There can be an array of reasons why phones feature in films and it’s not just for advertising. It may not have been considered much, but phones can actually be very important to the plot – you may wonder why the characters don’t just use the landline, but let’s face it, this doesn’t exactly scream wow factor.
Action films such as the Bond, Mission: Impossible and Bourne films are a great example of how phones can be important to the storyline and significantly change it. Just as we use our phones to keep all-important aspects of our lives together (contacts, passwords, calendars) so do our film heroes in the present day.
Back in the day Bond had to carry around a separate technology for tracking enemies, blowing up buildings and even electrocuting people. However, these days, Bond is able to reach for his phone and make just about any commands he needs to. Surely, as well as product placement, this allows the film producers to focus on other parts of the plot and make these twice as exciting.
Also consider the affect that having the Internet on mobile phones has too. Having access to social networks such as Twitter and Facebook or apps that provide worldwide news at the touch of a button considerably quickens the plot. Films like The Social Network or Project X would not have even existed if it wasn’t for information on the go.
Phones can also be used heavily to advertise the technology that may soon be available to us in the future. Just like sci-fi films predicted new phone technologies, so too have film franchises like James Bond. The iPhone is definitely a product of many ideas from the Bond movies which now is available to the general public through places such as phones4u.
So much new technology has arisen from those tacky (but classic) sci-fi films of the 70s and 80s. Take the famous Star Wars for example. Remember those scenes where Princess Leia is projected as a 3D image? This will soon be the next technology available to us (well, maybe not a full-on image, but certainly 3D).
What you also have to remember too about sci-fi films is that a lot of them feature species from different galaxies with different languages (not altogether different to the world we live in). So at some point, a universal translator will have had to be appointed. Now, who couldn’t do with one of these? Surely there have been times when a language translator wouldn’t have gone amiss? After technology like Siri on the iPhone, it is clearly the next logical step.
Thus showing just how much technology has risen from sci-fi films.
Originally published May 31, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
