NEMESIS

NEMESIS. Albert Pyun, dir. Denmark: Shah/Jensen and Imperial Entertainment, 1992. Author of the film for legal purposes: Scanbox Denmark A/S. Rebecca Charles, script. Olivier Gruner, Tim Thomerson, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Merle Kenedy, Yuji Okumoto, Marjorie Monaghan featured players.

Action/Adventure SciFi flick with a postmodernish mise en scéne, stringing together, by a quick count with a lot of fast-forwarding, clichés from W. Gibson's Neuromancer and Count Zero, and the films ALIEN(S), BLADE RUNNER, the RAMBO series (1982-88), [[ROBOCOP (1987}[[, and TERMINATOR: all save RAMBO listed under Fiction or Drama. As summarized by M. Lloyd, "The Loneliness of Cyborgs," Pt. 2, plot involves "a conspiracty of cyborgs that are replacing human beings with cyborg replicas" (ML cited by name under Background)—cf. Futureworld, this section. See NEMESIS for humans vs. machines, digitalized humans contained (so to speak) within a machine (see under Fiction, J. Sladek's [[Müller-Fokker Effect, The|The Müller-Fokker Effect]), the fear of human's getting mechanized—that one might be "getting more machine than human"—high-tech surveillance, and a colloquy between the hero and a "Mr. Big" (our term) in a room with a dynamo on the borderline between modern and postmodern. In one scene, the imagery suggests a cyborg alliance with an unspoiled environment. Note hero's "Never!" to the boss cyborg's temptation: cf. COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT (q.v. this section); also note that eyes and eyes with glasses compete for attention with other body parts of interest to adolescent voyeurs of both sexes and/or various sexual orientations. Rev. briefly and very negatively by Judith P. Harris, Cinefantastique 25. 5 (Oct. 1994): 60. Mentioned as "a better cinematic depiction of cyberpunk sensibilities than the far larger budgeted JOHNNY MNEMONIC (film)" by John Thenon, in his rev. of NEMESIS 2 (q.v. this Category), Cinefantastique 27.7 (March 1996): 60.