Movies with outdated premises due to technology

Of course this is purely in hindsight now but it's fun to see which movies from the past have premises that would simply not work now due to the many technological changes that our world has gone through.

A few came to my mind,


1. The Blues Brothers - Now you can just pay your tax assessment online or over the phone to the county government. No need to go on some major driving adventure to get the cash and make the payment in person.

2. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Why waste such a huge amount of space on the ship to house the AI CPU? You can just put that on a small server rack now.

3. When a Stranger Calls - Who still has a landline these days? And if some weirdo keeps calling your landline phone just call the phone company and have him blocked or have them trace the call!

Yea, there are loads of crime shows from years past which rely on information and communication gaps which are filled by modern technology.

Iron eagle - a stolen F-16 would have multiple flights searching for it before it even reaches the border.

Starship troopers - drones that sees further out with satellite views allowing air cover/artillery to bomb the crap out of bugs before they reach the infantry.

The ring - who the hell will copy the tape to a blu-ray? Or have someplace to rent it since blockbuster/Hastings went out of business.

Minority report - facial and motion reconization will be added if eyes can be changed.

Various movies where a smuck gets stuck in a backwater town - Amazon Prime, two day delivery of whatever you need to get out.

"The Village" by M. Night Shyamalan comes immediately to mind. Talk about a stretch.


You'd think that there would be the occasional airliner or small plane that would fly over or near their little community in rural Pennsylvania. There's no way that the inhabitants of that place could have been fooled for so long.

Wargames.
You just aren't going to stumble across a computer running all the nukes in your search for a video game, certainly not named "Global Thermonuclear War". LOL
Or:
A modem, dialing every number in the area until it gets an answer from another modem.
Researching the programmer for a backdoor password as simple as his dead kid's name.


However, one man's "outdated" is another man's "nostalgia", so the movies are every bit as good. That's why the Connery Bond movies are more loved than ever. Can't beat bad guys in fedoras.

Any movie where a mobile phone would have made a difference

Exactly. Old(er) movies also serve as great time capsules. Not only for the tech used, but also Zeitgeist and political/societal factors of their respective eras. "All the President's Men" is a great example of 1970's skepticism and post-Vietnam "hangover", whereas Hollywood's comedies and action flicks of the 80's represent the optimism of the Reagan era.

You mean the "bad guys cut the landline dilemma" is a thing of the past?

The X-Files is a great show where you can clearly see the progression of technology and how that influenced the changing plots for the episodes.

Seeing brick cellphones and large CRT computer monitors adds to the charm of the episodes from the early seasons.

Johnny Mnemonic upgraded his memory to an unheard of 160 GB! Now he could just have 10 times that on a keychain.
Gotta love the cyberpunk imaginings of a graphical internet existence too.

Can't wait to see Altered Carbon when it comes out.

Whenever I watch Clear and Present Danger, I get a kick out of the "hacking" scene in the CIA with their huge monitors and lackluster commands.
The first Mission Impossible used the same massive CRT's. LOL

I worked for an OEM in the '90s and we sold the CIA, and other three letter agencies, quite a few 27" CRT displays. They did produce a beautiful image though you did not want to have to move one very often.

I miss CRTs. I still don't think I've had a monitor since that matched my old Sony Trinitron. I'd be happy to go back to that and even deal with the weight as long as the BASES were updated and beefed up lol. Maybe layer those suckers with some rubber. Those always seemed to be the worst part, being only a thinly molded plastic that liked to try to cut through your hands under the weight of the CRT.

I'm having a hard time coming up with some movies going by PMs directions. I like the idea of it but my brain is having a hard time thinking that way. This idea kind of reminds me of those "How blank and blank should have ended" videos on Youtube. Like the "How Lord of the Rings Should Have Ended" video lol.

Wow, great question/mind excercise Panzer. I can not think of anything!

I miss 4:3 monitors, I sometimes wish that was still the standard. My 19" Sony back in the 90's felt huge to me. I've got a 32" now that just now seems big enough for the job because of height.

I had an NEC 1100+ 21" CRT that I bought refurbished in 2001 for about $150, and I just got rid of it last year. Max resolution was 1600x1200, IIRC, and with my graphics card I could run it at that resolution with a 100Hz refresh rate. .24mm dot pitch and 8ms response rate, IIRC. That sucker weighed 80+ pounds and was my cats' favorite place to lie down as it was high and warm. It was sturdy enough for even my biggest one (16lb) to use as a launching pad for the 8 foot leap to my bed. I wish I'd opened it up to see how much dust and cat hair was in it before scrapping it LOL

How about futuristic movies that missed their "deadline" -

Like Terminator (also outdated tech...no giant chips for Terminators, plus they are still driving '80s Buick's in the war against the machines), or Back to the Future (outdated in the future - they fire future Marty...with a FAX!!), Blade Runner...where's my flying car and my sexy Replicant??

Phone Booth - what's a phone booth?

Does the Ring work on PVR?

Creepy girl appears... skip 30s... skip 30s... sorted..

Yep, that and the, "He's on his way into a trap and we can't stop him!" thing as well.

I live in rural England (7 miles from a major town) and have no mobile signal. So don't go writing off that plot device just yet...

I dunno, even with modern technology wardriving is still a popular "sport" and you would be surprised at what some people leave open to public access. Wardialing also still exists in areas with limited high speed infrastructure. People still use bad passwords and cracking them takes less time in real life than it did in the movie.

Funny thing about Back to the Future. They still use faxes for everything in Japan. Country is stuck in the wrong century.

that's because digital signatures are still in a legal limbo, a bit of a similar situation in China, sometimes, depending on the mood of the day !

and soz for derailing off :-/

Cheers,
Slug

Along the same lines as Wargames which came out in 1983, "Hackers" with Angelina Jolie which came out in 1995, were not that more advanced with their powerbooks, that they said had a P6 and PCI bus, and those great luggable Compacs. Still would like a see through laptop though. That was kinda cool.

The Andromeda Strain (original). Criticize the remake as much as you want, it got one thing right - in the era of smartphones and social media you can't isolate the incident as they did in the original movie for two weeks.

...and along the same line, any zombie apocalypse film where army units surrounds the village and shoot on sight anyone trying to get away, and the rest of the world just doesn't notice. Maybe on a remote island.

Not so much technology related, but Smokey and the Bandit was about bootlegging Coors that wasn't legal east of the MS. LOL
Years later it was Corona people wanted, just because they couldn't have it.

To do it today, it would have to be marijuana. Or set in a dry county in MS.

Heh, I hadn't even heard of what a "dry county" was until I lived in Texas back in the 1990's.