7. Harry Potter Franchise The Time Turners
The Technology Apparently, there are departments below the Ministry of Magic where the wizarding worlds equivalent of scientists attempt to discern the secrets of three great forces death, love and time. Now, these are mentioned in the books but dont really appear in the film, although you may recognise the Death room as the place where Sirius Black got blasted through an archway. Whats important to us here is the time room, for theyve invented time turners in there. Throughout the course of The Prisoner of Azkaban (coincidentally the best film, and that is a scientific fact) Hermione uses it to get to her lessons on time, and when she has, to, she uses it to save Buckbeak the Hippogriff from his untimely and unjustified death before breaking out an incarcerated Black.
What They Should Have Used It For Literally everything else. I know, I know, this is an old one but I couldnt very well go through a list of mis-implemented technologies and not involve time turners. Its such a Pandoras Box of an item that you can have to ask why they didn't use it at other points of the canon. To her credit, J.K. Rowling realised this, writing that Hermione handed hers in out of fatigue with her hectic schedule and then its destroyed when the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix throw down in the Department of Mysteries, thus tying everything up in a narrative bow. Now, were never informed of this in the films, but you can sort of figure it out and most of the Potter audience were book-readers anyhow, allowing the films to jump the cop-out movie critics would maul them for. Yet, what happens between Hermione being knackered and the Battle in the Ministry? Only Voldemort being resurrected. If Hermione had kept her hilariously powerful trinket but not used it for schoolwork a perfectly viable solution considering it also doubles as a nice necklace or trinket she couldve dealt with such an emergency at the close of the Triwizard Tournament. All she had to do was wait for Harry to come through with Cedric Diggorys corpse, rewound the clock, grabbed Dumbledore and headed to that graveyard. He couldve stunned Pettigrew, locked stunted Voldemort in a box and they all could all go down the Winchester for a pint and let this all blow over (wrong film?). Nobody would have died, and the world wouldve lost a lot less life. Yet all this happened, for the sake of schoolgirl fatigue. If anything, that makes Hermione responsible for an awful lot of death. Probably, the moral of the whole thing should be to not dispose of game-changing items, not follow your heart or shag your best mates sister (seriously Harry, whats up with that?).