I watched Eagle Eye over the weekend, and it was fun but just terrible in its use of the old boogie man plot device of the computer taking over the world. In appreciation, here are some of my all time favourite bad computer movie moments.
1. Eagle Eye (2008): an all powerfull, all seeing surveillance computer tries to take out the entire US government but can be defeated by poking it in the eye with an metal rod.
2. The Net (1995): Sandra Bullock plays a notorious hacker who throughout the entire movie mispronounces the word MODEM (as if it rhymes with bottom) and uses a Macintosh and a drag and drop interface to hack computers! If only it were that simple.
3. Jurassic Park (1993): the computer that controls the park is apparently UNIX (identified by the super genius girl who apparently learned it in grade school). She then proceeds to operate it using this 3D flying interface!
4. Independence Day (1996): Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith design a computer virus that can infect an ALIEN COMPUTER via TCP/IP using a MacBook! Apparently alien invaders use the Internet but without the McAfee subscription.
5. WarGames (1983): Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy hack into the government using a 300 baud modem (with accoustic coupler for visual impact). The super computer is a room full of tape drives and flashing lights that is defeated by forcing it to play chess until it figures out the concept of a stalemate. "The only way to win is not to play".
6. Mission Impossible (1996): Standard computer animations like file uploads, logins, etc. are really boring to look at. In Mission Impossible, a standard macbook was used but the OS was suped up with some fancy animations. Why have a progress bar when you can have the screen whiz around and scream at you (even though its supposed to be top secret)?
7. You've Got Mail (1998): Email clients are also very boring. Who wants to watch someone reading email. This movie is a great example of how special effects people take great liberty to make computer applications much more interesting with animations, sound, etc.
8. Star Wars (1977): The computers in Star Wars are not bad actually, although the amount of blinking lights in the room that the Droids hang out in for most of the movie are a bit much. The demo on how to destroy the the death star is quite primitive (they look a bit like the original asteroids video game) but at least looks somewhat plausible.
9. Golden Eye (1995): Thanks to some product placement, all the computers are running OS 2/Warp. If the Russians were running Windows, maybe they could have had a chance against 007.
10. Swordfish (2001): Hugh Jackman is a hacker who puts together viruses using some sort of 3D visualization software. The one thing he does get right is the repeated swearing at his computer while he works.
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2 comments:
On #3: The system was IRIX and I had used it as well. Many systems were 'placed' in schools to try to get support. The flying thing was a real graphical tool that could be used to navigate file systems. If you were looking for a file, which she was, that would be the way to do it.
#11: Jumpin Jack Flash. Whoopi Goldberg guesses the right password to communicate with someone and the screen fills with the password (not much on security there, lol) then a bunch of colorful graphics fly by.
I can only imagine if I had to sit through that every time I logged into Active Directory at work :)
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