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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

> The big breakthrough work was The Lawnmower Man (1992), a conceptually absurd film where scientist Pierce Brosnan uses VR to somehow turn an intellectually handicapped gardener into a psychic genius. What made The Lawnmower Man a hit was the ground-breaking computer graphic effects used to depict the virtual environment. An even sillier work was the sequel Lawnmower Man II: Beyond Cyberspace/Lawnmower Man II: Jobe’s War (1996), which had the psychic genius trying to become a messiah in cyberspace.

Lawnmower Man was both awesome and ridiculous. Loved it.

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>somehow turn an intellectually handicapped gardener into a psychic genius

waddya mean somehow? They got him to understand the Sacred Geometry. I saw it in San Francisco when it came out and the guy next to me said "oh shit! it's the SACRED GEOMETRY!"

Lawnmower Man is probably the strangest license ever. IIUC the story is licensed from Stephen King. That story has absolutely nothing to do with what happens in the movie. It's entirely about some person who morphs into a lawnmower. Has zero VR. There's a like 3 second VR scene in the movie of Jobe becoming a lawnmower but otherwise, zero connection. I guess the director or the producer just used it as an excuse to get funding then made whatever they wanted to make

It's been what, 30 years, but even the ending has way more cgi/vr than 3 seconds. The movie may not have been made had they not used the name of King's short story, which isn't all that good to begin with.

That said, I think the Johnny Quest remake had plenty of vr. It was pretty cool for its time.

I still want to give that hamster ball thing a go though, it looks fun. Also the obstacle flying game, the hardware for that could be made and I believe almost exists.

I think the trigger for that is that 1992 was around the time of the first commercial VR headsets. They were hugely cumbersome and low res but they worked. I remember playing Dactyl Nightmare with my family circa 1991. It was probably in the mainstream press and some Hollywood executive got overly excited and decided to insert it into whatever project was on hand.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product)

> which had the psychic genius trying to become a messiah in cyberspace.

And Jesus wept. For there were no more worlds to conquer.

There's a SNES game based on the movie that has some decent sections.

Shameless dual-plug:

The director of Lawnmower Man (and Virtuosity), Brett Leonard, presented at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality meetup recently. After everyone thanked him for his movies, he talked about how he is currently involved in using VR for remote physical and mental therapy.

https://www.ubiquityvx.com/about

Interesting to watch Lawnmower Man alongside Being There (where an intellectually handicapped gardener is merely perceived to be a genius)

i loved the first one and was so hyped for the sequel, what a disappointment

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