Theme: AI

Johnny Mnemonic (1995) – Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer, Dolph Lundgren and Udo Kier

This movie features Hackers style music & visuals, which is not surprising since it’s from the same year (1995).

It also features agents in long black leather coats, and probably inspired many things about The Matrix, except that this movie is about the data being stored inside a cybernetically enhanced human, rather than the human’s mind being captured by a virtual matrix. Although there is one woman who lives on in a virtual realm after dying, like a kind of AI. Keanu Reeves‘s character Johnny even does a bit of Tai Chi in this movie, early on, to help cope with brain capacity overload.

Dina Meyer plays Jane, the cybernetically enhanced bodyguard Johnny hires to save his life and help him get where he needs to be. They become quite close.

A youngish Dolph Lundren (in his mid to late 30s) with long messy hair plays one of the main baddies.

Udo Kier (the pureblood burnt in the sun, in Blade) plays one of the main characters early on, who double crosses Johnny then is killed by the Yakuza when Johnny gets away.

This movie was probably great in its day, and is still quite memorable but the pace is a bit slow and the action is a bit mild by the best of modern standards. Still, the acting quality is real even if they seem to be slightly winging it with a shallow plot and loose script put together on the fly.

By half way through, this movie looks set for a Below Average rating, but that’s no knock on the acting level, it’s more due to the datedness of the special effects and the tameness of adrenaline, and with all that considered, it’s quite a respectable rating. Some bits are of course better than others. But the second hour is very trashy throughout — barely watchable in fact. So I think a final score of So-So is plenty fair, if not generous.

Free Guy (2021) – Ryan Reynolds and Jodie Comer

Free Guy (2021)

This is a childish and weird but fun, creative movie, put together quite well, and well led by Ryan Reynolds (from Deadpool) who plays an NPC character in a game, who calls himself Guy, who somehow gets a spark of free-thinking ability and self-awareness then learns how to do things the non-NPC way.

Lil Rey Howery does a good job playing Guy’s best friend.

Jodie Comer does a good job playing Guy’s girlfriend — the lead female.

As weird as it is, it actually works very well. I’m going to rate this movie Above Average which is an impressive score considering this is not my preferred genre, and so much of it represents a genre I normally loathe!

Tron (1982) – Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner and Cindy Morgan

Tron is a very early computer game themed AI movie. This has to be one of the earliest hacking themed movies too. It tells to story of AI trying to take over the world, from inside a video game system. The visuals are laughable by modern standards. For something so graphically dated, the acting is fair and the plot is thin, but it’s quite distinctive and holds attention enough to warrant a Watchable rating. It was probably quite high budget in its day — the cinematography and special effects resemble what may be found in an early Bond movie from the same kind of era.

Sequels

If you enjoyed this early niche cult gaming movie, check out its sequels made decades later: Tron: Legacy (2010) and Tron: Ares (2025), which I rated Average and slightly Below Average respectively — both several levels up from the original, mainly thanks to modern cinematography but also staying true to the original concept and investing fairly in cast, story, props, etc.

Tron: Legacy (2010) – Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde

Tron: Legacy is quite faithful to the original concept, even continuing with a lead role for Jeff Bridges while focusing more on his son. It’s got a similar storyline but has been upgraded to modern style in both special effects (great) and drama (irritating).

With strong-ish new cast members and upgraded effects, while staying true to the original cult classic theme, the producers have clearly taken this movie seriously, and I have done too: I rate it Bang Average which is a few levels better than the original (by today’s standards). What could be improved? Well the script was all over the place without ever much happening, which is a bit weak in a 2 hour movie. It’s more than watchable — it’s quite entertaining at times — but the plot is lacking; and the cast could be improved too, even though it wasn’t particularly weak.

Tron: Ares (2025) – Jared Leto and Greta Lee

I’m not a fan of the privileged Chinese-Jew lead character in this movie (Even Kim, played by Greta Lee) — it’s clear she was gifted this role for her family allegiance rather than any significant talent. The next main female, Athena, played by Jodie Turner-Smith, a privileged black tomboy woman, wasn’t any better either. Indeed, most of the cast are pretty weak here too — it’s a typical LGBT lineup for 2025. The lead antagonist warrior, called Ares, played by Jared Leto, is alright, but it’s not enough to make the movie any better than Below Average. The script is messy for the most part, and hard to enjoy early on — the first half hour was especially weak, but it does improve after half an hour. It gets particularly interesting around half way through, when Ares goes rogue from his evil dictator in the human world, because he doesn’t want to kill Eve Kim, the lead female who he was hunting earlier. By 1 hour in, this movie looks set for a Below Average rating — not quite as good as the second movie from 2010, but better than the original from 1982.

This movie also benefits from an aged Gillian Anderson (from the X Files) playing Elisabeth Dillinger, the mother of Julian Dillinger, the main baddie, played by Even Peters — another typical annoying modern casting choice.

There’s some good action here — the main reason I rate it so low is because of the pace, with all the slow annoying soppy Netflix-grade drama, and even the fast action scenes are very slowed down. Add that to the annoying modern casting style and this movie is a clear level down from 2010’s even though it does have some strong special effects.

Upgrade (2018) – Logan Marshall-Green

This movie is like a cross between Knight Rider and Terminator, mixed in with a massive dose of dull suspense-minded hollow drama.

It starts off a bit boring, in a non-descript way, but within the first 15 minutes the backstory is built — an AI controlled car went out of control, crashed, and a gang of thugs murdered the wife when they were both injured. A bit gloomy, to say the least, but it sets the scene for what’s to come, which gets quite cool at times. By half an hour in, the star of the show has been tricked into getting an ‘upgrade’ courtesy of an AI chip; although if you’re seen this movie before, you may be tempted to fast forward to the slow, dull & gloomy suspenseful between patches — between the talking and the real action — there’s a lot of them, especially early on.

The back end was a mix of semi cool scenes and distastefulness. The very ending was distasteful too. Considering its balance of pros & cons, overall I rate it Bang Average.

Alita: Battle Angel (2019) – Rosa Salazar and Keean Johnson

Aside from being a transhumanist sci-fi from 2019 — obviously helping to push a particular agenda relating to a particular problem-reaction-solution from around 2019 – Alita: Battle Angel is otherwise an entertaining movie with good action. A bit juvenile, but well scripted, well executed and consistently engaging.

I rate this movie Decent, which is quite complementary considering its juvenile aspect – the strong genre and execution kind of make up for that. It’s got a cool concept at times. Its inter-galactic souped-up transhumanist genre and its juvenile quality makes it a bit like a cross between Blue Beetle (DC movie with Xolo & Bruna), Dark Angel (series with Jessica Alba) and some kind of CGI-heavy semi-cartoony thing like Transformers perhaps. It it were a bit more grown up and human, without losing the slick action and excitement factor, it might resemble Dark Angel or Elektra or The One (with Jet Li) or even something more like The Matrix and it would be rated accordingly, but it’s not, so we’ll settle for a Decent rating.

A heavily CGI-d up version of Rosa Salazar plays the lead female and the main star of the movie, while Keean Johnson plays her boyfriend and one of the lead male roles. Christoph Waltz also plays one of the main male roles, as the doctor who originally finds Rosa’s character then fixes her and becomes her mentor in a very limited way. These main characters all give adequate performances but nothing that wows, while a few other supporting cast members do a pretty good job.

Elysium (2013) – Matt Damon, Jodie Foster and Sharlto Copley

Elysium (2013)

Elysium starts off with an interesting dystopian sci-fi concept but rather gritty screenplay. In the first half hour, not much happens to the least cast member except he receives a fatal dose of radiation poisoning in his workplace and is given five days left to live. This urges him to rekindle his old master criminal ways in order to reach the satellite city called Elysium – a place for the privileged to live away from the rest of humanity on Earth. He attempts to get there in order to heal himself, but it’s a dangerous mission – families have tried before and they tend to get shot down indiscriminately.

There’s a nice bit of action before the end of the first hour.

Much of the second hour constitutes a bit of an anxiety & depression fest – probably good for horror-drama junkies, but not so much for smooth action hero movie connoisseurs. Easily skippable if you’ve seen it before. Fortunately, that toxic junk at least intermittently subsides to make way for some half-decent action. This movie had a lot of potential to be a lot better than it eventually was though. Unfortunately, due to the amount of bad mixed with the good, I really struggle to rate it Above Average but I will on account of its genre & stars, and its resultant memorability.

Matt Damon manages to shave off his Jason Bourne identity (see what I did there?) by going bald in this movie – it’s not pleasing on the eye but at least it succeeds in creating a fresh new persona for this movie – this one having much more of an air of vulnerability from the start, since he gets radiation poisoning early on – quite fitting for a regularly toxic movie experience.

The fight scene at the end is dry and over dragged out – easily skippable, even though it’s kind of fast action – reminiscent of a Tony Jaa movie – no flying elbows, but just as spiritually dead.

Promoting radiation chamber type beds as cancer cures, at the end, was the icing on the cake – quite inkeeping with the Big Harma theme since the start.

On the plus side, the main baddies are played quite well by Jodie Foster (brains) and Sharlto Copley (brawn). Many of the cast members are pretty good, even if the movie is a bit thin and nasty while posing like it’s strongly representing a really cool genre.

Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015) – Robert Downey Jr and Elizabeth Olsen

Avengers: Age Of Ultron (2015)

This movie tells the tale of an AI being, determined to kill all life on Earth, and the Avengers try to stop it. These Avengers include those we’ve met before, plus a few new ones.

Doubling down on the mind-control theme from the first Avengers movie where Loki was able to turn Hawkeye into his puppet and caused everyone else to argue among themselves; this movie sees Loki’s sceptre used to create a woman (played adequately by Elizabeth Olsen) with the ability to trap people’s minds in their own worst nightmares, and when she eventually becomes an Avenger she starts throwing red Chi Balls around with her mind. Her normal name is Wanda Maximoff but she’s due to eventually become known as The Scarlet Witch (the main antagonist in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, 2022). Only the AI antagonist called Ultron is immune to her mind control powers in this movie, and becomes her leader early on. As a result, all the superheroes start daydreaming and living out their worst nightmares – a sneaky way to bring an extra large dose of horror, or at least irritation, to our screens. This, combined with a much larger helping of slow & muddled drama throughout, means I can’t rate this movie any higher than Bang Average, on a par with Guardians Of The Galaxy from the year before.

Disappointingly but unsurprisingly, they’ve also doubled down on fighting among themselves (even when not mind controlled). It’s like an episode of Eastenders on steroids. Not what a smooth action hero movie connoisseur really wants to sit through. But there are some good bits of course. There’s even a good bit of humour once or twice.

Like most Avengers movies, Robert Downey Jr playing Tony Stark and Iron Man is probably the main character here. Chris Hemsworth has some good screen time as Thor, but not as much as I’d like, and Chris Evans has a lot of screen time as Captain America – probably more than I’d like. Samuel L Jackson makes a strong contribution as always, playing Nick Fury, the Director of SHIELD. Mark Ruffalo puts in a curious performance as Bruce Banner and The Hulk. Scarlett Johansson puts in a decent performance as Natasha Romanoff, although not as strong as her appearance in Iron Man 2 when she seemed younger and more energetic. There were many more significant characters besides these ones too.

Iron Man 3 (2013) – Robert Downey Jr

Iron Man 3 (2013)

The first 10 minutes are a mix of plot-building drama with mild humour, and a couple minutes of irritating anti-Islamic conditioning. We also get a nice little action scene where Robert Downey Jr shows off some of his Wing Chun skill, before putting on his latest Iron Man suit at super high speed.

The plot takes some refreshing twist within the first hour, and although it dries up a bit in the second hour, the action is generally decent throughout – there are some really strong scenes from time to time, and plenty more mediocre. There’s also several instances of good humour in this movie. So I have to say it outperforms Iron Man 2 (2010) as well as The Avengers (2012) where Iron Man was one of the main characters and pretty much stole that rather muddled show. But Iron Man 3 is not quite as original or awesome as the original Iron Man 1 from 2008 of course, so ultimately I rate Iron Man 3 as just Above Average for an action hero movie – just one step down from the original which I rated as Decent. With a bit more of a smooth & comfortable, confident vibe, and a bit less scary, depressing and irritating, I would have rated this movie equal to the original. It would have been nice to see at least one of the women being kind of happy but every single one of them is a tormented soul – especially Iron Man’s woman Pepper Potts played by Gwyneth Paltrow who is literally tortured throughout this movie. It’s not meant to be a horror movie, it’s meant to be a cool action hero movie, but what do you expect from Hollywood – they’re addicted to horror and usually find a way to make it ruin an otherwise pretty cool movie.

Guy Pearce plays the main villain in this movie, called Aldrich Killian. He does a decent job of it.

Ben Kingsley plays the villain early on – a terrorist called The Mandarin who’s really just an actor called Trevor Slattery who didn’t think anyone was being hurt. His acting was excellent here.

Don Cheadle also returns as a core character, Tony Stark’s old friend Colonel James Rhodes who has his own suit and calls himself Iron Patriot – formerly called War Machine. He does an alright job here.

Iron Man 3 is eventually rounded off with a strong dose of conditioning against those who preach caution toward technological advancement. I’d guess this plus the anti-Islamic conditioning earlier on were probably what got this movie sponsored.

Iron Man (2008) – Robert Downey Jr

This already feels like an old movie because it’s been around so long and was one the very first movie produced by Marvel Studios, and the first to come under the umbrella of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it’s still pretty cutting-edge by today’s Marvellous standards.

Of course it’s not the first movie based on Marvel Comics – there were over a dozen before it, including the early Blade, X-Men and Spider Man movies, and even Howard The Duck going back to 1986.

Iron Man stars Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark, the main shareholder and chief inventor for the world’s top weapons designer & manufacturer. Then he sees the damage his weapons are doing even to Americans and turns his back on the former business, instead focusing on developing his Iron Man suit that turns him into a one man army and a superhero.

Gwyneth Paltrow (in her mid 30s) plays Pepper Potts – Tony Stark’s beloved PA.

The main antagonist – initially the friendly VP of Stark International, called Obadiah Stane – is played quite convincingly by Jeff Bridges. He eventually builds his own Iron Man suit after analysing the wreckage of Tony’s prototype, and becomes known as Iron Monger.

Of course, as with any war related movie, there’s a lot of narrative pushing and conditioning built into this movie, which sickens me, but looking past that, the budget is good, the action is good, the acting is good, and the plot development is not bad either.

Iron Man has some slightly stomached churning moments, bordering on horror, such as when Tony realises his heart has been replaced with a device powered by a car battery, and when the main antagonist pulls out that device later on. This, and the rotten America vs Middle East typecasting, also brings down my overall score of the Iron Man movie, causing me to rate it about equal to the likes of Doctor Strange, Venom, Black Panther and Blue Beetle. I rate it slightly weaker than the likes of Aquaman, Black Adam and Wonder Woman, mainly because their most thrilling moments are a bit stronger and/or their plots are a bit richer, and/or their downsides are less of an issue – but there’s not much in it. I rate Thor even higher. If we compare the best moments in Iron Man (such as when he makes his escape from the terrorists’ cave, and when he has a run-in with the F-22 raptors) vs the best moments in Thor (such as when Thor infiltrates the black site to go after his hammer, and when he regains his powers just in time to deal with the Destroyer robot that Loki is controlling) – they’re not massively dissimilar in terms of entertainment value. Thor’s scenes – especially the one where he goes after his hammer – may possibly be more credible, relatable and built up with better momentum, but the general entertainment value including good humour and healthy vibes throughout the movie Thor go a long way towards its ranking too.

Universal Soldier: The Return (1999) – Van Damme, Goldberg and Michael Jai White

Universal Soldier: The Return (1999)

This movie offers a novel twist on the already creative concept established in the original, while also featuring strong new co-stars in Bill Goldberg and Michael Jai White. This is actually the fourth movie in the Universal Soldier franchise, but the second & third did not feature Jean-Claude Van Damme or anyone else of note (the main protagonist in both was Matt Battaglia) so you’ll be forgiven for watching the first movie then jumping straight to this one – the fourth.

We don’t see enough of wrestling superstar Goldberg in this kind fast action movie – he makes a very convincing tough guy. Plus, this is easily one of Michael Jai White’s better performances – the robotic superiority-complex role matches his real life demeanour.

Overall I rate this a Decent movie – it’s a bit less of a revelation than the original but still quite creative with a fresh new concept, and features multiple action superstars, but on the downside the plot is a bit one dimensional – the script could have easily been developed more to make it an even better movie. There are multiple females in this movie, including a reporter and a fellow UNISOL, but none of them are particularly worth mentioning – they all deliver bland performances.

Fun fact: this was actually Van Damme’s last widely-released-in-cinemas English-language movie until 2 and a half decades later, when he released Darkness Of Man in 2024 (excluding movies where he wasn’t the main star, such as The Expendables 2 in 2012). Maybe he wasn’t totally playing ball with Hollywood’s sickest shenanigans, but they eventually rewarded him for keeping quiet during the deceptions of the 2020 era? Or maybe his movies had only a small niche audience? The fact that Inferno (1999) had only a limited cinematic released is odd, and the fact that The Order (2001) went direct to video is outrageous.

Further Sequels

If you enjoyed the original Universal Soldier movie from 1992, as well as this one – Universal Soldier: The Return – from 1999, which is the second one starring Van Damme; then you’ll be pleased to know there are a couple more decent Universal Soldier movies to enjoy after this one.

Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009) rekindles the rivalry between Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, then they both come back again for Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012) with the addition of Scott Adkins as the main protagonist in the final movie. Both of these movies from 2009 & 2012 also make a significant role for Andrei Arlovski, the former UFC heavyweight champion who still holds the record for the most wins in UFC heavyweight history to this day.