Analysis on "Johnny Mnemonic" (Short Story and Film)

When analyzing the movie on Gibson’s “Johnny Mnemonic” short story, any viewer who’d read the story can tell that it lacks the detailed descriptions and the rich vocabulary used by the author. As matter of fact, the movie has the visual aspect that enables the viewers to experience the story without relying on their imagination; it doesn’t need to engage in further character descriptions other than what people are watching, specially when it comes to characters not directly linked to the main conflict of the story. For example, how the “Magnetic Dog Sisters” are presented differ from short story to film. Originally the author plays with the readers’ imagination as he provides descriptions of these characters in a way that turns out to be different than the readers’ expectations… First, the author alludes to two “Sisters,” giving a sense of a family relationship, and then he mentions they are almost identical “as cosmetic surgery could make them” (with the exception one is white and the other one is black)….and then further the reader discovers it’s more like a transgender-lesbian relationship, as the author reveals they are actually lovers. In the movie, however, the black one is presented as a man dressed as a woman and they are clearly not identical at all, which differs from the description given in the short story. This is an example of how carefully detailed descriptions, whether implicit or explicitly, are presented in the story as opposed to the film, which main focus is the conflict surrounding the main character Johnny Mnemonic in a way that invites viewers not to pay that much attention to characters that are not of much importance within the story and whose identities reveal nothing let alone have any kind of effect on what’s happening to Johnny. However, the main emphasis of the story remains the same as both story and the film presents the audience with themes on artificial intelligence and the overall cybernetic world.