Dear Hollywood Producers, That’s Not How Tech Works
Think for a moment. What are the most common situations in which a gaming console or a computer of some sort appears in a movie or TV show set? Not that many, but we can provide you with some that for sure you might have come across. In the end, it’s all about the characters and what they are doing in certain scenes.
First example. One or more characters are simply video game fans or geeks. You are watching your favorite teen drama, let’s take “The O.C” for example. Ryan and Seth are often seen in some scenes playing something on a gaming console. If you take a more serious tone and look at a TV Show like “Halt and Catch Fire”, both the gaming consoles and PCs (with their different components) were the protagonists in a story developed in the 80s around this great Age of Tech. Then, you also have space for the same dynamic in a sitcom like “The Big Bang Theory”, where the main characters are often gaming or computing experts, even if Sheldon believes to be above everyone else.
Second situation. Computers are just a symbol to represent main characters in their professional contexts, because who would work nowadays without a PC? Imagine all the guys from “The Office”. Here, the professional context is the main context, but how many times do Michael, Jim, Dwight, and Pam appear next to a computer? At least once every episode. Nevertheless, in any movie or TV show where you get to see a character working, most likely he will be next to a computer.
The next one is related to special contexts. In the movie “You’ve Got Mail”, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan’s characters get hooked on this new technology called e-mail and through some form of online dating, they fall in love. The same happens in that episode of “Friends” where Chandler reignites his relationship with Janice through an online chat on his new computer, without knowing who was on the other side of the screen. There are surely more ridiculous contexts but this is one that I immediately remembered.
A final note must be related to all the times, computers appear in crime-solving situations. One or more characters are either spies, detectives, or any other type of authority that uses PC and some of its components to save the world, and life or just send someone to prison. I have a feeling that these are precisely the types of stories where some debates arise on how the tech is showcased. Yes, “CSI” producers, I’m talking directly to you. But not only.
Fiction is Always Better Than Reality
In the world of entertainment, there is a natural impulse to make things look better than they actually are. Ultimately, telling a story, in any format, means picking up someone’s routine or someone’s perception of life and making it appealing for a broader audience. But throughout the history of movies and TV, too often the tech presented is simply too good to be true or not properly researched.
The Speed
“Time is of the essence” is an expression frequently proclaimed by a character who is in a rush or facing a situation that requires a quick solution. However, when it comes to tech and how fast it can do something, a writer’s imagination sometimes goes way beyond reason. We’ve all seen hundreds of movies and TV shows, where someone hacks a security system in a number of seconds or the upload of a file or group of files always seems to reach 100% in the end. In most cases, it did not like that any movie produced in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.
The Data
Remember all those beautiful UI designs producers have to come up with because they don’t want to pay “real platforms” to show them in a certain scene? Or those amazing charts or lines of code that when zoom-in make absolutely no sense? It looks as if no one even bothered to hire a consultant to create a better link with reality or just thought that scene was worthy of extra attention to detail. Thank god for all those internet detectives looking for easter eggs in every corner of a screen.
The Context
WiFi connection and signal reception are two common problems for individuals and corporations everywhere. But in movies and TV shows that rarely seems to be an issue when you need computers to do something for a narrative: a car chase, a bank heist, a very dark and underground cave, or any other random location. The characters often take out a PC, place it somewhere, don’t have to connect to any Wi-Fi, and just make things happen whether it is hacking some security systems or just the traffic lights protocols of a certain city. Life is so easy.
Take a Look at Our Favourite Examples
Skyfall (2012)
The James Bond movie, led by Daniel Craig and directed by Sam Mendes, is definitely one of the best of the franchise (just started singing the Adele song). However, there were definitely some moments in the story that didn’t make sense story-wise. For some reason, “M” (Judy Dench) continues to use her computer after being the victim of a hack and “Q”, who supposedly is a tech mastermind thinks that it is a good idea to connect a villain’s computer to the whole MI6 network. Good for the plot, not good for his CV. It was also interesting to see the lack of technology in the Macau Casino scene, where there weren’t any form of modern casino, like the ones you can find here, which was a bit peculiar.
NCIS (2003-Present)
In the crime procedural is one of the most famous in the US, there is a “great” scene where the agency is being hacked and two agents both start typing uncontrollably on the keyboard while images just appear on the screen. It makes absolutely no sense and the situation is simply resolved with Detective Gibbs (Mark Harmon) turning off the computer. If only it was that easy.
Hackers (1995)
In the early days of her career, Angelina Jolie played Acid, a hacker who in a particular scene of this movie, decides to boast of her laptop (a Macintosh PowerBook 280C) which has a P6 Pentium Pro microprocessor and a PCI bus. In reality, the PowerBook 280C had neither. You gotta research the specs first, dear producers.
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Marvel alumni, Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie take part in this Oscar-winning movie about the Iraq War. There is a scene where soldiers are seen playing Xbox 360 in 2004, which is impossible since Xbox 360 was only launched. Maybe they had an earlier access?
CSI (2000-Present)
No other TV show was as scrutinized as this one regarding its tech. Although it had a huge impact by bringing awareness to how science could be used to solve crimes, those moments in which the team would gather in a lab to zoom 100x into a 320p image and get in return a great 1080p resolution was just pure fantasy. But at least the bad guys would be put behind bars.
