Movie Scenes We've Lost To Technology

Pour One Out For These Storytelling Tactics

With every new technology comes the inevitable obsolescence of an older one. The changes we see in our day-to-day lives have been discussed ad nauseum, but what about our cherished movie scenes?

• Discarded Newspapers Blowing Across a City Street: How will you know when the storm of the century is about to hit a populated city center? Or when a killer cyborg from the future is about to teleport back in time to a dark alleyway? Do characters just get a notification on their phone now? Does the Weather Channel app even provide Terminator forecasts?

• A Shelf Full of Labeled Videotapes: How will the audience get a view into a character’s psyche without being shown a shot of their entire videotape library on their living room shelf? The Netflix homepage doesn’t exactly give an accurate description of your tastes. So now what, the writers have to just develop a personality through smart dialogue and creative storytelling instead? Pass.

• A Breakdown Inside a Phone Booth: What will someone bang their hands against to showcase an emotional climax? Who will idle in the gloomy dark, awaiting that secretive call from the kidnapper? Where will Clark Kent change into Superman?

• Slamming the Office Desk: The advent of remote work is nearly extinguished this once proud and effective method of character expression. How can one show they are angry at the DA’s investigation? Raise their Zoom hand? If I had a desk right now I would slam my hands down on it in anger.

• Holding up a Giant Paper Map in Confusion: Gone are the days of a person unfolding a comically large map and turning it in different directions to try and orient themselves. With Google Maps, intricate plot points of complex movies like Home Alone 2: Lost in New York have become obsolete.

• Newspaper Headlines Spinning Into Frame: How will movies inform the audience about major external events that affect the story? A spinning iPhone 16 with CNN Mobile pulled up? The audience would have to wait for the pop-up ad to finish before they can even read the headline. They could be dead by then.

• Big Reveals From Developing Film: With the advent of digital cameras and smart phones, the dark rooms of the past are no more. How will the killer be revealed in a dramatic fashion without the suspense-creating environment of a slowly developing picture hanging from a string? Won’t someone think of the amateur sleuths on network television, please?

• Questions Answered From Library Research: What is more cinematic than watching a young detective scroll through microfilm of old articles to find a clue. Now they are all behind paywalls online, so I guess the killer is getting away with it after all. Thanks JSTOR.

• Breaking News: No more basic cable means no more flipping on the TV where the reporter is talking about the exact, relevant story that involves the characters. Sure, they can get a push notification about the dirty bomb that was just dropped over St. Louis, but that doesn’t have the same gravitas.

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