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Most films that require some degree of miscommunication couldn’t work because cellphones are ubiquitous.
Additionally a lot of old sci-fi films based on a hypothesis that later turned out to be pseudoscience are here as well.
It seems you’re oblivious about drunks and addicts whom always talk shit on any kind of communication doesn’t matter the medium.
Didn’t stop any of the wacky bs in iRobot from happening. Cellphones do cure a lot of what ails older pics, but they can be waved away by things like ‘oopsies! Forgot to charge it.’ or ‘the club is so loud I didn’t hear the ringer.’ and my personal favorite ‘forgot to take it of dnd’.
Modern media just handwaves this easily with phones being broken or low battery whatever. It still works
Even makes it a tiny bit funnier (if it’s a comedic miscommunication, not if it’s “someone gets killed” miscommunication)
I like when movies kill off characters though
I have no issue with movies killing off characters, I just meant that miscommunication can be funny, but usually not if it’s tragic. But then again, deaths can be comedic if we’re talking Final Destination or Tucker and Dale vs Evil. So it’s all in the context
It’s going to get harder and harder to do that as cellphones get better though.
iPhones already have satellite SOS feature which works worldwide, and are starting to roll out satellite texting for non-emergency use. There are a few Android models that are slated to do the same, and it’s only a matter of time before most phones can do this.
There are plenty of phones that are waterproof (or rated for submersion in 5 meters of water for 30 minutes or whatever) and that’s only going to become more common too.
My phone lasts for about 2 days on a charge with how much I use it, and I charge it every night. That’s only going to get better with better battery technologies (the trend of phones getting thinner in response to increased battery capacity has actually somewhat reversed in recent years).
So, in a classic horror movie scenario with 5 or so people they’d need a reason why every single person is out of charge or has their phone broken. Even if the protagonists can’t get themselves out of the situation they’re in using their phones (because they’re broken or whatever) you still need to answer how they got into that situation in the first place if they have offline maps and GPS navigation. That’s not as big of a problem but it eliminates “they got lost” as a premise for why they’re in some spooky woods or wherever.
It seems to me that you’d either need to set the story in an abandoned mine or make the antagonist explicitly supernatural.
Even in movies before mobile phones, more often. Than not, they could resolve any problem by just telling the other people something, but they don’t because the movie would be over.
Also, ever since covid, a lot of movies became way more believable. Man if only the people knew that a pandemic was coming. If only we knew how dangerous it was, if people in other countries could’ve been warned from other countries where it’s already ravaging
You couldn’t make Deadpool 1 today because it already premiered on February 12, 2016 and today is Sep 5, 2024, and it’s philosophically impossible to make the same movie again.
I don’t think you could make a Deadpool 1 again because they never made a Deadpool 1. You could easily make Deadpool again, they do that all the time and it kind of sucks because you have to label it like Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool (2024).
Mostly you couldn’t make Deadpool today because it takes way, way longer than that to make a feature length film. Maybe you could do a YouTube short or something if you get started now. It’s already almost noon.
Someone should produce two identically named films in the same year and watch IMdB burn while they try to disambiguate them.
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That won’t stop them.
DC have remade Batman 900 times now
Technically you could, if the movie were a forgotten piece of media, or the makers happened to be entirely ignorant of it.
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The missing word is “boob”, for the record.
You couldn’t make 8 heads in a duffle bag today, because people would be like “what the fuck? This is just 8 heads in a duffle bag. Did I just pay to buy a decades old movie?”
You couldn’t make half of Seinfeld because with cell phone all the funny situations don’t occur.
Eh, series today still use this trope. “Oh no, I’m out of battery” or the comedic “My battery is at 1%, let’s take a selfie!”
That scene where he calls the phone in his stolen car would still be funny
That’s why so many tv shows are now written as period pieces or based in the 80s and 90s.
None of those situations were funny to actually live through. They’re only funny in a TV show.
“Comedy is tragedy plus time”. I like to say it’s comedy plus distance.
A man gets a paper cut, that’s drama. They fall down an open manhole and die. That’s comedy.
- Mel Brooks
True of literally every sitcom.
24 (TV series) is like this if I remember well. The daughter would have had a cellphone now.
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You couldn’t make Citizen Kane because flashbacks and other innovative filming techniques are now the norm.
Scully and Mulder often had to clarify “they were in an area that did not get great cellphone coverage” thirty years ago, they were always getting separated in urban settings
You couldn’t make Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone now because you’re not Warner Brothers and don’t own the copyright.
You couldn’t make Gone With the Wind today because everyone in it has died
Technically Correct
Use different actors?
Since everyone in the previous one is dead, why would they take the chance?
100% of people who live, die. Don’t live! Wait, no…
Actually, only around 92% of all people who ever lived, died. So there is a chance!
The later in history you’re born, the lower your chances of dying. People born in 2024 have only a ~3% chance of being dead, while the death rate for people born just 100 years ago is over 99%. We’ve gotten much better at being alive as time goes on!
This table from the SSA messes me up. Apparently at 119 you’ve still got a 1 in 10 chance of survival. That seems rather optimistic.
IF you have already lived to 119 ……
Your life expectancy is 0.6 years ……
AND you have a one in ten chance of surviving one year
Everyone?
Rip!
This reminded me of a question I had a while ago, but maybe it is easier to search up now. What is the oldest movie with at least one actor who is still alive, and what is the newest movie where no actors are still alive.
Maria Riva, the daughter of Marlene Dietrich, played as a child actress in The Scarlett Empress (1934) and is still alive. She’s 99 years old now.
Your other question is much harder to answer.
I appreciate the answer! And I agree that the second one is a question that I am not sure how to find the answer to. It would be easier if we only limited it to the cast, but if it was extended to the crew, it gets a bit more complicated
If it gets to the crew or extras, it becomes impossible. Lots of them you wouldn’t even find out if they died from public sources.
Main cast may be doable, it’ll probably be a hobby film done by one person.There is one way to be sure
Any movie where 1 cell phone would resolve the situation. A lot of serial camper killers would get shut down pretty fast.
Commando. Arnold spends a good chunk of the movie stopping people from getting to a pay phone to let the bad guy know he escaped their custody
Not just cellphones but every house now is equipped with a camera on the doorbell and possibly several more throughout the house. Back in the day serial killers basically just had to not be around when the police showed up and had a pretty good chance of just getting away
scribbling notes
- don’t be there when police arrive
- also steal the cameras and tech
Also disable the Internet beforehand so that the cameras don’t upload stuff to cloud storage.
There are also a swath of movies that couldn’t be made because of the ubiquity of surveillance cameras.
Who did it!?! ~Checks camera~
Jesus Christ it’s Jason Bourne
Heh in the new Mission Impossible, it’s
Tap for spoiler
a scary computer program interfering with the audio/video feeds so you couldn’t rely on them. Pretty well done overall, not bad at least.
Logical solutions to problems don’t happen in many kinds of horror movies. Even the tiniest bit of common sense applied would destroy so many, cell phones or no.
That’s why I love Cabin in the woods. They make it a creepy movie, but also make fun of all the common horror tropes by having the haunted grounds be a very orchestrated event.
“Oh no my cell phone doesn’t work” It’s because the creepy org turned on a cell phone jammer
“Why don’t they just leave?” The creepy org blows up a shit load of tnt to make the tunnel collapse
“Why don’t they find an alternate route out?” The creepy org put a fucking force field around the area.
That movie definitely ventured in to silly territory, but then it was quite directly a well-meaning parody of horror movies that kinda’ HAD to get a bit silly to do too much with the premise.
It would be kinda funny for someone to make something that starts as a horror movie but then everyone acts in a sensible manner without contrived reasons for their efforts failing, resulting in the whole dangerous situation falling apart over the course of the plot until its more a sort of parody of horror movies than a proper example.
That’s just a normal movie
The best horror movies are the ones where all the characters act in a highly capable and intelligent way and the monster/force/whatever still keeps beating them. Like The Thing. Or Alien.
If only Hollywood paid good writers what they’re worth.
Our group of teenagers should definitely split up to search for the monster and/or serial killer!
Rather than making a swift exit to anywhere else, we should instead hide in this building where we think the killer is
Oh my god! It’s the killers childhood home where he brutally killed one of his family members in each room! Let’s hide in there, but we should each find a hiding spot in a different room.
What if we kissed on the infanticide balcony
Let’s walk right by the car we got here in and go house in the creepy building that we think the killer lives in and that we were too scared to enter before he killed our friends!
Introduce a character that’s a teacher so sick of cellphones in their class they bought a jammer off the internet. Make that character the serial killer’s first victim.
Just put the camp outside of cell service. Plenty of camping in the mountains outside of cell service.
Still fully believable
The newer phones have satellite SOS features.
That’s not at all common yet though, it’s pretty much a gimmick in a few select phones.
Pfft, that’s a fad that will never catch on. Just like that internet thingy.
Airplane!
Lots of reasons. Pick one.
You can’t make “The Princess Bride” nowadays because optimism and feel good emotions aren’t things that we’re allowed to have anymore.
The Weather Man… Cobra Verde… Even though the latter could have hardly ever been called mainstream.
