubbles.
It almost goes without saying that he attacks a private security team with cyberbees.
If you can follow narrative arcs at all, youāve already assumed that Lawnmower Man uploads himself into the supercomputer — which actually withers his body in real life since computers drink blood — because he wants to be the internet.
Only he winds up looking like an early Aphex Twin video and moving like a puppet whose master is fighting off cyberbees.
We cannot discuss any of that stuff, itās all irrelevant, because what we absolutely have to talk about is the chimp murder.
Zoom in on a lab at night, two scientists arguing:
Theyāre fighting about the ethics of science as an engine of war. Weāre led to believe this is a super soldier training program, and then…
No, itās so much bigger than that. Theyāre deciding the fate of the best damn chimp Pierce Brosnan has ever had the pleasure of knowing. He loses the argument, of course, and we smash cut to a supercomputer using virtual reality to train a chimp for cyberwar.
Listen, what does a chimp care for graphics? Everyone knows the chimp eye canāt see above 10FPS. Why burn out your supercomputer rendering his little chimp hands when itās widely known that great apes only care for gameplay? Strap the little bastard into that K-Mart waterlogged 3DO and heāll be all-
I mean if you want to see something really funny you can make a little Tron suit for his chimp body and strap him into a gyroscope. If you wanna mess with an ape, that is like the second best way to do it. The best will always be basic sleight of hand. You ever done magic for an ape? They love that shit! Whereād the banana go? They have no idea. They donāt even have a guess. They just assume youāre a fruit wizard and they go nuts. But this is pretty hilarious, too:
You know this chimp fucking dominates at LAN parties. Little screeching son of a bitch hauling a gyroscope and an 8-ton supercomputer down the basement stairs just to dominate Devon at Quake II. Look how tiny that hitbox would be. Itās like heās always Oddjob.
But whatās the number one danger in teaching a chimp how to use a gun? Right. Itās that you taught a chimp how to use a gun.
So when the chimp picks the lock on his own cage and dresses up in his best mallsoldier gear, you know somebodyās about to get their ass shot and their face torn off.
He fires up his APE HUD, which is weirdly full of human words instead of icons of different tire swings and various states of chimp genitalia.
Then he steals a rent-a-copās gun…
And hereās the best scene in movie history.
Remember, this is not within the VR program. This lab actually designed an augmented reality helmet just for combat apes, and then left it around unattended. You canāt even blame the chimp for this. This is an elaborate suicide-by-chimp scheme gone awry. Pierce Brosnan was two offices down with a half-empty bottle of bourbon and an insurance plan that pays double if a zoo animal accidentally discharges a gun in the workplace and heās wondering whatās taking Mr. Tickles so long when heās never been more ready for the void.
Combat Ape flees for the exitā¦
But oh no, another security guard spots him, takes aim…
And itās game over, Combat Ape.
RIP, we should have known you better. This movie should have been called Combat Apeās Big Adventure, like a hyperviolent Curious George, and it should have ended with you bringing video games back home to your troop. But instead the saga of the digital murderchimp has ended in tragedy.
Then the title pops up.
THEN THE TITLE POPS UP.
All of this happened before the title! This is the cold open for Lawnmower Man! Scientists trained a warchimp to destroy robot gorillas in virtual reality so it stole a mallcopās gun and murdered its way out of the lab, only to die at the exit.
But thatās not what I wanted to talk to you about. I only want to talk to you about the combat apeās adorable little āwhatās up now, motherfucker?ā head nod before he pulls the trigger.
Isnāt that just the cutest?
Iām glad we could talk.
