Top 10 tech tricks we're sick of seeing in movies

[Sporkman]

Definitely agree re most of them:


Think how awesome it was the first time you saw a lightsaber in action. Or how your mind was officially shredded when Neo mastered the Matrix. Technology in movies is cool. When artfully filmed, gadgets, gizmos, robots, and computers can captivate and amaze audiences.

But for every thrilling example of cool-*** tech, Hollywood seems to produce a tired, dated cliche...

Here, then, are the Top 10 tech tricks that are officially played out..

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20020527-1.html

[Dixon Bainbridge]

"Can you enhance it?"

Yes, by rewriting the laws of physics. :)

Nice article.

[ticopelp]

I love it when people bring up the "laughable" 3D interface in Jurassic Park (http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool-from-jurassic-park/).

The "dead cell phone" is kind of a tricky one. A lot of drama depends on isolation, and technology has made it pretty difficult to be isolated. You can't have a story about a guy getting lost if his GPS just tells him how to get home. But if you don't address the question, the audience will ask "why didn't that guy just use his cell phone"? So it's kind of a catch-22.

[Windows Nerd]

Article is totally bang on.

[hhh]

To say HAL was evil and had any personality other than innocence is to not have paid any attention to the movie at all.

"If these gadgets were real, those bleep and bloops would drive any user crazy." Posted on the forum for the OS that by default plays a bongo sound right and left.

[Pogeymanz]

To say HAL was evil and had any personality other than innocence is to not have paid any attention to the movie at all.

"If these gadgets were real, those bleep and bloops would drive any user crazy." Posted on the forum for the OS that by default plays a bongo sound right and left.

Agreed. This person missed the mark with HAL. Also, the whole computers with personality thing doesn't bother me anyway. The point is that the technology is so advanced that the computer is either sentient or programmed to behave like a person would. That includes being snarky sometimes.

[lykwydchykyn]

To say HAL was evil and had any personality other than innocence is to not have paid any attention to the movie at all.


Yeah, and the whole point of Marvin the android (and every other personality-possessing machine in HHGG) was to spoof machines with artificial personalities.

[CraigPaleo]

Think CSI and taking a blurry, dark spot in a photo and enhancing it to reveal an HD, detailed image of someone's face, license plate, or street name.

[whiskeylover]

Think CSI and taking a blurry, dark spot in a photo and enhancing it to reveal an HD, detailed image of someone's face, license plate, or street name.

A lot of people I know actually believe that you can bring back high res details to a blurry photo using computers.

[lisati]

Sometimes the effects are done in the interests of telling a story, with accuracy and realism taking second place to the storytelling. I'm sure we've all seen the mainframe tape drives that masquerade as a "computer" (e.g. as in the ST:TOS episode "Tomorrow is yesterday", I think there's an old Dr Who episode with Jon Pertwee which does this too) or the "viewer friendly interfaces"......

<side note>/me wonders how some of the not-so-tech-savvy users I know would cope with the technology available when I started using computers.</side-note>

[Verbeck]

And here's a list of the things computers can do in movies

http://www.inflection-point.com/jokes/88.htm

[CharlesA]

<side note>/me wonders how some of the not-so-tech-savvy users I know would cope with the technology available when I started using computers.</side-note>

Punch cards?

*hides*

[kevin11951]

Sometimes the effects are done in the interests of telling a story, with accuracy and realism taking second place to the storytelling. I'm sure we've all seen the mainframe tape drives that masquerade as a "computer" (e.g. as in the ST:TOS episode "Tomorrow is yesterday", I think there's an old Dr Who episode with Jon Pertwee which does this too) or the "viewer friendly interfaces"......

<side note>/me wonders how some of the not-so-tech-savvy users I know would cope with the technology available when I started using computers.</side-note>

Mixing IRC code, and HTML simultaneously? Hm... you're a dare devil...

[CraigPaleo]

Sometimes the effects are done in the interests of telling a story, with accuracy and realism taking second place to the storytelling. I'm sure we've all seen the mainframe tape drives that masquerade as a "computer" (e.g. as in the ST:TOS episode "Tomorrow is yesterday", I think there's an old Dr Who episode with Jon Pertwee which does this too) or the "viewer friendly interfaces"......

<side note>/me wonders how some of the not-so-tech-savvy users I know would cope with the technology available when I started using computers.</side-note>

Theatrical justice: Just like in the movie From Hell, someone had a lobotomy before the procedure was invented.

[KiwiNZ]

Has the writer not heard of "artistic license". I bet he is sick of birthday cards, sunny days, kittens and smiling babies.:rolleyes:

[NightwishFan]

Just watched this one:

18. If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen (See "Clear and Present Danger").

This bad movie I (for some reason) like a lot:

20. Computers can interface with any other computer regardless of the manufacturer or galaxy where it originated. (See "Independence Day".)

My machine has this feature. :)

23. Note: You must be highly trained to operate high-tech computers because the buttons have no labels except for the "SELF-DESTRUCT" button.

Well they certainly do these days. (Not mine) :/

25. Laptops always have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and performance similar to a CRAY Supercomputer.

[hhh]

And bongos. Kittens and bongos.

One thing that I'm sure was mentioned in another thread that should have been in this article was why oh why oh why in "The Departed" could you erase an undercover officer's entire career with the officer's personal password and the touch of a button?

[NCLI]

To say HAL was evil and had any personality other than innocence is to not have paid any attention to the movie at all.
Exactly. I agree with the rest of the article, but HAL 9000 was very realistic. He was never afraid, or angry. Sure, he said he was afraid, but that was because he was trying to manipulate Dave not to turn him off.

The only reason he killed the crew was that he felt that they were a threat to the mission, which was programmed to be his number one priority.

[KiwiNZ]

Also Spaceships and Lasers don't make a noise in space , Car tyre's don't squeal on grass/gravel and you are very unlikely to shoot a running man at 500 meters one handed with a hand gun.

Again it is called Artistic License.

[NightwishFan]

I just watched Firefly and was pleased to see that the gunfire and ship made no noise in space. I will bet most folks just thought someone muted the TV. :)

[Ric_NYC]

I'm tired of this kind of expression... This "open mouth" thing when they see a monster or something "different":


http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/7273/jurassicpark48jpeg20jpe.jpg

[NightwishFan]

Ha ha true, though I think I would look like that as well if I saw some monster attacking me. Of course that is before meeting up with that awesome hunter guy and plotting ways to sneak past the raptors. Jurassic Park... Good times :)

[Sporkman]

Just watched this one:


18. If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen (See "Clear and Present Danger").


Perhaps the file is in a shared UbuntuOne folder.

[NightwishFan]

Perhaps the file is in a shared UbuntuOne folder.

Does that work without refreshing? My Samba shares need a refresh.

[wojox]

The movie "Breach"

Robert Hanssen played by Chris Cooper


I wrote a program
last night using nothing
but ones and zero's just to see
if I could do it.

Six-hundred twelve bits
of encryption,
completely unbreakable.

[CraigPaleo]

Also Spaceships and Lasers don't make a noise in space , Car tyre's don't squeal on grass/gravel and you are very unlikely to shoot a running man at 500 meters one handed with a hand gun.

Again it is called Artistic License.

That's true in general, but to be more specific, in the case of movies, it's called Theatrical Justice or a Theatrical License.

[ShruggingAtlas]

Again it is called Artistic License.

Well, some artists need to have their licenses revoked :)

The article missed one thing, which has started annoying me recently, the total disregard for bandwidth constraints.

[CraigPaleo]

I'm tired of this kind of expression... This "open mouth" thing when they see a monster or something "different":


http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/7273/jurassicpark48jpeg20jpe.jpg

Then, said monster catches up with her while lumbering one step at a time while she's running, falling, tripping, and running. She hides behind a tree.. the monster is already on the other side to slice her throat! :cry:

[hhh]

Also Spaceships and Lasers don't make a noise in space ...
Cars don't blow up the minute they strike an immovable object?

This article is flat out lazy writing. Jakob Nielsen and the Wall Street Journal both did lists like this 4 years ago. How could the author criticize "enhancing" and not reference "Enemy of the State" by name?

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/2691/moviecomputerhack.jpg (http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/2691/moviecomputerhack.jpg)

[Sporkman]

Does that work without refreshing? My Samba shares need a refresh.

Hmm... Probably not..

[blueturtl]

If computers in movies were realistic:

An agent sits in front of a computer screen. It is not his, he has snuck into someone else's office. He starts moving the pointer and clicks at a file or folder he deems interesting. He waits. He waits some more. He double clicks again, to make sure he didn't do it too slowly the first time. He wearily eyes the hallway to make sure nobody is heading his way. He gets back to the terminal. Now there is an hourglass, but no clear indication of if stuff is happening or not. Suddenly, just when he is about to panic, the folder opens and he sees a file listing. He plugs in his portable memory device to steal the data he desperately needs to save the world/make things right with his wife and kids/prove himself to his superiors. The system throws a cryptic error with lot's of numbers and letters, on a blue background. He just taps the keyboard and he sees the desktop again. He gets ready to drag and drop the wanted file to his memory device but suddenly a new file manager window opens stopping him dead in his tracks. Must be that second double click coming to effect. Exasperated he clicks the close button to remove the new file manager window. This time nothing happens. The new window just sits there and the cursor has turned into an hourglass again. He tries clicking the 'close' button again. The file manager window is now white. He can move it, but he can't focus on the window with his files of interest in it. Why don't these things ever work he thinks to himself as he tries to find away to terminate the wanton windows. He manages to reboot the system. After logging in (his victim uses the default password) he can now retry his operation. He inserts his memory and reaccess the file folder he wants to copy. The copy process starts. The progress bar speeds along until it stops at around 89% and just sits there. The agent waits for ten more minutes and then has to abort because he hears people coming his way. So much for the narrow escape.

You see, things could be worse than what Hollywood likes to feed us. Who would want to ever watch a scene like this? :D

[NightwishFan]

I am so adding this to an indy film. :) It will be the epic opening.

[del_diablo]

Well, that would fit quite well in a comedy movie.

Well, I don't mind good abstractions, but at points it gets too ridicule. And even better: Lazy writing for the sake of lazy writing.
Well, Hollywood is more guilty, because Hollywood is better at spewing out crap movies(formla, no attempts at being creative, etc).

[lovinglinux]

One thing that bothers me a lot is that everyone now has "CSI-like" transparent monitor screens and "whiteboards", where you can see squat. Is ridiculous. Additionally, hitting any key makes exactly the photo of the criminal pop up, along with detailed information about his rap sheet, everything with state-of-the-art animations.

[ve4cib]

The "Zoom in" or "Enhance" one always bothers me, especially in modern-day shows. It bothers me less in sci-fi (like Star Trek and Blade Runner) since one could suppose that they've developed better algorithms for reverse-pixelating an image. Does it still bother me? Yes. It just bothers me slightly less.


I completely agree with what several other posters have said about HAL: he was not inherently evil. In fact, it was his complete lack of emotions and empathy that caused him to go off the deep-end protecting the mission. If anything, HAL should be a poster-case for the inclusion of emotions in AIs to prevent such problems.

From an HCI perspective, if you're going to be interacting with a computer using visual and/or vocal communication, making the machine as human as possible could make it more natural to interact with. It would at least make for some interesting papers.


All the little beeping noises technology makes on TV isn't really there for the sake of the characters. It's there to give the user some kind of aural feedback that there is something working. Often we don't see the characters' hands as they dance across their touchscreen displays, nor do we see the screens over their shoulder to see the visual cues the computer would logically display. Instead we get background noises that tell us that things are working (or not working in the case of a negative-sounding noise, or in fact no noise at all). No, it's not a completely-accurate portrayal of technology, but from a film-making/narrative perspective it works.


As others have already said, the "no signal," "I lost my phone," and "dead battery" scenes do serve an essential narrative role: they reinforce the isolation, and answer the obvious question the audience will ask: "Why doesn't he just call for help."

If anyone can offer a suggestion of a better way of solving that problem please feel free. I'm sure screenwriters would love to hear from you. But in the meantime expect there to be more such scenes.


Biometric security isn't really all that hard to defeat. Mythbusters has done a couple of episodes about it, and showed that without much effort you can bypass such things. And yet they're still used. Hollywood portraying biometric security as fallible is possibly one of the most realistic things they've done lately.

Granted, some shows do it better than others. I recall one episode of The Lone Gunmen where they paint their faces chromakey blue and put white markers on their faces in strategic locations to fool the facial-recognition software into mistaking them for different people. That's just dumb, but sounds high-tech and cool if you don't know anything abotu computers. If they'd just printed out some A4-sized photos of the empolyees' faces and held them up to the camera I'd have an easier time believing the show, despite the lower-tech nature of the solution.

[ticopelp]

I'm tired of this kind of expression... This "open mouth" thing when they see a monster or something "different":


http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/7273/jurassicpark48jpeg20jpe.jpg

I'm tired of plot, dialog, action, and characterization. Talk about overused.

[Pogeymanz]

Exactly. I agree with the rest of the article, but HAL 9000 was very realistic. He was never afraid, or angry. Sure, he said he was afraid, but that was because he was trying to manipulate Dave not to turn him off.

Or was he? ...

Also the second part of your post is spoiler. I don't know if it counts for a movie that was made in 1969 and is the quintessential sci-fi movie...

[lisati]

Punch cards?

*hides*
Memories of "portapunch" cards which get mangled when fed through the card reader come to mind, together with lectures about how first year students shouldn't be using the card punch machines. The following year, first year students were allowed to learn Pascal using terminals instead of Fortran on portapunch cards.

The "Zoom in" or "Enhance" one always bothers me, especially in modern-day shows. It bothers me less in sci-fi (like Star Trek and Blade Runner) since one could suppose that they've developed better algorithms for reverse-pixelating an image. Does it still bother me? Yes. It just bothers me slightly less.


^^This

[KiwiNZ]

It's not meant to be accurate depiction or documentary evidence , it's escapism and entertainment. You know, that thing called fun :rolleyes:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fun

[swoll1980]

I would would say #5 has to be part of a horror plot, else the movie ends with one call to the police dept.

[marin123]

my favorite is when someone wants to destroy the data on the computer breaks the monitor, and thats it, voila! :D
so, if youre a movie character, just put 4-5 monitors in the room, and hdd underneath the desk... your data is safe and sound...

[swoll1980]

my favorite is when someone wants to destroy the data on the computer breaks the monitor, and thats it, voila! :D
so, if youre a movie character, just put 4-5 monitors in the room, and hdd underneath the desk... your data is safe and sound...

That's funny. I remember a Splinter Cell mission that included exactly what you described.

[NightwishFan]

For once I do agree with Kiwi. It may not make any sense, it is just pure awesome. :)

[benerivo]

I saw a movie where it presented an impossible tech trick, and the audience is meant to believe it, but later it turns out that it the presented truth was simply due to time travel! See 1:30 onwards in this youtube clip [SPOILERS] for the supossed technology explanation...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihp78M1Z6_0&feature=related

[ticopelp]

It's not meant to be accurate depiction or documentary evidence , it's escapism and entertainment. You know, that thing called fun :rolleyes:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fun

Exactly. It's like getting disproportionately upset about historical accuracy in movies. Movies are not history. They're drama and glorified play-acting. If you want authentic history, open a book. If you want facts, see a documentary.

Although I'm glad the depiction of computers has generally gotten more realistic the past twenty years or so, as they've become mainstream and writers don't rely on "computers are magic" quite as much.

[Schrute Farms]

Think CSI and taking a blurry, dark spot in a photo and enhancing it to reveal an HD, detailed image of someone's face, license plate, or street name.

I really hate this one too. One of the last CSI episodes I ever watched they took a blurry surveillance photo, zoomed in on one lens of someones sunglasses, and produced a perfect picture of the killer. Ruined the whole show for me.

[CraigPaleo]

It's not meant to be accurate depiction or documentary evidence , it's escapism and entertainment. You know, that thing called fun :rolleyes:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fun

True, but what's over-done or used too much?

[lisati]

I saw a movie where it presented an impossible tech trick, and the audience is meant to believe it, but later it turns out that it the presented truth was simply due to time travel! See 1:30 onwards in this youtube clip [SPOILERS] for the supossed technology explanation...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihp78M1Z6_0&feature=related

I saw that movie on TV, and thought the ending was mildly paradoxical. I still enjoyed it.

[KiwiNZ]

True, but what's over-done or used too much?

If you are at home watching the movie or at the cinema you can do either of these ;)

[NCLI]

Or was he? ...

Also the second part of your post is spoiler. I don't know if it counts for a movie that was made in 1969 and is the quintessential sci-fi movie...
Well, this forum doesn't have spoiler tags, so...

[hhh]

It's not meant to be accurate depiction or documentary evidence , it's escapism and entertainment. You know, that thing called fun .
But it's no fun when you're immersed in your escapist experience and you're ripped out of it by something so fake that you can't suspend your disbelief anymore, at least for a while. It's so damn distracting.

For example, I loved "X-Men". I thought they got so much of it right but two moments in it were so distracting it was excruciating. Not the existence of superpowers, if you've ever read the comics then you're already accepting that. But of course when Wolverine did the 360 around the spike on Miss Liberty's crown because gravity and physics ceased to exist for a moment... and especially for me was when the bullet spun around in the cop's forehead and THERE WAS NO BLOOD. BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

[TheNessus]

I hate it when a hacker uploads a virus there's a small window with a progress bar, titled "virus upload".

[CraigPaleo]

If you are at home watching the movie or at the cinema you can do either of these ;)

I'm more interested in the topic at hand. Your answer isn't so different from the one who suggested that LMGTFY be banished.

[KiwiNZ]

I'm more interested in the topic at hand. Your answer isn't so different from the one who suggested that LMGTFY be banished.

What I am saying is, that watching a Movie that annoys you is something you have to do , change channel or walk out, that simple.

[toupeiro]

I love it when people bring up the "laughable" 3D interface in Jurassic Park (http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool-from-jurassic-park/).

The "dead cell phone" is kind of a tricky one. A lot of drama depends on isolation, and technology has made it pretty difficult to be isolated. You can't have a story about a guy getting lost if his GPS just tells him how to get home. But if you don't address the question, the audience will ask "why didn't that guy just use his cell phone"? So it's kind of a catch-22.

... I actually still have a usable version of fsn (the Jurassic Park SGI interface) running on one of these (http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs495.ash1/27023_378861953257_683708257_3603817_6465218_n.jpg ) (Photo is of actual server)

[mkendall]

Has the writer not heard of "artistic license". I bet he is sick of birthday cards, sunny days, kittens and smiling babies.:rolleyes:

<snip> smiling babies. Oughtta be a god damned law.

[3rdalbum]

Think CSI and taking a blurry, dark spot in a photo and enhancing it to reveal an HD, detailed image of someone's face, license plate, or street name.

I can't believe nobody yet has linked to the Red Dwarf parody of this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xm0CruhJ7Lk

[ticopelp]

... I actually still have a usable version of fsn (the jurassic park sgi interface) running on one of these (http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs495.ash1/27023_378861953257_683708257_3603817_6465218_n.jpg ) (photo is of actual server)

That's awesome :D

[Austin25]

If computers in movies were realistic:

An agent sits in front of a computer screen. It is not his, he has snuck into someone else's office. He starts moving the pointer and clicks at a file or folder he deems interesting. He waits. He waits some more. He double clicks again, to make sure he didn't do it too slowly the first time. He wearily eyes the hallway to make sure nobody is heading his way. He gets back to the terminal. Now there is an hourglass, but no clear indication of if stuff is happening or not. Suddenly, just when he is about to panic, the folder opens and he sees a file listing. He plugs in his portable memory device to steal the data he desperately needs to save the world/make things right with his wife and kids/prove himself to his superiors. The system throws a cryptic error with lot's of numbers and letters, on a blue background. He just taps the keyboard and he sees the desktop again. He gets ready to drag and drop the wanted file to his memory device but suddenly a new file manager window opens stopping him dead in his tracks. Must be that second double click coming to effect. Exasperated he clicks the close button to remove the new file manager window. This time nothing happens. The new window just sits there and the cursor has turned into an hourglass again. He tries clicking the 'close' button again. The file manager window is now white. He can move it, but he can't focus on the window with his files of interest in it. Why don't these things ever work he thinks to himself as he tries to find away to terminate the wanton windows. He manages to reboot the system. After logging in (his victim uses the default password) he can now retry his operation. He inserts his memory and reaccess the file folder he wants to copy. The copy process starts. The progress bar speeds along until it stops at around 89% and just sits there. The agent waits for ten more minutes and then has to abort because he hears people coming his way. So much for the narrow escape.

You see, things could be worse than what Hollywood likes to feed us. Who would want to ever watch a scene like this? :D
I have a feeling I would like this movie.

[blueturtl]

I have a feeling I would like this movie.

Too brutally realistic for me. :)

"Hey Grissom, I had the labs you wanted, but the printer didn't work and for some reason I can't share the files using our internal network so I had to go to the store to pick up a USB memory stick and..."

That said I wouldn't mind if they had some rudimentary ideas right (breaking the monitor won't stop a computer, you can't zoom in on a file with a poor resolution to reveal more details, the ridiculously overdone GUIs...).

[Dixon Bainbridge]

Has the writer not heard of "artistic license". I bet he is sick of birthday cards, sunny days, kittens and smiling babies.:rolleyes:

I didn't get that from the article at all. The writer isn't attacking artistic license more repetitive cliches in films. And he's spot on.

[Lucifer The Dark]

The person who wrote that article has never used a T-Mobile phone, you're lucky if you ever get a signal, when I had one I used to have to move around the house or go out into the garden to get a signal & using it while driving (I mean the passenger not me while I'm driving, that would be naughty) was out of the question.

[ironic.demise]

Maybe the images are incredibly high resolution?
Maybe the satalite took a 5,000,000 x 5,000,000 few gigabyte png and the monitor just doesn't have the same resolution?

Seriously, Take a 12 mega-pixel camera, take a picture of something or someone, open it in Ubuntu, ...notice that there's a "zoom" function or that it defaulted to 50% to fit on the screen?
Now click 100% and it no longer fits on the screen but is more detailed than it was before.

Now imagine in a few thousand years when camera's are 70,000 megapixel (and for some reasons monitors are still 1280x700)

and kiwi, ew at clip-art

[kevin11951]

Maybe the images are incredibly high resolution?
Maybe the satalite took a 5,000,000 x 5,000,000 few gigabyte png and the monitor just doesn't have the same resolution?

Seriously, Take a 12 mega-pixel camera, take a picture of something or someone, open it in Ubuntu, ...notice that there's a "zoom" function or that it defaulted to 50% to fit on the screen?
Now click 100% and it no longer fits on the screen but is more detailed than it was before.

Now imagine in a few thousand years when camera's are 70,000 megapixel (and for some reasons monitors are still 1280x700)

and kiwi, ew at clip-art

Not like that, its where they zoom in on glasses for example, and theres no detail and its all pixalated, and blurry. They then bring in a guy who magically uses an "algorithm" to see the man it the reflection of the glases.

[lykwydchykyn]

I'm reminded of the time I first watch "The Lord of the Rings" with my uncle who's a retired automotive engineer.

In the opening scene, the narrator is talking about the one ring being "forged" while the scene shows a ring being cast in a die.

It ruined the movie for him. :)

[Austin25]

If only a bunch of Linux syadmins got together and made a movie about hacking.

[Shpongle]

they did its called Revolution OS :D

[Sporkman]

If only a bunch of Linux syadmins got together and made a movie about hacking.

That movie would likely suck. :)

[ironic.demise]

Not like that, its where they zoom in on glasses for example, and theres no detail and its all pixalated, and blurry. They then bring in a guy who magically uses an "algorithm" to see the man it the reflection of the glases.

Aha point taken.
I completely agree, it ruins movies for me... but I did enjoy watching the video links posted in here.

[Austin25]

That movie would likely suck. :)
I would still watch it, and I would enjoy it.