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Top 10 most ridiculous movie tech moments

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Dan Warne15 July 2009, 12:00 AM

Hollywood. Industry of large explosions, car chases and really laughable depictions of tech in movies. Here's our top 10 worst of the worst.

10. Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Keanu Reeves: has to store 320 GB in his brain and might die from it within 48 hours because he's only used to carrying 160 GB. Seriously, dude... we are speechless at the lameness of this.

9. Independence Day (1996)

Jeff Goldblum hacks into an alien space ship using a Macintosh PowerBook connected to the spaceship via a Parallel printer port.

8. The Lone Gunman (2001)

"We could do this if had one of those new Octium 4's!" They proceed to swap out the Octium 3 processor for the Octium 4 … without so much as switching the PC off.

7. Demolition Man (1993)

"Access denied. Override?"If only all computers were that easy.

6. The Net (1995)

Throughout the whole movie, Sandra Bullock pronounces "modem" to rhyme with "bottom" (it does draw attention to her bottom though, which is not necessarily a bad thing). Then she hacks a computer using drag-n-drop.

5. Jurassic Park (1993)

"It's a UNIX system… I know this…" and the 10 year old girl proceeds to use a 3D fly-flying interface to lock the door of the control room. As it turns out, the technology is not ridiculous -- this is an actual UNIX program, a 3D file system browser called FSV that was created by Silicon Graphics. But the fact that a 10 year old girl would have come across it at school in 1993 is completely implausible. Read more about FSV here.

4. Wargames (1983)

Matthew Broderick defeats a military supercomputer by forcing it to play tic-tac-toe until it learns the meaning of stalemate.

3. GoldenEye (1995)

Bond movies are famous for product placement, and in this movie, all the computers -- whether Mac or PC -- were running IBM OS/2 Warp.

2. Swordfish (2001)

Hugh Jackman constructs computer viruses using some sort of 3D modelling program.

1. Firewall (2006)

"10000 songs, 10000 accounts, it won't know the difference."Harrison Ford connects an iPod to a scanner which he sticky tapes to a computer screen to steal information.

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Knight (New user):

dumb arse - the game was tic tac toe in war games. pay attention lol

15 July 2009, 7:32 AM (8 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Dan Warne (Administrator):

Haha!! My memory is obviously failing (like Keanu Reeves' brain). Thanks for the pickup. I've fixed it in the story now.

16 July 2009, 12:15 PM (8 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Chris (User):

Not in a movie but 24 has a few.
My favourite is when they give an IP address. It ALWAYS starts with 292. It's the 555 of IP addresses.
They also seem to always have a cool GUI for every system they access.

15 July 2009, 11:28 AM (8 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Michael Quinn (User):

"Pirates Of Silicon Valley" where Bill Gates convinces IBM to a licensing agreement. As If!! Oh wait...

15 July 2009, 12:01 PM (8 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

DFTBA (User):

Movie: Pirates of Silicon Valley
Scene: HP boss rejects Steves computer and says "what would ordinary people want with computers"

15 July 2009, 12:36 PM (8 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Aubrey (Advanced member):

Not a movie - but the weekly episodes of "Spooks" on the ABC have some great tech moments. A recent episode had a nanotech spray that activated a GPS tracking satellite when it was activated (by a handshake). What I like about Spooks is that the "Geek" (who can summon up a sophisticated hack on ANY network or device at less than a minute's notice) is at least 50. That and the fact that nobody goes "wow!" or "cool!" when he does something truly amazing.

16 July 2009, 10:21 AM (8 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Carmar (User):

StarGate - when they use perfectly normal laptops to hack into alien computer systems, which all seem to be running Windows.
Oh - so that's where Microsoft got the idea.....it's really alien technology!

16 July 2009, 5:09 PM (8 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

whitecros (New user):

movie hackers......pretty much every scene!!!!(still a good movie)

16 July 2009, 7:16 PM (8 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

The Big Baboo (User):

Ectually ;) I've always liked liked Sandra Bullock in "The Net" not because of the sheer complexity of what she's doing but just because she looks so hot doing it ;)

21 July 2009, 10:31 AM (8 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

agami (User):

Does it bother anyone else that the reflection of Broderick and Sheedy does not match the images of them in front of the screen?

Bad: Arnie navigates a complex visual database with two index fingers typing on a keyboard in Eraser.

Good: The systems I think were represented truthfully are the ones in Twister.

There is nothing really lame or wrong with any of the movie or TV representations of computer tech. The real stuff is generally either very inane or obscure for the general public and does not lend itself to easy viewing from a distance. Devices used in visual story telling are meant to keep the viewer immersed.

23 July 2009, 12:23 PM (8 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

vlt06 (New user):

Dirty Dancing "Nobody puts Baby in the corner" Oh please!

08 August 2009, 7:52 AM (7 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

raddles (New user):

In the movie Mission Impossible, Tom Cruise types in a search using only the word "File" and gets.....THREE results. Wanna know what search engine he used?

10 August 2009, 10:34 AM (7 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

jonnnk (New user):

Superman 3 - richard pryor first scene as the computer genius? His boss asked how did he do that and he said "I don't know." All he did was type in 'list'. The most basic thing you can do in dos. What a genius!

24 August 2009, 5:49 PM (6 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

jonnnk (New user):

Superman 3 - richard pryor first scene as the computer genius? His boss asked how did he do that? and he said "I don't know?." All he did was type in 'list'. The most basic thing you can do in dos. What a genius!

24 August 2009, 5:50 PM (6 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

donkey12 (New user):

I agree with Raddles. Tom Cruise getting 3 results for "file". I suppose if it didn't happen he would jump up and down on the couch!

25 August 2009, 4:50 PM (6 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

donkey12 (New user):

I agree with Raddles. Tom Cruise getting 3 results for "file". I suppose if it didn't happen he would jump up and down on the couch!

25 August 2009, 4:50 PM (6 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

stevjosco (User):

Blue Thunder (1983 - starring Roy Scheider): The helicopter Blue Thunder has 'Whisper Mode' that somehow makes the chopper run silently without seeming to inhibit it in any other way... So why not always run in whisper mode?

03 September 2009, 3:56 PM (6 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

stevjosco (User):

Minority Report (2002) - The entire film was one giant cringefest. I already disliked Tom Cruise before I saw this rubbish. I have detested him since.

03 September 2009, 4:14 PM (6 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Pauly (User):

This article does seem kinda like trekkies at a sci-fi conference picking tech holes in the latest star trek series.
Suprised comic book guy hasnt posted

05 September 2009, 11:10 AM (6 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Senor-Mick (New user):

BTW guys, the girl's character in Jurassic Park was thirteen (13) years old, not ten (10). Not a big difference I know, but for a kid that is supposedly a massive computer geek (and very clever) those couple of years allow it to be at least slightly more plausible. Feel free to check out this site which talks about her character:

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0002041/bio

14 September 2009, 11:03 AM (6 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

ctrlprtsc (New user):

Another dumb tech moment or maybe I should say "dumb tech starting scene" is the one from movie "District 9" :
An Alien spacecraft is stranded on earth just hanging in the air some hundred feet from ground (ok so far, why not, they are not able to fly but can still float in the air)
The alien were in bad shape and deposit on earth in a kind of "alien reservation" (=district 9).
Apparently this race has two different kind of castes, workers (without any objective in life) and intellectuals.
After 20 years the only one intellectual that we see (or know about) apart from his very clever son was able to gather enough battery-like(and mutagen???) fluid from old (alien) apparels on several garbage dumps.
The only thing he needed to do to join the (still floating) mother ship after 20 years (what proves somehow that there is plenty of energy) was to put the gathered fluid in an alien shuttle and to take off.
And after at least 5 minutes, he was able to use the mothership to go home...
Why 20 years, why collecting from dumpsters, why has he taken off without food that could have been the initial problem (and could have been solved after a few weeks twenty years ago to send them back home)...

(I am sure that the writer has a good explanation but somehow it has not been judged important enough to present to the audience.
It is just that without this thing the entire scenario is not consistent, we learn that they were not stranded but able to go home every moment. The mothership was absolutely intact and they only needed a shuttle to remote activate a beamer (=teleporting) ray to go back in the mothership)

23 September 2009, 6:06 PM (5 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Brad Fredricks (New user):

Sorry APCMAG, you don't know your technology. Your number one is real. There have been many programs written to steal info from pcs and networks once an ipod is plugged in via USB.

This is why, until only recently, usb auto exe's were blocked.

As a matter of fact, Slurp.exe was so fun to do on networks, I have several hard drives filled with stuff when we were testing in for our corporate network holes.

Dang doods, FAIL...

http://www.sharp-ideas.net/downloads.php

17 October 2009, 8:11 AM (5 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Brad Fredricks (New user):

17 October 2009, 8:15 AM (5 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Brad Fredricks (New user):

Gents, you had me until you got to number 1.

Your number 1 is actually real. Sorry, FAIL...

A long while back many, I mean many, of us had the fun in using Slurp.exe on our ipods to download any downloadable file on a pc or even a network.

Yup, we could even assign file types or have it slurp a specific file name.

But hey, don't take my word for it, go download and play with Slurp for yourself.

http://www.sharp-ideas.net/downloads.php

17 October 2009, 8:15 AM (5 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Brad Fredricks (New user):

actually, i can see your number 1 happening.

you gents lack imagination, and respect for coders.

remember slurp.exe???

http://www.sharp-ideas.net/downloads.php

years ago, i developed an evil thing. It was a shredder that had a scanner built in. If I could do that, why can't someone develop a screen scanner that has a screen refresh lock, and just saves the visual data to an ipod.

seriously...

17 October 2009, 8:20 AM (5 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Kent (New user):

This has to win, surely....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU

Yes, we are all geeks...

21 October 2009, 6:42 PM (4 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

wikoogle (New user):

Dude you guys forgot Die Hard 4 where a hacker hacks into every single possible device, object on the planet, from traffic lights, electric grid to all of the internet. Holding the world hostage. Not to mention that you guys also forgot Eagleye...but I can forgive you for that. But the biggest folly of all, you guys forgetting the movie that made the NSA seem competent. Enemy of the State!

26 October 2009, 4:24 PM (4 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

wikoogle (New user):

26 October 2009, 4:35 PM (4 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

wikoogle (New user):

26 October 2009, 4:35 PM (4 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

doctorindyj@hotmail.com (New user):

Actually the Johnny Mnemonic thing is sort of plausible. I know this may be a kind of urban legend ;^), but they warn you if you try to overburn a DVD or CD then you could damage your drive. This may be what the writers were thinking especially back then when most people hadn't heard of CD burning.

29 October 2009, 10:20 AM (4 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend

itsalljamie (New user):

i seriously think that some people need to get laid a bit more often, hahaha, why dont you look at the plot of most films, "The ring" for instance, like someone is gonna crawl out of a TV, or casper the ghost, like someone is gonna have an animated ghost in their room. I mean come on guys they are films not real life, geeeeeeez

04 December 2009, 10:54 AM (3 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend