Very loosely based on a short story by Stephen King, Brett Leonard’s original The Lawnmower Man tells the story of an intellectually disabled gardener, Jobe (Jeff Fahey) who assumes god-like powers when his employer, Dr. Angelo (Pierce Brosnan) uses him as a guinea pig for the radical VR technology he is developing for a conglomerate known as The Shop, who are determined to create a race of super soldiers.
When Angelo’s subject becomes superhuman, the stage is set for an epic battle for both Jobe’s mind and the future of the world.
A landmark film for its pioneering use of visual effects and helping to bring the concept of virtual reality into the mainstream, The Lawnmower Man is a fascinating artifact of early ’90s science fiction, with visuals that are clearly of their time, whilst remaining utterly spectacular (and often quite bonkers) in the sheer scale of their VR world building. It remains a film that demands to be seen on the big screen.
In Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace, Jobe (now played by Matt Frewer) is resurrected by a dastardly scientist who dreams of controlling the world through a computer chip that Jobe is to build for him. But a group of teenage hackers have other ideas in this supremely daft conflation of the first film, Scooby-Doo, The Goonies and Hackers.
For all its faults, this is no direct to video sequel, having been made on a significant budget. Offering a striking vision of a future, cyberpunk America, and more crazy VR visuals than you can shake a stick at, this is a spectacular, if troubled sequel to the original film.