4 Commonplace Technologies That Every Movie Still Gets Wrong
Hollywood has a long history of using cutting-edge technology to produce some of the most eye-popping visuals you'll ever see while simultaneously telling stories filled with a complete misunderstanding of everyday technology.
For every incredible creature that couldn't exist without CGI wizardry, there are dozens of times when everyone behind the scenes is absolutely baffled when it comes to digitally recreating something simple, like...
Fake Websites
There are a lot of soda options out there, but if you know someone who, as a choice they made entirely on their own and not against their will after a threat of physical violence made by a low-life in clown makeup, chooses Faygo over Coke or Pepsi, there's a good chance you don't like that person. Soda preference isn't the main reason you don't like them, but it's just one annoying grain of sand within the Sahara Desert that is your distrust of them.
If these men offered your child a spray of Faygo to the lips, would you let that happen?
Watching a character from pretty much any movie or show surf the Internet is the same thing. Maybe you're really invested in the ongoing tales of Sam and Dean from Supernatural. All that fan loyalty grinds to a halt for a moment when they need to research their Monster-Of-The-Week. And they don't Google it; no, they Search The Web it...
Jeff Winger on Community is a sarcastic asshole whose natural charisma adds to his cool guy mystique. Too bad his preference for Searchsies.com over any real world search engine makes him look like an out-of-touch grandpa who's about to enter his social security number as a search term.
And those cops on Law and Order could solve a couple rapes and a homicide case before lunch if they weren't using a Chinese Google knockoff ...
It's not just search engines. It's everything on the Internet.
Want to befriend someone in the Supernatural universe? Find them on BFFLink.net, a social networking site that somehow gained in popularity in spite of its third-world-dot-net status.
If you want to watch an Internet video on Castle, you can head over to YouWillViewIt.com, which seems to have been launched circa 2006 and abandoned by its owners circa early 2006, but people just kept posing stuff to it ...
But They Have to Do It Because ...
Google will probably sue them if they use their logo, or the Bing people will soil their pleats and bitch about how it's unfair that Google gets all that free publicity, even though Google is so ubiquitous it's a verb now and "Binging" probably describes the acts committed by an obscure group of fetishists who fuck-dressed as '90s-era Matthew Perry, as if there were any other era of Matthew Perry and if there were anything else you could do in that state of dress other than get pussy.
Horribly Produced Newscasts
Since the financial crisis hit, news organizations had to cut corners, in some cases getting rid of entire news desks or shutting down altogether. So, the big news networks doubled down on technological fanciness to make up for a lack of real reporting. Newscasts in fictional TV shows were apparently hit even harder.
The characters in the new Kevin Bacon show The Following get their news from a network newscast that appears to be broadcasting in front of a green screen in the producer's basement, surrounded by boxes filled with the remains of abandoned hobbies ...
On Arrow, the only news program anyone watches has the same production value as a North Korean propaganda video ...
Even the newscasts on Arrested Development went from being filmed in a studio with a physical set in the first three seasons ...
... to a set so fake the desk is probably a binary code/balsa wood-blend in season four.
The old saying "Dress for success" applies to more than just clothes. If you want people to take you seriously -- especially in a profession like news reporting, where seriousness reigns supreme -- you have to put your best foot forward. That starts with not looking like a movie villain who has commandeered the airwaves to deliver a scary yet theatrical threat to blow up the moon.
In these worlds filled with newscasts that have low production values, you have to wonder how many corners news programs are cutting elsewhere. If all they can afford is a desk and a green screen, how much are they spending on reporting?
But They Have to Do It Because ...
After running a cost-benefit analysis, Hollywood has determined that physical backgrounds have no business being around humans. Wood, a few nails, and some paint is too much to ask when you can just put some fake stuff on a green thing to give a news anchor that trustworthy cable-access-preacher-at-2 a.m. feel.
Unrealistic Cell Phone Screens
Cell phones are one of the more ubiquitous pieces of technology of the modern age. What began as a trend among America's wealthiest coke dealers has turned average people into junkies who have forgotten what life was like before cell phones and their more impressive and better looking younger brothers (smartphones) took over their lives. We all have one. We all know what they look like. The chances are pretty good that that the people who make TV shows and movies have them, too. It's a wonder, then, why anytime a phone screen is shown it seems like some dude from the graphics department runs off to Bermuda with what's left of the budget, and he was the only who had ever used electronics in the post-microwave era.
Here's a phone from a really shitty movie from 2009 called Echelon Conspiracy. Note how the on-screen text has a font and clarity similar to a pop-up ad for boner pills ...
The lower half doubles as a video slot machine for the compulsive gambler on the go.
In Arrow, there's not much difference between Google Maps and footage of AC-130 precision bombings ...
And on How I Met Your Mother, the graphics department decided that the giant screens we watch shows on are not big enough to read a text on an iPhone, even when the shot is so close to Neil Patrick Harris' hand, that channel-flipping homophobic palm readers prayed for his soul at the mere glance of his love line.
But none of these come close to being as shitty as the phone screens on Dexter, where every incoming call is a Jeopardy! category ...
... and every text message is a "Final Jeopardy!" answer.
"Your answer: 'From Quinn.' I'm sorry. The correct answer was 'Mongolia.'"
But They Have to Do It Because...
People won't be able to read the tiny text on a screen, even though we live in the HDTV era and that tiny text is actually 47 inches long. It can be argued that it's also to protect the intellectual property rights of the company that made the phone, but that theory is obliterated by giant company logos no one cared to cover up.
Video Games That Would Be Unplayable in Real Life
Now and again a show or movie will weave a video game into its plot. Sometimes the game is real, sometimes it isn't. But almost all of the time the simple fact that this plot now contains a game acts as a harbinger of the horrors to come: nonsensical footage of the game in action.
In an episode of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, the gang gets hooked to a PC game that might be a Facebook game, but it takes up the whole screen and browser games don- You know what? It's easier just to say that the game makes no fucking sense.
It can be played on a PC...
... and with absolutely no graphical downgrade ...
... can also be played on a smartphone. The faces on the characters are stylized replications of their respective in-show characters. In order to do that the developers who made the game would have had to custom render their faces into it, which means they'd need to do that for everyone who plays the game. That's an incredible amount of work. None of us are worth that shit.
In this article, John Cheese talked about an embarrassing chase scene from CSI: New York where a blue fox on a hover board is chased by a generic white man with a jet pack, and it all took place in the MMO Second Life and in your mind during your last aneurism. What he didn't mention are the few minutes that led to that chase, when a member of the CSI team takes part in a series of in-game gladiatorial battles.
During the fights, the camera cuts to a new angle approximately three times a second. In a lot of games -- MMOs in particular -- there's no such thing as a camera cut; just a lot of third-person ass and neck. If a game actually played that way you'd vomit and quit just after telling some poor kid from Milwaukee that you violated his mom.
Quick, he's attacking you, in this first-person shoo-
Oh, sorry, not first person, now we see him from behind while you kill him ... for whatever reason.
And now a shot of the crowd? Why?
The Big Bang Theory doesn't exactly get the nerd seal of approval for its portrayal of geeks, and this clip, wherein Penny plays Age of Conan, really takes their suck up a few notches.
Motion sensors inside your microphone will know to tilt the head of your avatar if you tilt your head, because the writers of this show have never played a video game.
And if the player wants to stroke her chin condescendingly, press and hold "B."
If the technology to have in-game avatars understand language and immediately perform gestures appropriate for the words spoken by the players, every Halo deathmatch you've ever participated in would have included a moment where a Master Chief rage-screamed homophobic slurs while pointing to a non-existent TV, which would be followed by the genetically modified super-human Spartan solider cowering in fear as his father pummeled him with a belt. Then you'd watch Master Chief type an angry status update.
But They Have to Do It Because ...
They're trying to tell a more dynamic story, so they bend the rules of video games until they're a mangled, useless heap of digital bullshit that resembles nothing that can be found in a real game. Only then is their totally rad and hip reference to modern technology ready for the screen.
