# 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:** 9\ **Page:** 5
**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, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/81 "2006-05-17T22:39:16Z")
> [@bluethree](#): > > 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. Although it was originally managed with templated index cards, it’s generally agreed that J. Edgar’s motivation for establishing the FBI was probably as a pretext for maintaining the Agents In Underwear database. Hoover _loved_ paper dolls. ---
**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, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/82 "2006-05-17T22:54:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I think the issue is what the movie’s premise is. Right. You’ll tolerate a lot more outlandishness in _Jurassic Park_ or _Lord of the Rings_ than you will in, say, _Giant_. (Although a few T. Rex attacks in _Giant_ would be a welcome addition, especially if they shortened the movie.) I once read this long, argumentative Internet board discussion over the movie _Groundhog Day_. There was this one guy who just couldn’t grasp the central premise. He kept wondering why Phil (Bill Murray) couldn’t easily break out of his situation by staying awake past 6:00, or breaking the clock, or hiding outside of town, or something. Maybe the fact that the movie was otherwise realistic — as in, there are no wizards or aliens or wormholes to account for any strangeness — confused him on what the “rules” were, on what was possible and impossible within the film. So a Tom Clancy movie can have satellite images that resolve dandruff flakes on pedestrians’ heads, and we don’t mind too much. We were expecting a lot of silliness anyway, going in. Really, we should just be happy the characters are named consistently and that the sun isn’t purple. Any other resemblence between the movie’s events and real-life events is entirely coincidental. I guess the point I was trying to make in the last post is that sometimes there seem to be _gratuitous_ impossibilities, ones that could easily be re-worked into something much more plausible, while still fitting the movie’s premise. Of course I’ve never had to write or direct a successful movie, so it’s easy for me to be a backseat driver. Maybe I too would cave in to temptation, to meet a deadline, and throw in the security cameras with infinite resolution, and the computer monitors that project their images onto people’s bodies, and the super secret passwords that can be cracked in less than a minute. _Let he who is without sin **cast** Sharon **Stone**._ ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2006, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/83 "2006-05-17T23:28:43Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > **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. I’d argue that, for a high-tech action spy flick like M:I:III, super-satellites that can make out amazing resolution on ground objects are as much a part of the genre as FTL drives are for Star Trek. If we were talking about a movie based on a John LeCarre book, it’d be different, but this is more James Bond. Fancy, impossible gadgets are part of the fun. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/84 "2006-05-18T04:41:38Z")
> [@Merijeek](#): > > 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 Well Joe, I’m glad you asked. From what I can tell the ‘cutoff point’ between stupidity and feasability is in the eye of the beholder and their own personal understanding of reality. Since this board is more scientific minded than most people we all see scientific flaws where many people would not. But that is true for any movie with a false premise be it political, scientific, cultural, economical, etc. Whenever you see a war movie I’m sure tons of vets get upset and say ‘thats not how it happened’ and alot of vets were pissed about the movie ‘bridge on the river Kwai’ for example. When the movie ‘colors’ came out crips and bloods got upset and actually started battling more because that wasn’t how LA gangs worked. There are probably many more examples of people with personal experience with something/anything (working in fast food, being a bartender, driving a racecar, etc) who walked away from a movie upset because the portrayal wasn’t realistic even though 99% of the viewers didn’t have the personal experience to know better. Everyone knows you can’t shoot lightning bolts out of your eyes but how many people have ever been in an LA street gang enough to know that the movie ‘colors’ was bullshit and respond accordingly? And how many people understand DNA synthesis enough to really know about Jurassic park not being realistic? I guess that is why movies consult experts and real life experts for a movie, but sometimes real life isn’t as interesting or as good for the plot as fiction so that is why it happens. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/85 "2006-05-18T06:17:48Z")
I can handle the nine-year-old girl in _Jurassic Park_ recognizing UNIX (even if she didn’t exhibit any geek tendencies earlier in the movie); what I refuse to accept was Nedry claiming he wrote all **three million lines of computer code** to operate the park by himself. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/86 "2006-05-18T06:51:51Z")
> [@NOTAR](#): > > It’s from the book ‘Patriot Games’ I remember reading it in PG , but originally it was in a book called Deep Black by William Burrows , back in 82. Declan ---
**Author:** ![JeffB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeffb/32/188_2.png) [@JeffB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JeffB)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/87 "2006-05-18T13:34:40Z")
> [@Larry Mudd](#): > > …using a scanner from a fax machine taped to the screen and **spoojed** to a hard drive from an mp3 player… eeewww! ---
**Author:** ![NOTAR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8c91f0/32.png) [@NOTAR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NOTAR)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/88 "2006-05-18T14:35:29Z")
> [@Declan](#): > > a book called Deep Black by William Burrows Fiction? Or non-fiction? (Genuinely curious; not trying to be a dick) ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2006, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/89 "2006-05-18T14:38:50Z")
> [@bluethree](#): > > 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. Um, no, they were using some “Dressy Bessy” paper-doll type site (one of the agents’ daughters liked to play on it) to paste agents’ ID photos on the bodies on the site. There was other stuff about that that was implausible (why would a girly dress-up site include the body of a man?), but it was never suggested that the dress-up program was an FBI database. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003.md?page=4)