Think about it. Jessica Alba showing of those perfect curves while typing away on her laptop. It would probably be an iBook, or a Sony Vaio, the only laptops that have a design sweet enough to be seen around a gal like Jessica.
But that’s not really what I want in a tech movie no, although I wouldn’t mind. I’m talking Jessica Alba swimming around, scuba diving like she knows what she is doing. Scuba diving training they have had for that one, and it shows. Into The Blue is either written by guys that know how to dive, or assisted by diving instructors. There are a bunch of scenes in the movie that show that. The one where the tank is used as a weapon for one, there’s a buddy breathing scene, or simply using the correct diving signs. There are some mistakes in there as well of course, but the movie wouldn’t be very exciting if they wouldn’t screw up now and then right. Checking your air supply is something they didn’t do a lot I noticed. But then again, your manometer might be the last thing you’d check if you have Ms. Alba swimming in front of you. In a bikini! Look at that butt go!
Anyway, what does this have to do with technology movies? Those mostly suck, that’s what. I’m a scuba diver, and I can enjoy watching Into the Blue for its correctness. I can actually believe what I see happening on screen, and that’s what you want from a movie right? You want to see something great, but still have the feeling it could really be happening. For realistic movies of course. Horror or fantasy movies create their own world, and then still.
Movies where technology plays a central part make me feel like I’m sitting on an ant hill. They jump from one mistake into the other making the whole movie lose its credibility because it turns out being based on unexisting and impossible technological tricks with laptops, cellphones and unexisting operating systems that you can hack in a second or two. I saw a trailer of this new tech movie called Untraceable for instance, and I so do not want to see that one. Check the trailer, and you’ll know what I mean. The whole idea of an untraceable website with streaming video of a murder alone is so technologically wrong it screws up the whole movie even before I’ve seen it. I bet the rest of the movie is filled with more of that inexplicable techno mumbo jumbo as well.
If a website is untraceable, how the hell are simple internet users supposed to find it? So dear Hollywood script writers, consult your IT specialists in the future before you start writing those ridiculous IT-fantasies of yours down into a so-called script. Us geeks will appreciate it, and there’s more of us than you might figure. If you realize that the most realistic hacking scene ever to show in a movie was featured in the Matrix as Trinity exploited an SSH server using nmap, there still is a long way to go.
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