In 1992, the original Lawnmower Man was far ahead of its time. Loosely based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, the cyberpunk film transformed a neurodivergent gardener into a sort of pre-Matrix badass in a virtual world. Starring Jeff Fahey as Jobe and Pierce Brosnan as Dr. Lawrence Angelo, it was a haunting, strange sci-fi horror movie, completely unlike anything else in cinema history. Well, at least that was true until January 12, 1996, when the film’s sequel, , hit theaters and attempted to completely reboot the concept with an almost entirely new cast.
Looking back three decades later, it’s not so much that Lawnmower Man 2 damaged the legacy of the original film; it’s that on paper, some of the bold reworking of the concept could have succeeded. Because one of the greatest strengths of the sequels is that having Matt Frewer play Jobe was, if you look closely, an improvement.
Taking place several years after the first film, Lawnmower Man 2 uses a group of hacker teens, completely unconnected to the events of the first film, as a plot device to re-enter the twisted cyberspace world created by Dr. Lawrence Angelo (now played by Patrick Bergin), and inhabited by a digital version of Jobe (now embodied by Matt Frewer).
Why was Frewer such an interesting choice to bring into the paranoid VR world of The Lawnmower Man? Well, because in some ways, Frewer’s appearance pioneered modern pop culture ideas of digital personalities. The metafictional AI character “Max Headroom” was played by Frewer in its various incarnations, including, most famously, a faux-talk show style series, as well as a drama series called Max Headroom, in which the quirky digital character advised ordinary humans throughout a variety of adventures and mysteries.
So casting Frewer as the disturbed and disturbing character of Jobe in Lawnmower Man 2 was a bit meta: Here’s an actor already known for playing a digital cyberspace character, but now here he is again, but this time basically an outright villain. In a sense, Matt Frewer playing Jobe in Lawnmower Man 2 is like the 1990s version of Andy Serkis taking on the role of Caesar in the Planet of the Apes reboots, after he was famous for playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings.
That being said, despite the stunt casting of Frewer as a more menacing, and frankly, sicko, version of Jobe, Lawnmower Man 2 fails not because it’s a sequel with most of the original cast absent, but because the plot is extremely nonsensical. The cyber-Macguffin of the film is something called the Chiron Chip, which is kind of like a master control hack of all computers on Earth. Interestingly, the original Lawnmower Man lacked this kind of Bond villain world-domination plot, which is part of the reason why Lawnmower Man 2 doesn’t feel like the original film at all. Had Frewer been allowed to play Jobe with fewer cliché motivations, the film could have worked. But, as it is, in this film, Jobe isn’t that different from the evil Jeff Bridges avatar, CLU 2, from semi-digital baddie wants to destroy the world.
Because the character of Jobe is neurodivergent, Lawnmower Man 2 is also guilty of a fair amount of ableism, especially through a 2026 perspective. These facts don’t make the film completely unwatchable today, but it is disturbing how much the film casually associates neurodivergent people with outright evil. Again, Frewer does his best to add some nuance to this role, but it’s a far cry from the coolness of Max Headroom or the originality of the first film.
Should you watch Lawnmower Man 2 today? The answer is a qualified maybe. If you need to see how small, would-be sci-fi franchises tried to stay alive in the 1990s, there’s certainly a history lesson here. If you want to see a decent, vintage cyberpunk movie, certainly, look somewhere else.