The Lawnmower Man is a strange early 90s cyberpunk horror film very loosely based on a short story by Stephen King. Although its special effects are very much dated for its time, The Lawnmower Man's story remains oddly compelling. In it, a young man goes through a massive change from being developmentally delayed to having god-like powers.
Released in 1992, The Lawnmower Man came out before most households had internet access. The idea of a virtual world that connects to every aspect of people's lives was still a novel one. People hadn't yet shaped in their minds what that kind of world might look like. They also hadn't seen very many CGI effects used in movies. CGI was still being developed at the time, and the effects used were often blocky and cartoonish. However, The Lawnmower Man was able to get away with using such effects because it portrays a world of virtual reality. Plus, 3-D computer animation was cutting-edge at the time, despite how clunky it appears today. Still, The Lawnmower Man's limitations aside, the idea that a person might be able to transfer their consciousness into a computer simulation is an intriguing one.
In The Lawnmower Man, Dr. Lawrence Angelo (classic science-fiction plot. However, The Lawnmower Man stands out for the ideas it explores and the questions it asks.
How The Lawnmower Man Connects To Stephen King
The original title was Stephen King's The Lawnmower Man, but Stephen King sued the filmmakers because he felt the movie didn't have enough in common with his story to be considered one of his movies. In fact, other than The Shop mentioned above, the movie is completely outside of Stephen King's universe. Really the only connection The Lawnmower Man movie has to King's short story by the same name is a vague reference when Jobe uses the lawnmower "Big Red" to kill Peter's father. Other than that, the entire plot and all of the characters were fabricated by the screenwriters. Stephen King won the lawsuit, his name was removed, and The Lawnmower Man is not listed as one of his movies.
In Stephen King's 1975 short story "The Lawnmower Man", Harold Parkette hires a service to mow his lawn. The man who shows up has a lawnmower that mows the lawn on its own, while the man crawls behind it, naked and eating the grass. It turns out that the man is a satyr whose allegiance is to the Greek god Pan. In the end, the satyr-man uses his mower to ritualistically sacrifice Parkette to his god. It's not a long story and has nothing to do with virtual reality. Oddly, about the only real connection to King's work in The Lawnmower Man is The Shop, a government organization known for its dangerous experiments that sometimes get out of control. The Shop is connected to the Arrowhead Project from The Mist and the Lot Six chemical seen in Firestarter. Beyond that, it's clear the filmmakers wanted only to capitalize on Stephen King's popularity in order to sell their own movie.
What Dr. Angelo's Experiments Do To Jobe
Dr. Angelo is experimenting not only with psychoactive drugs, but also with virtual reality to enhance the cognitive experience. The idea is that the virtual world provides a lot more stimulation than the physical world, so he begins by using video games. His wish is to boost intelligence for someone like Jobe as a way to better society. As the treatments proceed, Jobe goes from not understanding how to play the game to being the best at it, far beyond most humans' capabilities. He begins to develop telepathy and can move objects with his mind. It looks as if Dr. Angelo's treatments are a success. Through the use of drugs and virtual reality, Jobe evolves very quickly into a human being with advanced capabilities.
Nevertheless, after an accident at his lab, Dr. Angelo decides to put a halt to the experiment because it is too dangerous, but Jobe continues himself. His goal is to reach the final stage of evolution, becoming pure conscious energy inside the VSI mainframe computer. By doing this, he will be able to reach all systems of the world. However, the project director as VSI reintroduces "aggression factors" into the experiment to see if Jobe can be turned into a super-soldier, which causes Jobe to begin killing everyone who wronged him in the past. He then transfers himself into the computer, becoming a purely virtual being. Dr. Angelo is able to stop him by encrypting the network, trapping him inside the mainframe computer, until he is able to escape.
According to The Lawnmower Man, the highest state of evolution is an escape from the physical world. If one is able to become pure energy, then they can live as pure consciousness without the limitations of a physical body. It's a pretty deep concept for a Hollywood sci-fi movie from 1992.
Why Jobe Wants To Escape Into The Virtual World
As Jobe evolves, he begins to look for more power and influence over the world. He finds this power in the virtual world, that can be shaped and manipulated to do and be anything. He believes that his developmentally delayed state as a human being was due to physical limitations. He is then able to escape these limitations and become all-knowing by leaving his body behind and becoming pure energy. In the virtual world, he will not only have access to unlimited knowledge, but will also have god-like control over his environment. The real question is: how much influence will he have over the physical world if he is trapped inside a virtual one?
Before Jobe becomes a part of the virtual world, he displays incredible influence over the physical world. He is able to get inside people's minds and manipulate them. At one point, he has virtual sex with someone and ends up erasing her mind. He is also able to scatter the molecules of some team from The Shop. With power like this, why would Jobe want to escape into the virtual world? It seems like he already has the ability to manipulate reality. Nonetheless, from the virtual world, Jobe may be able to reach out into the physical one to shape it as he pleases, blending reality with virtual reality until there is no longer any distinction between the two.
What The Lawnmower Man's Ending Really Means
In the final scene of The Lawnmower Man, Dr. Angelo and others hear a telephone ringing, followed by telephones ringing all over the world. This is to signal that Jobe has been reborn as pure energy inside the virtual world. However, the movie ends before it's known whether Jobe will have any control over the physical world from where he is now trapped. Today it's easier to see how Jobe could have power in cyberspace, perhaps acting similar to a virus on the web, absorbing all of the knowledge there is and creating his own paradise reality, but in 1992 telephones were used because it was the phone lines that connected everyone. The internet had yet to reach most households and hardly anyone had cellphones. It was a cutting-edge concept at the time. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to escape the needs and physical discomforts of the body and exist as pure consciousness and thought?
Before Dr. Angelo's experiments, Jobe was picked on by those who were stronger and smarter than he. It's natural for him to want to escape the limitations of his life. However, his transference into the virtual world could prove tragic as he is abandoning more than the simple injustices of the world, also giving up pleasure and joy. Can human consciousness exist as pure thought without going insane? What's more, as the only one of his kind inside the virtual world, it's a lot like being alone inside of a vast library. There's unlimited knowledge, but no connection to anyone else. Even if he is able to communicate with people from the physical world through the internet, he won't be able to find an intellectual peer and he may lose himself and his identity inside the virtual world until he is virtually nothing.
On the other hand, if Jobe is able to meld simulated reality with actual reality, then he can be a god. He will be able to shape reality as he chooses, rewarding those he sees as good and punishing those he sees as bad. The issue then becomes how he will be able to fairly make these types of judgments, or if he, in his intellectual omniscience, will choose to take a backseat and allow humanity to take its course without his interference simply because he no longer cares. By making himself a god, he makes his own existence far different than that of humanity, no more connected to humans than they are to ants.
All in all, The Lawnmower Man proves to be an interesting movie that raises some compelling ideas and questions. Look past its dated special effects, ignoring any connection it has to Stephen King, and the story is worth analysis. Not only is The Lawnmower Man about using technology to better mankind, but it's also about human evolution and the dangers of having too much power over reality.
