Lawnmower Man 2 is even worse than the original — yet it’s also weirdly prescient

This unwatchable sci-fi sequel feels downright prophetic in 2026

Do yourself a favor: Don’t watch Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace. Sure, you could boot up the 93-minute-long science fiction sequel on Tubi right now out of morbid curiosity, but even if you’re a fan of the original (and there are dozens of us), there is literally no good reason to subject yourself to the follow-up movie, which arrived in theaters three decades ago on Jan. 12, 1996.

Not only is Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace an unwatchable slog with almost nothing in common with the 1992’s Lawnmower Man — New Line Cinema dumped it in January, after all. But its plot (if you can call it a plot) is downright uncomfortable. Mostly because it got a lot right.

Let’s start at the beginning: Brett Leonard, the writer and director of Lawnmower Man, was inspired by early advances in virtual reality to make a movie about the technology. His film follows Jobe Smith (Jeff Fahey), an intellectually disabled gardener who submits himself to an experiment conducted by Dr. Lawrence Angelo (Pierce Brosnan). The doctor’s plan is to use a combination of VR and drugs to improve Jobe’s intelligence. It works… a little too well. Jobe develops superhuman powers, gaining the ability to manipulate reality as if it were a simulation and control the minds of others. Eventually, Jobe escapes into a computer system, becoming a being of pure energy in a terrifying climax that looks like a Windows 95 screensaver.

Lawnmower Man was a box office hit, largely because it was marketed as a Stephen King adaptation despite having absolutely nothing in common with his work besides the same title. (King’s short story is about a human-goat hybrid who uses his magic powers to mow lawns). The author eventually sued the production company, Allied Entertainment, to get his name off the marketing materials, but they refused to comply, even after losing in court.

A sequel was inevitable, but Allied made the unusual choice of moving forward without any of the original team (aside from one minor child actor, Austin O'Brien). Brosnan declined to return so his character was written out of the story, while Leonard was busy on another project. As for Jobe himself, the studio opted to recast its villain with Matt Frewer, an actor best known for playing computer-generated music-video presenter Max Headroom.

As a result, Lawnmower Man 2 feels unrecognizable when compared to the first one. The movie begins in the literal rubble of the original’s ending, with Jobe unearthed by a rescue team and promptly set to work developing new VR technology for a generically evil corporation. A title card then cuts to “Los Angeles: The Future” (roughly six years later in the timeline). We see a cyberpunk-esque vision of LA that mostly amounts to flaming trash cans and a popular new device called the “Eye Phone” (sunglasses and submerges the user into immersive virtual reality).

The story follows O'Brien’s Peter Parkette, now a 16-year-old hacker living in the LA subway tunnels with a group of friends and a dog. During their VR adventures, they encounter Jobe, along with Dr. Benjamin Trace (Patrick Bergin), the creator of virtual reality who’s lost control of the technology. They also discover Jobe’s plan to build a virtual city where he can rule over humanity as a god. As this scheme comes to fruition, he finds a way to overpower the safety controls put into place by his corporate handlers and takes control over the internet and all connected devices, unleashing chaos on Earth while broadcasting a message that encourages humanity to seek refuge in his virtual world.

It’s here that Lawnmower Man 2 feels weirdly prophetic. Watching Jobe wreak chaos on the planet with one virtual hand while guiding the refugees to technological salvation is a bit like watching real-life tech giants pillage the Earth’s resources to develop AI tools based on the promise that those tools may one day cure cancer, only to offer up video slop and sexual harassment bots instead. What’s the difference between Jobe and Sam Altman? At least Jobe has a sick oversized virtual sword.

Maybe I’m pushing the metaphor too far, but there’s not much else to mine from this movie. With a paper-thin plot and lackluster performances, Lawnmower Man 2 isn’t worth your time. The fact that it manages to muster up a warning about the dangers of trusting technology to solve our problems doesn’t exactly make for groundbreaking cinematic storytelling, but at the very least, it demonstrates that these are issues we’ve been grappling with for several decades.

Our current crop of tech disruptors promising to fix the world only to break it even further are just the latest in a long line of Jobe-like villains whose greatest sin is believing in their own superiority over the rest of humankind. Maybe we should make Atlman and the rest of them watch Lawnmower Man 2.

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Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace is streaming on Tubi.