10 Scientific Errors In Movies That Really Need To Stop

3. Anything Involving Computers

Despite the fact that they spend all day staring at their blank screens, screenwriters apparently don't know a whole lot about how computers work. Seriously, we're not sure we've ever seen a film with somebody realistically using a computer. Except maybe Secret Window, which has Johnny Depp using his PC to write a book. It's the rest of that movie that doesn't make a lick of sense, and that's hardly the computer's fault. Elsewhere you'll find technology that can achieve impossible feats like the crime thrillers favoured method of tracking down a suspect: zooming in and "enhancing" an impossibly distant and degraded image to produce a crystal-clear snapshot of the bad guy to give the hero. Any attempts to use "hacking" to break into somebody's computer system is similarly likely to be completely unlike the actual practice of script kiddies. Either the hacking in question will be the weird twist on the meaning we use in everyday life, which simply amounts to guessing somebody's username and login for their Facebook, or else it'll be the sort seen in Jurassic Park where everything is much more visually interesting and engaging than seeing somebody type a load of unintelligible code in green text on a black screen. Not that The Matrix is all that better in that regard. Then there are the cinematic computer users who type everything, never using the mouse to point and click around the screen (which is what you do 99% of the time you're using a PC), the emails that appear on the recipient's screen as they're being typed - thanks for that one, Bridget Jones - or people just doing things with a regular, store-bought desktop that's plain impossible. Take that, Weird Science!