“Franly, Miss Scarlett I don’t give a — hold on, I need to take this.”
Pretty much that. Those women were the Google of their day. Totally redundant these days.
Lord Cardigan, could you charge those guns and stop the Turks taking them away ?
No, no you idiot not THOSE guns, that would be certain death, those ones over there I mean.
…
Hello Dr Strangelove here, you’ve been sent a mistaken attack code by someone who’s lost the plot.
Heres the official code recalling you.
Phew that was a close one, could have started WW3 there, chuckle !
By that point in the story, the specialized radio that was supposed to receive the codes was busted. Not sure if Verizon’s network provides roaming service over Russia if any of the crew had cell phones on them. 
Just saw North by Northwest for the first time, and this thread immediately came to mind.
If you’ll remember, the whole plot is set in motion by a case of mistaken identity–Cary Grant’s character Roger Thornhill is believed to be an American secret agent who’s working to take down enemy agent Van Damme’s organization.
The mistaken identity occurs when Van Damme’s goons have a hotel bar’s porter page “George Kaplan”, the name of the enemy agent. At that exact moment, Thornhill raises his hand to get the porter’s attention, making the goons believe that Thornhill is Kaplan, responding to the page.
But of course, that isn’t the case at all. Thornhill wants the porter to send his mother a telegram telling her he can’t make an appointment, and since Mother’s playing bridge someplace without a telephone, this is the only way he could do it. Of course, the goons don’t know that, and killer crop dusting planes and hanging off presidents’ noses ensue.
Here’s a PERFECT example of a plot that could have been thwarted by a cell phone. If Thornhill’s mom had had a cell phone, he would have called her on it and not even noticed the page!
Easily replaced by calling “George Kaplan’s” cell number and having Thornhill’s ring co-incidently at the same time. Really no more trite and unbelievable a mechanism to get the story going.
And I was recently in a situation where four cells on three different carriers could not be used. Where do you people live and, more importantly, what service do you use?
A cellphone would work really well in 2001.
As the monkeys gibber around aimlessly, a large black monolith rises silently through the rocky ground
- Der-ner-ner-ner Der-ner-ner-ner Der-ner-ner ner-ner!!!*
Any version of Romeo and Juliet. “Jules, I’m going to fake my death. You pretend to be distraught, I’ll wake up, and we will elope.”
Duel.
Other technology would change the significance of older plot tropes and original ideas.
What about “The Shining”? All those reams Jack Nicholson typed of “All Work and No Play…” would only reflect his descent into madness using a typewriter. Anybody today could copy/paste a sentence that many times.
They could just replace the Room Full Of Crazy with him updating his Twitter with the same message over and over again.
“Mr Dracula wants me to go to Transylvania to do real estate stuff? Why can’t I just Skype him?”
Mmmmm, that would undercut the whole theme of isolation … but I think watching the words appear on the screen, and scrolling back through pages and pages of the same words could be just as effective.
“Only the wizard can send you back to Kansas. Here’s his cell number”.
Twitter only indicates a lack of isolation if anyone is following him. Same effect could be had on Facebook.
No, if he had Twitter and Facebook, so did Wendy; she would not have been isolated and trapped in the violent situation.
But we shouldn’t be debating one film, in a survey thread. I’m still trying to come up with an example …
I thought of this thread over the weekend. How about the stories where a spy sneaks in somewhere, pulls out a teeny tiny hidden camera, snaps a bunch of photos, then hides the tiny film inside a hollow tooth or whatever and tries to run some gauntlet to get the hidden photots to his handlers?
Nowadays, use your phone camera, hit send.
“So according to his GPS, Godot is… what the hell? He’s all the way across town? Fuck this, I’m not waiting any more.”
Most of the situations in National Lampoon’s Vacation makes it unwatchable for my kids, because the situations seem impossibly unbelievable to them (as opposed to hilariously unbelievable but possible).
How’d he get so lost on a road trip? What happened to his GPS?
How would he not know Wally World was closed until he got there? Didn’t he buy the tickets online before he left?
What kind of a hotel doesn’t take a credit card? He had to wait for a check to clear in 10 working days? Why not just hit an ATM they really insisted on cash for some reason?
Kids “bopping the baloney” with stacks of porno mags? Er… Isn’t that what most of the Internet is for?
And Grandma dying in the car just freaked them out 
Ingmar Bergman’s last words: "Knight to queen one–damn!"