# Technology BS in movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 16, 2006, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003 "2006-05-16T17:40:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/61 "2006-05-17T08:51:56Z")
> [@Twotwofive](#): > > You must have really hated Enemy of the State then. Remember when they take an image of Will Smith’s shopping bag from a shop’s CCTV camera and then use “technology” and “computers” to rotate it through 180 degrees, to try to work out what’s inside it? That scene makes me cringe every time I see it. There’s a bit like that in _Blade Runner_, where Deckard is manipulating a photograph and manages to ‘look around’ an obstacle that is obscuring some detail in the picture. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/62 "2006-05-17T10:53:00Z")
Before the, say, 90s, it used to take about thirty or sixty seconds for the technology available to police departments to track a call through the old electromechanical switches. In the digital era, this is… less of a concern. Old meme. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/63 "2006-05-17T13:23:18Z")
> [@Wesley Clark](#): > > I’m with garygnu, you aren’t going to get realism in movies. Movies are designed to give a fake reality, not explain real reality. Sure, but you’re being too forgiving. What if, in **Fried Green Tomatoes** you have dumbass on the traintracks with his foot wedged so he can’t move. The train is coming…it’s about to hit him…and then he uses his super strength to lift up the rails so that the train runs OVER him? Stupid, huh? In **Jurassic Park** the whole concept of the Park, the amber, and the DNA were the central backstory of the film. What if they’d all just flown, Superman-style, off the island once things started to go wrong? Stupid, right? Your logic seems to be that if you’re going to forgive one thing (Dinosaurs) you should be willing to forgive the other (Everyone is Superman’s cousin). But if they’d done something that idiotic you’d have used that as a stike against the film, right? -Joe ---
**Author:** ![audit1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed8c4c/32.png) [@audit1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audit1)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/64 "2006-05-17T13:36:05Z")
Well, if we are knocking Mission: Impossible techonology. lets go all the way to the MI face mask, which can make Martin Landau look like anybody, so good your closest friends will not know you are an imposter. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/65 "2006-05-17T13:50:53Z")
> [@](#): > > Well, if we are knocking Mission: Impossible techonology. lets go all the way to the MI face mask, which can make Martin Landau look like anybody, so good your closest friends will not know you are an imposter. Jim Phelps: “Ok, now, Rollin, for this next mission, you’re going to have to look like Bela Lugosi…” … ---
**Author:** ![c\_goat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@c\_goat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/c_goat)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/66 "2006-05-17T14:04:06Z")
> [@audit1](#): > > Well, if we are knocking Mission: Impossible techonology. lets go all the way to the MI face mask, which can make Martin Landau look like anybody, so good your closest friends will not know you are an imposter. Don’t forget the voice changer strip thingy, which will make him SOUND like anybody too. Man, they really overused that stuff in MI:2… that’s why I hate that movie. Lazy writers kept reusing it as “the twist”. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/67 "2006-05-17T14:40:11Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > There’s a bit like that in _Blade Runner_, where Deckard is manipulating a photograph and manages to ‘look around’ an obstacle that is obscuring some detail in the picture. And this drives me crazy every time I see it, and I love that movie. ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/68 "2006-05-17T15:12:34Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Are you sure about that? There’s a difference between resolving something the size of a newspaper (the usual example object that people mention in this connection) and resolving the _text on the newspaper_ Well, no, not being in the NSA; but I think that’s what I’ve heard. (And the font size on a license plate is larger than the font used in a newspaper, of course.) ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/69 "2006-05-17T15:47:44Z")
> [@Declan](#): > > Its been documented that a spy sat , was able to distinguish a womans bra size, by the shadow that she cast on the ground. This sounds like something you got in a circulating email, especially since it’s in the passive tense. ---
**Author:** ![NOTAR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8c91f0/32.png) [@NOTAR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NOTAR)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/70 "2006-05-17T16:09:39Z")
> [@fetus](#): > > This sounds like something you got in a circulating email, especially since it’s in the passive tense. It’s from the book ‘Patriot Games’ ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/71 "2006-05-17T16:26:16Z")
Isn’t that a Tom Clancy novel? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/72 "2006-05-17T16:34:07Z")
I hated the MI 1 movie the moment they used thin wire-framed glasses that had built-in video cameras with transmitters. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/73 "2006-05-17T16:42:09Z")
> [@Malienation](#): > > Speaking of **War Games** , one of the thing that pisses me off about that movie is that the computer eventually decides to try every single launch code to launch the missiles. The problem is that it gets the code one digit at a time, when in real life it would get the code all at once (picture trying every combination on padlock…you wouldn’t get one number at a time, you’d get the whole answer all at once when the lock opened). Agreed. Password systems that work like a game of _MasterMind_ are generally not worth the money they save. First rule of user authentication: Don’t give out hints. > [@Wesley Clark](#): > > I’m with garygnu, you aren’t going to get realism in movies. Movies are designed to give a fake reality, not explain real reality. But there’s an interesting question here. Which impossibilities and improbabilities do we (some of us) object to, and why? And no, it’s not just because nitpicking is a lot of fun. Just because _some_ impossibilities are made possible in the movies, doesn’t mean that _any_ impossibility should be made possible. The interesting question is where we draw the line. As **Merijeek** says, if the main characters in _Jurassic Park_ just flew away like Superman to escape — or if they shot lightning bolts from their eyes, or revealed themselves to be titanium robots that can’t be chewed on and therefore have nothing to fear — we would hurl our half-gallon cups of Pepsi at the screen. (Unless we’re at home of course.) So yes, give us the resurrected dinosaurs, and plenty of them please. That’s wonderful. But don’t get all _magical_ on us now. It all going to come down to personal taste I’m sure, but sometimes a blatant impossibility, especially one that isn’t necessary to the plot, diminishes one’s enjoyment of a movie. The gaffe reminds you that you’re just watching a bunch of fiction, a cast of actors giving a performance with props, sets, costumes, and special effects. The movie frames are all up there in the projection booth, on film reel or an optical disk, waiting in line for their turn to be flashed onto the screen. There are no real decisions the characters will be making, no real consequences, no lives to be lived happily or nightmarishly ever after. No reason to actually care about what you’re seeing and hearing, even for just the two hours. No reason except maybe that you paid $9 to be there, and that usually doesn’t do it. For me. Of the movies described so far in this thread that I’ve also seen, I wouldn’t say my enjoyment of them was ruined by any of the technical errors. But I’ve often said to myself, while watching such a movie, “Why didn’t they just do such-and-such instead?” — where “they” now refers to the writers, not the characters. At this point, I’m thinking for a while about the _making_ of the movie, and not the movie’s content. This is a distraction. Possibly a funny distraction, or possibly annoying, but still a distraction from whatever immersion I might have had in the movie’s story. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/74 "2006-05-17T16:48:21Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > There’s a bit like that in _Blade Runner_, where Deckard is manipulating a photograph and manages to ‘look around’ an obstacle that is obscuring some detail in the picture. That’s a little different, though, since the picture isn’t a 2D photograph – it’s a mundane-looking sort of holograph. Before Deckard does all the shifting around looking for tiny details with the viewer, there’s a conspicuous shot that shows (without comment beyond a glance from Harrison Ford) the shadows moving quite dramatically in the picture as he handles it. It may have the superficial form of a Polaroid, but it’s supposed to be some vaguely super-advanced technology. We’re talking about a society that has genetic engineering down to the point where they can put serial numbers on repetitive features like snake scales and it’s taken for granted; it’s no biggie that their “photos” have surprising optical properties. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/75 "2006-05-17T16:54:24Z")
> [@](#): > > I saw an episode of Law and Order (or something) the other day that had the most ridiculous internet BS I’ve ever seen on TV. They were tracking down child porn customers online, and not only did they find someone whose account had been used because his identity had been stolen (what are the odds? It’s happening to everyone, I tell ya!) they were able to monitor the chat conversations of their suspects in real time, and display it in the form of an AIM chat window. That whole episode was so unrealistic and corny in so many ways, it almost felt like a comedy. I’m not seeing the issue, here… Are you suggesting that it’s in some way difficult to eavesdrop on an Internet chat? **Bytegeist** , I think the issue is what the movie’s premise is. One could, for instance, make a movie where one of the major plot points is a new, super-high-tech system of spy satellites that _could_ do real-time millimeter-resolution images of an entire city. If that was the premise of the movie, then sure, go ahead and zoom in on the crossword puzzle the villain is doing in the newspaper to see what clues he solves first. But in an action spy thriller, that’s not the premise, so it’s jarring. Likewise, a movie about titanium people who can fly and shoot lightning could do very well, as long as it was about flying titanium lightning-people. But depending on how that premise was presented, a T. rex might be incongruous in that movie. ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/76 "2006-05-17T17:09:27Z")
> [@BMalion](#): > > I hated the MI 1 movie the moment they used thin wire-framed glasses that had built-in video cameras with transmitters. Well, if they put a fiber optic camera mounted inside the wire-frame and ran that back down to a bigass transmitter strapped to the back of their head it might work. Or a fanny pack. Was Tom Cruise wearing a fanny pack in that one? 🙂 -Joe ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/77 "2006-05-17T17:12:08Z")
Let me ask _you_ a question, **Wesley Clark**. Why would a man wearing a t-shirt reading “Genius at Work” spend all his time studying a children’s cartoon show? (_Itchy and Scratchy_, that is.) ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/78 "2006-05-17T17:15:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **Bytegeist** , I think the issue is what the movie’s premise is. Thanks. For some reason I wanted the word “premise” and “backstory” was what came out of the ol’ fingers. Duuuuuuh. :rolleyes: -Joe ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/79 "2006-05-17T17:50:37Z")
Speaking of techy stuff, and speaking of _Law and Order_ (which I generally like): Man, NSA has nothing on the NYPD’s super-duper database. With a dozen key clicks, you can not only find out who bought a green 1997 Buick in Manhattan in August, but pull of a picture of the guy and what high school he went to. Granted, I have to give them some artistic license here. No one wants to see some nerd spend 2 weeks trying to compile data from multiple databases to generate some lame Access report. ---
**Author:** ![Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/4da419/32.png) [@Gala\_Matrix\_Fire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gala_Matrix_Fire)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/80 "2006-05-17T21:28:53Z")
In Miss Congeniality, the FBI had a database of photographs of their agents in their underwear which you could then manipulate to see how they’d look in different outfits. I’m willing to bet that the FBI doesn’t really do that. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003.md?page=5)