A younger friend and I were talking about movies the other day and I realized there really hasn't been any 'good' computer movies produced in the last 10 years. What's worst, I'm beginning to forget what computer movies have been produced in the last 20. I ask all of you for help. If there is useless computer trivia to be found, it can be found on Applefritter.:)
I thought of the following:
1. Pirates of Silicon Valley (one of my favorites)
2. Wargames,
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. Sneakers
5. Colossus
6. Tron
Anybody?
Are we sticking to good movies only?
Don't forget Demon Seed. A movie about A. I. that wanted to be let out of this box. It had the voice of Robert Vaughn as I remember but it has been a very long time since I have seen it, At least 15yrs
Electric Dreams was a pretty mediocre movie, but had a decent film score/soundtrack by Jeff Lynne of ELO.
The Short Circuit movies (I and II) were mainly focused on androids, but I think they'd be pretty close to counting. As would AI, the Stepford Wives, and I Sing the Body Electric.
i know its almost all fake, but i loved the movie hackers, they atleast praised the apple laptops in that movie! imagine if they made the same movie with technology of the now!
You've Got Mail -- a cheezy romantic comedy with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, almost as bad as Sleepless In Seattle (I can't think of any movie as awful as that one without having a dog or a car in the starring role).
While not truly computer-centric, the main characters use their computers (PowerBooks, by the way) quite a bit. There's also a very funny sequence involving Michael Keaton's character changing a speech heading to a teleprompter.
Also, "Independence Day", also known as "A PowerBook 5300 Saves The Earth"...
They used a 5300 in that movie??? why didnt i know that....
Or was it a 190?
Terminator (I/II/III/vs.Predator) was at least based on computers and technology ... not sure if these really count though.
If those are valid, then First Contact is in there too.
-West World
-Future World
-The Questor Files
-BattleStar Galactica (the theatrical release: in SensoRound!)
-Cyborgs of 2149 (I think that's the correct year)(which Terminator is a rip-off of)
-The Matrix (series, though I'd say only the first one was "good".)
-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the Earth, and Deepthought were two computers that drove the plotline.)
Mutant_Pie
BTW for completeness
First Contact = StarTrekTheNextGeneration:First Contact
I didn't know that they had made a "Terminator vs. Predator" film yet. Apparently Dark Horse has run down every comic book iteration, but a film was made???
Thats a New one. When did it come out?? as I have not seen it or do you mean Alien Vs Predator. Don't forget Lawnmower man one and two although one was better than two
The great mind-eff grandaddy of all computer movies?
The Matrix.
... or, more accurately, the Matrix Trilogy.
Would that be Matrices?
And don't forget Johnny Mnemonic.
Ooooo, and War Games.
Ooooo, and The Net.
and "still not quite human"
although it was a disney movie
Also, Bicentennial Man.
there was a movie called "Sneakers" I have yet to see it, but my friend suggested adding it to the list
My bad. Easy enough to get my Ahnold films mixed around. Sorry!
.... I was thinking more on the lines of 70's & 80's 'computer' movies. (or older). Terminator does start to strech the subject a bit, but good suggestion. Wasn't there a movie that Katherine Hepburn played in as a computer programmer? Or was it Luceal Ball?
I have never seen Colossus completely through but I remember someone metioning it once in the control room so I added it to my list. Can remember Electric Dreams...When was it produced?
To push the subject in another direction... what about computer centric television shows?
they use apple quatras with pc mouses (how dumb)
that ticked me off but the screens were apple for
sure looked like system 7.I like to look for computers
in movies and drive everyone in the room nuts.
Office Space!
dan k
Not sure of Triumph of the Nerds would count, but Independence Day had a Powerbook 5300c in it.
Everyone's named all the movies I'd put near the top of the list... but...
Resident Evil should be here somewhere... and Blade Runner... but certainly not in the same post.... and also The Final Cut, arguably, but not D.A.R.Y.L., Strange Days, perhaps, and Swordfish, I guess, or how about Weird Science... Jumping Jack Flash...
oh, this is kind of a funny list
You're thinking of Desk Set with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey. (1957 IIRC). A classic, and actually one of my favorite movies.
What is almost as fun as looking at the Mac in J.P. is looking at the SGIs.
(drool)
Good call on Westworld. Probably more influential than people think, if only because for the entire decade of the 80s it played every weekend on Saturday afternoon TV. All the obvious ones have been mentioned, I'll also offer up:
THX 1138
The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes This was my favorite movie when I was 4. I'm scared to see it now for fear it will ruin my childhood memories.
This link is interesting for this topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_computers#Film
did they have a nightrider movie? If no, then I toss in as a Series
also, men in black has a pretty advanced computer system for main area. and dare I say the horrible movie? "Stealth" Also, there was Flight of the Navigator (disney I believe) among others
.....or perhaps it is a product of my rural upbringing. Series... Hmm, Knight Rider would have to be up on the list but not before the Bionic Man or Bionic Woman. It does tend to the Terminator side of the spectrum but it was probably on of the few show that featured computers in the plot line (typically someone trying to steal one). Of course there was an 80's TV show that featured a computer whiz kid that solved crimes, but I can think of the name (believe it was and ABC show).
Desk Set.. I will have to look for a copy of that movie.... If we are going to add Desk Set, what about Fail Safe?
You wouldn't be thinking of "Whiz Kids", would you?
And what about "Automan"?
I was wondering if that was the name.. I remember someone had a few issues of a teen computer magazine 'k-power' and it was a feature article. Automan....wow.. I almost forgot. I remember one or two episodes and they were horrible. The 'automan' character.. was he the same actor that played the lead in Manimal?
There was an episode of Magnum P.I. that featured somebody trying to break into a security computer that Magnum kept playing an early RPG on, IIRC.
Also,
Minority Report
Antitrust
Maybe even Gattaca
Deep thought also has an apple logo on it! In the newest (2005) film (as opposed to the TV series, which is technically a film) there is a shot where there is a closeup of the "eye" of deep thought and you can see just above it to the right (iirc) there is a small apple logo, just thought you might like to know that
No... Chuck Wagner was "Automan"... Simon MacCorkindale was "Manimal"... damn, I used to love that show...
In the midst of late night channel surfing, my fiancee and I came across the absurdly cheesy (and delightfully fun in this respect) Ghost in the Machine. It's almost as ridiculous as Hackers (I consider this to be a more realistic presentation of technology), but it's one of the most uninentionally funny movies ever. (www.stomptokyo.com has reviews of some great films along these lines) The early to mid '90's were awesome - since the cold war was over, the studios were looking for the next source of creative cinema - the technothriller, which today is incredibly amusing. (Timecop is another gem from this era - I wish there were a 10th anniversary DVD release in 2004)
Ghost in the machine... can't quite remember that one. That's not the one with Dezel Washington is it?
Timecop... yeah, bad....
How about Runaway?
Nope... The one with Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe is "Virtuosity"...
Y'know, the more we think about these, the more we keep coming up with...
The Last Starfighter?
Not only does part of the movie centre around an arkade game, but all the spaceship scenes were computer-generated. (The first movie where that was done, and is therefore an important item in any computer-collector's inventory)
Yes, it was a crappy movie...
Does the TV-series Red Dwarf count? One of the characters is a computer AI, and another is a hologram based on the memories of a dead crewmember.
OK, it makes fun of Star Trek and a lot of other series, but if baldy(you know which Star Trek captain that is) is a fan...
Johnny Mnemonic was mentioned.
What about The Lawnmover man? I think there were two of them, even...
In Anime, there's Chobits(now there's some hardware I'd like to lay my hands on), 'I Dream of Mimi'(I don't have this series, yet, but it's on the to buy list), which seems to have a similar theme, 'Ah! My Goddess!', and yes, it's definitely about computers, something anyone will realise if they stop staring at Belldandy and study the intro...
(5episode OVA, 1 movie and a TV series)
In the 'Lost Universe' series, one of the main characters is a hologram created by the main computer of a starship. (Also, all the spacecraft are drawn with the DOGA software package)
Does 'Videogirl Ai' count?
Yes, I know she came out of a TV Screen, not a computermonitor, but she IS cute.
Edit: Forgot 'Dark Star', or did I repress the memory?
(Search it out, I don't want to remember enough of it. Just don't start discussing existentialism with a 'smart bomb'... )
GitM was an anime. As for TLSF, it sure was done on a computer. It was rendered on Crays, and they had to cut back on what was going ot be rendered bacause they didn't have the production time to do it all. The technology had been demonstrated to Lucas and others for use in SW, but he didn't think it was the way to go, at the time of course. The model master saw the demo and was thoroughly impressed by the way they could do the movements he couldn't achive with models.
The Ghost in the Machine (1993) that I was referring to is the live action cheese fest found here . I've heard of the anime of the same name, but never seen it (not too keen on anime myself). Red Dwarf was an awesome series, and I'd say that it'd count (a movie has supposedly been in the works since 1998). My computer is named Ace Rimmer in honor of the series. Though, in my father's home network, the central linux server is named Holly. Good times.
Virtuosity - man that's a gem I'd almost forgotten about. Sad thing is that I didn't even know that was Russel Crowe. (despite my fiancee's best wishes, that's going into the netflix queue!)
Doctor Who is another gem, with the great quote from the Tom Baker years "The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very sophisticated idiots." - one of my favorite quotes of all time.
Edited to remove page-streching URL. ~BDub
D'oh! The one I was thinking of was Ghost in the Shell.
Oh, my, that's sweet.
I can't believe nobody has mentioned Jurassic Park.
1. The disaster was set off by a disgruntled programmer.
2. The day was saved by a kid hacker using a Mac supposedly running Unix, but the monitor showed an entirely different operating system. (Hey, it's no dumber than Jeff Goldblum managing an infrared connection to upload a Powerbook virus to an alien invasion fleet!)
3. The first large-scale CGI critters on the wide screen! That may not be part of the plot, but still...
And just to mention a couple of anime series, .HACK//sign and Serial Experiment Lain.
Not sure if it's in the movie, but in "The Lost World" (sequel novel), they escape from a bunch of dinosaurs trying to eat them by going through a wiring tunnel. They're trying to pull up a schematic of the park to find an escape but nobody's trained to use it. The kid figures out that for that good of a GUI (at the time the book was written) it had to be a terminal connected to a larger machine elsewhere that they were using, and therefore there'd be some sort of service conduit.
http://www.applefritter.com/node/9989#comment-30273
Jurassic Park was mentioned, just misspelled.
Oh, whoops! I tend not to look at titles, and my search didn't work on the misspelling. I see now that Jon also mentions 'J.P.'
Welll, all the others I could think of were already mentioned.
I still love Sneakers, even though the super-high-tech feel of it has degraded over time.
Hey, how about Small Soldiers? It revolves around the computer chips.
I am not sure if it is accurate but recently I watched "The Internship" it is bran new but it is good movie regarding computers.
Matrix, Total Recall ...
o and also 'Wreckin' Ralph' !
I can think of these:
I, Robot (2004) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/
Stealth (2005) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382992/
Real Steel (2011) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433035/
The Imitation Game (2014) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970/
Robot Overlords (2014) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2145829/
Ex Machina (2015) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/
Chappie (2015) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1823672/