The Little Screen on the Big Screen

So blogger John had an entry on TV on the Internet, and now I'm writing about the Internet on TV (well, movies, anyway).

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article (link via slashdot.org) talking about 20+ years of the Internet as shown on the big screen.

It's a neat piece that also features a pretty good gallery of clips from the mentioned movies, which I have to admit that I didn't expect from the WSJ, which after all, still uses those silly stippled-drawings instead of photos in their dead-tree edition.

Anyway, the featured movies cover the good, bad and ugly when it comes to portrayals of computers and the Internet on film, starting all the way back with 1983's WarGames, though we really don't get moving with the Web until 1995's Hackers (featuring Angelina Jolie) and The Net.

Now, just like with any specialty, there are going to be things that movie makers get wrong, especially technical details with the guns, cars, elevators, boats, etc. Sometimes it's a flat-out mistake, other times it's just a fudge for dramatic effect.

And unless they make a big deal about it in the plot, unless you're a sewing machine technician, are you really going to care that the Bass-o-Matic XL4500 that shows up for 2 seconds in the background didn't have dual-bobbin autothreaders until 1985?

Of course, when they make a particularly obvious mistake, it can "take you out of the moment" as they say, so it might be better to not make a big deal about an exact e-mail instead of trying to pass off "Max@Job 3:14." as a valid e-mail address (as they did in Mission Impossible).

Anyway, I'm sure you have your own examples of movie goofs, so you can check out the entire universe of Web sites dedicated to Movie Mistakes and Movie Cliches. (Also check out the great Bad Astronomy site that discusses good and bad science in movies.)

Since the Web is so well-integrated into our lives these days, it's both easier for filmmakers to get right (since they're using it), and more important that they not get it wrong (since everyone else is using it, too).

Thanks -- Joe