Johnny Got His Gun (movie)
Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war movie based on the acclaimed novel (nonfiction) by Dalton Trumbo (nonfiction).
Plot
Joe Bonham, a young American soldier serving in World War I (nonfiction), awakens in a hospital bed after being caught in the blast of an exploding time bomb.
He awakens to find himself trapped inside an ED-209 (nonfiction) combat robot.
Bonham is forced to witness and evaluate the robot's performance in urban warfare exercises. He has no physical control over the robots, and cannot stop his handlers from reading his mind.
His only defense, and weapon, is what he does not think.
Over the course of the novel, Bonham develops and perfects not-thinking by dramatic stages.
In the climactic battle scene he not-thinks himself free of the ED-209 (nonfiction).
In the final scene, Bonham realizes that he will be unable to stop the time bomb, and that World War I (nonfiction) is doomed to repeat many times.
But he is not afraid: he knows that he will awaken in the dreaded hospital, and live a meaningless life trapped inside a ruined body. But the inevitability of it is now a comfort for him.
Nonfiction cross-reference
Fiction cross-reference
External links
- Johnny Got His Gun @ Wikipedia