The 8 Most Preposterous Movie Computer Moments
Posted at 5:01 AM May 08, 2008
By Summer Mullins
Hollywood has a long and storied history of sexing anything up to make it more appealing to the masses. For instance, check out the recent 21 to see the true-life story’s fat math geek transformed into a svelte, blonde Kate Bosworth. But its bullshit machine seemingly kicks into overdrive whenever a computer enters the script. Whether through ignorance or willful belief that the common moviegoer doesn’t know jack about what a computer can actually do, Hollywood moviemakers rarely bother to present a computer's limitations on screen, instead letting them be capable of anything, especially leaping through plot holes and loading a fat deus ex machina as needed. As geeks, this upsets us greatly, and thus have no choice but to call out the eight most egregious examples.
8) Antitrust
If you’re a die-hard Law and Order fan, you’ve seen this one more than once. When you zoom in on a photo, it does not get clearer, it gets more pixilated. So the code for that sweet, sweet program you want to get off programmer’s computer screen by zooming in via the crap 72 dpi overhead security camera? Not gonna get it, douche.
7) Weird Science
If any dude could create the girl of his dreams by entering Playboy-esque measurements into a pre-Photoshop wire grid, scanning in a bunch of photos of hot chicks—you know, for reference, in case the computer had never seen a sexy lady before—and strapping a bra to his head, we’d be hip deep in…actually, thanks to anime and To Catch a Predator, probably nubile prepubescent girls. Ugh.
6) Independence Day
When Jeff Goldblum (in what was clearly the winning move in his campaign to represent Apple in endearing Goldblum stutters for years to come) first hacked into the alien spaceship with his PowerBook, Slushees spurted out of geek noses in theaters across America. Call us crazy, but we find it highly unlikely an alien civilization warped across the galaxy with spaceships that ran on a Mac OS or came equipped with a parallel port. Either Steve Jobs paid a pretty penny for that one, or the aliens were Mac user and Jobs is actually one of those aliens in disguise, which would admittedly explain a lot.
5) Swordfish
The first mistake was expecting anyone to believe Hugh Jackman even knows how to read email. The second was, well, everything else. Let’s just pick using AutoCAD to create a worm. That’s like using Photoshop to check your bank balance. Also, the day a hacker can “drop a logic bomb through their trapdoor” while getting a blowjob is the day Tom Cruise walks past a hot dude and doesn’t do Katie from behind that night.
4) Firewall
Oh, Harrison Ford, even your rugged, elderly face must have had difficulty delivering lines about how you were going to use your daughter’s iPod to record account numbers by using it as a hard drive for the scanner that you TAPED TO THE COMPUTER SCREEN. Does that scanner cord go in the earphone jack? Maybe the magic to scan something that emits light will be included in the next iPod update.
3) The Net
The old adage goes that if Sandra Bullock says yes to it, the film is doomed, and The Net was no exception. Maybe a hacker could mess with your lease if, say, it was housed on the Internet. But no matter how good your hack is, it can’t shred the original document and erase the memory of the cranky landlord who knocks on your door the first of every month for the rent. Also, if a computer is not connected to anything, not even God’s hack is going to get you in there.
2) Johnny Mnemonic
In the future of data couriers, Johnny’s wetware allows him 80 gigs of storage. Uh, really? Even four-year-old computers have more than that on a space much smaller than the back of Keanu’s head. Also, the last time you tried to burn too much porn onto a disc, it probably didn’t just let you and then leak the extra all over your collection.
1) Hackers
Even Angelina Jolie’s panties could not distract nerds from this movie’s non-stop cavalcade of magical computers that could hack sprinkler systems and unnecessary 3-D sequences. But the climactic mind-boggler was when the adorable rag-tag team banded together to crack into the evil Fisher Steven’s system USING PUBLIC PAYPHONES. Do you remember how slow a modem goes? Some of you might be too young to remember. They could have been typing by selectively pissing on the keyboard and they still would have been standing there waiting for their programs to load when the police came to haul them away for gross stupidity.
Comments
Number 8 is especially annoying for me, since my boss, even after our having a security system for two years, continues to tell me to "just zoom in" on inane details, and doesn't understand when I tell him that we won't be able to read what someone just wrote, despite what he saw on tv last night. And then he makes me do it anyway.
Posted 05/08/2008 at 06:22:45 AMAh, Independence Day. "UPLOAD VIRUS" ftw.
Posted 05/08/2008 at 06:37:38 AMHow could you forget Jurassic Park with it's Graphical version of Unix et al?
Posted 05/08/2008 at 07:36:30 AM"Hackers" was pure poo. When I first saw it, I didn't know shit about computers and still knew it was pure ridiculous.
I'd ask about the "Matrix" trilogy but don't want to get pelted by action figures.
Posted 05/08/2008 at 08:00:41 AMSeriously...what about tron?
Posted 05/08/2008 at 08:13:09 AMAs fun as it is to pick on Keanu, remember that Johnny Mnemonic was a film from 1995. Here's an example of the high-end corporate technology that was around then:
So a guy with 80GB in his head must have sounded pretty amazing back in 1995, especially since a Terabyte was still considered a theoretical unit at the time.
I'm not saying the film wasn't preposterous, but it was the only proper science fiction film on the list (I'm ignoring the presence of Independence Day for obvious reasons). And picking on a science fiction film because it's out of date is akin to kicking a puppy.
Why not pick on Die Hard 4 for it's use of PDAs to hack into government infrastructure systems. I mean seriously, has anyone tried to use Windows Mobile? It makes that group phone scene from Hackers seem plausible.
Posted 05/08/2008 at 08:44:48 AMLest we forget Ben Afleck in that little gem called Paycheck. Come to think of it, what was the last good Ben Afleck movie? Wasn't DareDevil or Surviving Christmas. Jersey Girl? No. Gigli, definitely not... Sorry to deviate off topic but anything with Ben Afleck and computers deserves mention in this discussion.
Posted 05/08/2008 at 12:29:55 PMWhiteRabbit.Obj: I think that was actually a weird 3-D Unix file manager called FSN. Why you'd want a 3-D file manager is still beyond me, though.
Posted 05/08/2008 at 12:47:13 PMZuckervati: You have a good point, and I hate kicking puppies. However, my second point still stands: no matter the size of the storage space, you only get that much.
Posted 05/08/2008 at 12:51:35 PMI'm so glad my favorite hacker flick isn't on this list. That would be Sneakers, which took 1989 technology and made it look pretty badass. It still had a Deus ex Machina (a computer chip that can decrypt anything! Sweet Jeezus!) and Robert Redford, but it still ranks up there on my list.
Posted 05/08/2008 at 01:44:59 PMExplorers (Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix). They use their computer to create a bubble, which will then house a small ship that will eventually take them into space. Okay, it's really hard to explain. It's that crazy. Great movie though.
Posted 05/08/2008 at 01:59:46 PMJohnny Mnemonic is even more remarkable when you consider the original William Gibson short story was first published in 1981.
It was still a for-shit movie, though. Wish someone with a clue would remake it.
Posted 05/08/2008 at 07:32:01 PM@ pr0n_j3r3my - Hollywoodland and (arguably) Gone Baby Gone
Posted 05/09/2008 at 09:18:09 AMThe lack of Wargames on this list is disturbing.
Posted 05/09/2008 at 12:44:24 PMwhat about how on CSI: miami every single person in florida's fingerprints and DNA are already stored in a magical database with pics of them.
Posted 05/10/2008 at 06:59:03 PMWhere was the "ultimate computer" from Superman III? In the movie, Richard Pryor's character supposedly creates it, and somewhere in there Superman drinks scotch. Richard Pryor. Let me remind you that he's an unfunny 70's comedian that can't even do worthwhile comic relief. Yet he builds a supercomputer that can engineer kryptonite.
Posted 07/22/2008 at 05:26:38 PMIll give you yeas, most of it is quite far out by our standards of technology. I dont disagree at all.
But keep in mind, they are just movies for entertainment, not Documentaries, but also isint sci fi about hope and possibility. After all, i'm sure many people in the know told Jules Verne hge was full o poop too.
i.e.
Book: TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
Published in 1873.
Successful Predictions:
* Self-propelled submarines capable of diving to the ocean's floor, maneuvering underwater, and moving at high speeds beneath the surface of the waves.
* Practical demonstrations of electrical power.
* Electrical clocks that are more accurate than other kinds.
* Electrical stoves and heating coils.
* Electrical generators and motors used in propelling large engines.
* Electrical lights and high-beam searchlights.
* Underwater aqualungs capable of sustaining life for hours at a stretch.
* Practical wetsuits to enable divers to work on the ocean floor.
* Submarine warfare, which renders surface ships helpless against hidden attack.
* Discovery of the South Pole (in Verne's version, most of the polar region is underwater).
For a huge list of our everyday technology and science being predicted by authors since the 1600's till now go here...
Posted 08/26/2008 at 08:40:03 PMhttp://www.technovelgy.com/ct/ctnlistPubDate.asp?BPDate1=1900&BPDate2=1949
>>a hard drive for the scanner that you TAPED TO THE COMPUTER SCREEN.
I didn't see Firewall so I'm not sure what you're talking about, but I'd like to point out that it IS possible to wirelessly capture the output of a computer screen. Google TEMPEST or Van Ecks's phreacking.
Posted 05/14/2009 at 03:19:12 AMYou forgot Kevin Mitnik! None of those computers were ever real! You can't do shit without every touching anything capable of anything! That simply makes no sense!
Posted 05/16/2009 at 01:58:16 PM