here's my take on technology movie making. hopefully everyone has seen
"hackers", and most of you probably go "ewwww, what a crappy movie". if
you thought it was crap, you missed the point, by focusing your geek brain
on things that were not supposed to matter.. which is where the writers
made their big mistake, and I think hollywood writers continue to make
mistakes. I'm going to make a few examples, and give some correct, and
incorrect useage of technology in movies. this might get long winded, so
bare with me. the big problem that I see, is hollywood writers are trying
to make themselvs look cool, by using real-world technology terms that the
non-tehcnical people in the audience will go "oo! ahhh!" over. this is a
big mistake, in the movie hackers, the world is not the same as it is in
real life. it's a fictious world, just like the world is fictious in the
matrix (if you havn't seen that one, you should be shot, then forced to
watch it :) the problem is they made it too close to reality, no modems
arn't that fast, no GFX arn't that fancy, and no, you can't manipulate
most traffic lights like that. (or even sprinkler systems) but in the
world of "hackers" it is possible, get over it, it wasn't the point of
the movie. good examples are these: matrix, it's a fantasy world, none
of the technology is real, in the matrix reality, nor in the future world.
the audience is brought to that attention, immidiatly, YES they used
minidisks for the less common data pourpous, but that's just a small,
iconic, usefull, and shiny prop. and yes, they smashed their fingers on
LCD's that were most likely not really touchscreen. but you gloss over
that, because it's not reality.
another example is startrek, untill recent years, they had excelent
writers, that used mostly babble technology, stuff that was either pure
theory, or didn't exist at all. or they used things that were so
base-line like binary numbers, that it can't be dated. maybe in 20 years,
some of the passwords they used, and the voiceprint id stuff will be too
insecure for use. but they made it so obviously fictitious, that it
didn't invoke too much of your reality side of the brain.
Babylon 5 was also good in this respect.
"the net" is another example of trying to use too much real, existing
technology, trying to impress non-tech audiences. all it would have taken
was a bit more effort, and they could have pulled off a much better
movie.. you must throw in things that don't really exist, and set the
placement of the movie far enough into the future that props you use,
won't exist before the movie is out. otherwise you end up fighting movie
critics who like to poke fun in documentaries for historical inacurices.
my spelling is horrid, but my ideas are there.
Thank You,
Ben Kochie (ben at nerp.net)
"Unix is user friendly, Its just picky about its friends."
On Fri, 12 Jan 2001, Michael Hicks wrote:
> Okay, was anyone else out there bored enough to go spend $7.50 to see
> `Antitrust'? I wouldn't be surprised if you don't want to admit it ;-)
>
> The reason I'm posting, in case you all didn't know, is because there
> may be a few of you who would watch the movie because of the two words
> `open source.' Now, you may be thinking, ``Open Source? You can't say
> that in a movie! It's too cheesy!'' You would be right, but they did
> it anyway. More of you might see the movie because of Tim Robbins or
> Rachel Leigh Cook (originally from Minneapolis, IIRC) -- those are
> probably much better reasons ;-)
>
> Anyway, my opinion is that the movie played like version 0.10 of Gnome.
> It looked kind of cool, but things just didn't work quite right and it
> crashed a lot. Fortunately, it looks like the f/x people actually
> listened to John Hall, rather than inventing absolutely impossible
> scenarios. In most movies and TV shows, any scenes involving technology
> make me groan, while the rest is usually okay. This movie seemed to be
> the other way around. Sure, they did dumb stuff (Fool! rsh is
> insecure!), but there was much less reaching beyond the realm of
> possibility than what I might have expected (no looking around corners
> in 2d images or hacking traffic lights in this movie).
>
> The train wrecks in Antitrust are in the parts that are really supposed
> to make it a thriller. Tim Robbins did a good job (duh), but the others
> just didn't stand up. IMHO, it seemed more like a problem of bad
> directing than bad acting. I guess the writer and director are probably
> much more suited to comedies (what they've mostly done before, according
> to IMDB) than thrillers..
>
> If you have a desire to see this movie, I'd probably suggest waiting for
> it to come out on video, and then borrowing it from someone else who
> rented it ;-)
>
> --
> _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ ___ _ _ __ It is bad luck to be
> / \/ \(_)| ' // ._\ / - \(_)/ ./| ' /(__ superstitious.
> \_||_/|_||_|_\\___/ \_-_/|_|\__\|_|_\ __)
> [ Mike Hicks | http://umn.edu/~hick0088/ | mailto:hick0088 at tc.umn.edu ]
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