Bad acting and bad direction will result in a bad movie
Per Wikipedia:
According to reports at the time of the production and interviews with some members of the cast and crew, the original version of the movie had a disastrous test screening, so producer Ronald Shusett was brought in to re-shoot around 40% of the movie and add more character scenes and humor. Emilio Estevez also mentioned how director Geoff Murphy let them down by focusing too much on action in his original cut of the film. Geoff Murphy claims that there was interference from production company Morgan Creek and that he asked for his possessory credit to be removed.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freejack#Production
I always liked it as a kid, but yeah, it's clearly a movie that had a lot of trouble and the results speak for themselves. It's a neat idea, at least.
100% one of the coolest ideas for a movie I remember seeing as a kid. I never really liked watching the majority of the movie, even on repeat watchings as a teen.
Reshooting 40% of the movie makes sense, but the concept of this movie was frequently in my imagination as a kid. A+ initial concept
Perhaps it was a already a washed up idea, but at the time, Freejack had a brilliant concept idea that totally hooked me at the beginning of the movie.
Then the movie seemed to have almost no special effects and to be set in a future that looked too much like the present and the cars and tanks didn't look amazing at all. Freejack was from 1992 and the world had already seen sci Fi marvels as Back to the Future Part 2 which, defects aside, really "looked like the future"
Still, the movie had a pretty good ending with the dead billionaire stalling the hero in order to capture his body and the main character's posing as such billionaire after having managed to screw with the takeover procedure (and making up the confirmation code), and making a mistake afterwards showing he knew how to drive (when the billionaire didn't)
It was a deeply flawed movie with terrible special effects, but it had an engaging premise and some smart ideas along the way.
Or, Cyberpunk is a Free Jack game.
I had never heard of this movie, but the premise seems similar to the Netflix show Altered Carbon, which is also cyberpunk and I enjoyed.
season 1 was awesome. season 2 sucked though
Yeah, rich people downloading their consciousness into a younger body isn't really a unique idea. There was also a Batman Beyond episode and a Ryan Reynolds movie with the same plot. The first season of Altered Carbon did a great job with it though.
I think it was a plot point in Stepfather Bank, which, now that I remembered it exists, I think might be a bit cyberpunk too. I'll have to reread it at some point.
Altered Carbon is based off of a series of books my Richard Morgan. Highly recommended!
Yeah, it wasn't a good movie. Lacked vision, budget, and direction. They just ended up with a generic action movie and expected the star power to carry it.
Boring entertainment is spot on to the true cyberpunk vision though, so it's perfect you see
Better than the novel it was based on, though. Amazing soundtrack, too.
Cyberpunk
A place for discussion of all things cyberpunk (not primarily Cyberpunk 2077)