What’s the Worst Tech Fails You’ve Seen in Movies? (Bonus: Rage Over Power/SATA

[xahefig900]

We've all cringed at Hollywood's hilarious misunderstandings of tech—hackers smashing keyboards, "enhancing" JPEGs into 3D crime scenes, or connecting to the mainframe with a cable that clearly goes nowhere.

So let's rant about:

Most Unrealistic Cable Scene

Example: A hero "rewiring" a server with what's obviously a [spam link removed]SATA cable[/spam] (meant for hard drives) to stop a nuke.

Or a power cable dangling from nothing, magically fueling a supercomputer.

Best/Worst "Tech Babble"

"Reverse the polarity of the Ethernet!"—wait, that's not how any of this works.

Your Favorite "Bad Movie" Tech Moment

Extra points if it involves cables used as plot devices (looking at you, Mission Impossible rope drops).

The Goal: Celebrate the absurdity while roasting the worst offenders. Who's earned the Golden SATA Cable of Nonsense award?

[Gabriel Knight]

I think the most absurd would be INDEPENDENCE DAY when they just "upload" a virus to an alien spacecraft, like if they were running Windows XP or something.

On the other hand, the most accurate I've ever seen was UNTRACEABLE. While still has some corny stuff, overall it makes perfect sense, talking about proxies and stuff instead of super hacker skills that makes no sense. Give it a watch if you have the chance.

[Trevor]

THE RECRUIT tells us that the CIA headquarters does not allow drives in their computers yet a character is shown putting a USB flash drive into a PC and downloading information 😳

[zombie no.one]

In WILD BEASTS (1983) a guy picks up his regular landline phone and makes a call to his buddy in a car on his CB radio....

I'm no tech guy but I don't think that was ever a thing?


--- @Rev.Powell should this thread be moved to 'bad movies' for more traction?

[chainsaw midget]

In Resident Evil:  The Final Chapter, the lead character has trouble starting a military humvee with her key. 

Military Humvees don't HAVE keys.  They have a little switch you flip

[Alex]

So many things in Top Gun 2.... I could spend hours talking about the things it gets wrong and why Maverick would have been on so many charges for things, including facing the death penalty (so an American military lawyer informed me).

I'll settle for just commenting that flares will do absolutely nothing against radar-guided missiles.

[Dalmatian Bobby Samaritan]

In WILD BEASTS (1983) a guy picks up his regular landline phone and makes a call to his buddy in a car on his CB radio....

I'm no tech guy but I don't think that was ever a thing?


--- @Rev.Powell should this thread be moved to 'bad movies' for more traction?

Actually if you are a member of the Bilderbergers you can call Mulder and Scully from a landline that links to a Global hawk. And then links to a star diamond capacitor disk on your hand. That was linked to a consciousness reading on your chest. That then could do an ultra wavelength entraferometer to Alpha Centauri. Then all of the Glucox phenos beings would hear it. Then it would possibly go to a CB radio or whatever the script of the movie demanded.

Ok, actually in a way I think I (or you and I) have actually just described the plot to Masters of the Universe 2026. It is not disconcordant. It makes perfect sense. It is like Sampras backhand. Or Pete Sampras (I saw a guy today who looked just like him, since someone else is talking about their rear ending story. Today I saw someone who looked just like Pete Sampras.) Yeah I mean it is the backhand. That explains Independence Day too. You don't have to get into all of that Windows XP and computing wiz nonsense. Aliens use computers. Sure I buy that and those computers can be hacked into. Sure.
It is the Pete Sampras backhand. AkA Gabriel Knight needs to explain to us the technology of the three stooges because now he looks like a legitimate stooge.