Movies That Technology Killed - Part 2

The Bonfire of the Vanities

A few years ago, there was a whole series of movies, like Grand Canyon and Doc Hollywood, that involved innocent people whose lives were changed forever when they made a wrong turn off the freeway, all sired by The Bonfire of the Vanities, in which Tom Hanks found himself far from his Manhattan penthouse. GPS eliminates all that; nobody ever gets lost anymore. Nobody drives through bad neighbourhoods without global positioning systems these days. If you don't have GPS, you're an idiot. And if you're an idiot, you deserve to die.

The Talented Mr Ripley

Matt Damon doesn't look anything like Jude Law. He just doesn't. Facebook, YouTube, Google, the whole shooting match would just blow Damon's pathetic little masquerade right out of the water. You're not that talented, Mr Ripley.

Goldfinger

James Bond would know in advance to be on the lookout for Odd Job's deadly chapeau because Q would have seen one of these hats for sale, dirt cheap on eBay.

Jaws

Sharks, even humongous great whites, aren't that hard to kill. That's because sharks are dumb. Still, if at first you don't succeed in ridding your otherwise congenial summer resort of a ravenous great white, you simply convene an impromptu gathering of resourceful, experienced shark hunters on Twitter and your problem's solved. It's not a case of, "We're going to need a bigger boat." It's, "We're going to need a bigger flash mob here in Amityville."

The list of motion pictures whose plots get deep-sixed by modern technology goes on and on. Silence of the Lambs. Die Hard. Memento. Scream. And any movie where little kids or damsels in distress are hiding in closets or basements or under the bed won't work anymore because at some point their smart phones will make that annoying "powering down" beeping sound and Chuckie or the Beastmaster or the little girl from The Ring or Al Pacino will know exactly where they are. If you're smart enough to turn off your phone before you hide under the bed, you'd be smart enough not to be in that house in the first place. Or smart enough to text the FBI before you dive into the linen closet.

Here is the central paradox in all this: directors have no problem getting an audience to believe in ghosts, vampires, succubi, extraterrestrials, poltergeists, gremlins, wizards, giant worms, latter-day dinosaurs or rustic werewolves who seem to have unlimited access to steroids; all that is deemed perfectly logical and believable. But it is impossible to get anyone to believe that a character in a horror film or thriller would not be armed with the technology needed to foil the depredations of his rampaging, bloodthirsty stepfather.