+37 Many movie plots become obsolete due to cell phones, amirite?

by Howerosella 1 week ago

the seinfeld episode where they all get separated in a parking garage wouldnt exist

by Anonymous 1 week ago

My parking garage has horrible reception.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Yeah, I got lost in a parking garage in Omaha because I had no service. This was like 2 years ago, lol.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Yeah, folks don't realize how bad cell reception is in certain buildings. Also Big O!

by dortha04 1 week ago

I went hiking and not even a mile in there was no service.

by ksimonis 1 week ago

Some say they're still lost to this day.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

AM radio listeners know this all too well.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Even FM to an extent. A couple grocery stores near me have underground parking garages; in one of them the FM drops out entirely, and in the other the FM is degraded. This is for a local high power station.

by Over_Tumbleweed_4470 1 week ago

And XM too but I gave up that crap a long time ago. Good programming, terrible sound quality.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

pretty much all of seinfeld wouldnt have happened

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Or it would all have happened... just over discord

by Anonymous 1 week ago

it would be things like "im not getting a signal" or "my phone is dead"

by Anonymous 1 week ago

It was... "The Mooks." One of the best jokes of my childhood (since my class literally learned about The Moors the previous week) probably wouldn't have existed since the info would be easy to look up.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

moops

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Just for the sake of keeping the joke going, I'm going to double down on The Mooks and not look it up.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Its Moors!! Misprint on Trivial Pursuit

by Glass-Effective123 1 week ago

"Moops." (Also I did look it up because I need to have more integrity than George, and it was Moops.)

by Anonymous 1 week ago

In a similar vein, there's the episode where they're all trying to find each other in one of two movie theaters. There's also the episode where George and Jerry have to get into George's girlfriend's apartment to swap out the tape in her answering machine. As a lesser plot element, the Chinese restaurant episode involves George waiting to use a payphone.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

I'd imagine close to 90% of Seinfeld plots wouldn't work with iPhones

by No-Instruction 1 week ago

Yeah I used to crush that

by Anonymous 1 week ago

I'll give you Home Alone and Kujo. How exactly would that have helped in Jurassic Park? They were on an island and running a Unix system.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Also, in one of those films there were mobile phones. A spinosaurus ate one, and it made for a great scene with the phone ringing inside the dino.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

that wasnt a cell phone, it was a satellite phone

by Anonymous 1 week ago

They werent common use.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

For the military/corporate people on the island it was for the most part

by Chackett 1 week ago

That little ring tone lives rentfree in my head

by Anonymous 1 week ago

And in the Dino doo

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Nevermind that most of Jurassic Park's immediate problems could have been solved by Hammond not sparing expenses. Why didn't they have independent radios, backup power on the fences, more robust security, and a host of other basic precautions that would have prevented most of the action.

by hgleason 1 week ago

Or just paid the guy doing all the computer stuff more money.

by Krodriguez 1 week ago

Boeing: [awkward_monkey.png] Any money spent on infrastructure is the same money not going to the shareholders.

by luettgenlulu 1 week ago

Because KaOS ThEOry!

by rosenbaumfreder 1 week ago

Because the park wasn't close to ready - Hammond rushed it to appease shareholders and brought our protagonists in super early to buy more time with glowing reviews. Hence why the blood sucking lawyer was there, to see what a great time everyone has and go back to the board to buy more time.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

What's Kujo?...I remember a book about a dog named Cujo🤷‍♂️

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Cujo sounds like the name of a former Toronto Maple Leafs goalie

by Over_Tumbleweed_4470 1 week ago

Just phone the police when the raptors escape? duhhhh /s

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Imagine how short Gerald's Game would have been if they'd had an Alexa

by Anonymous 1 week ago

I wouldn't even give them Home alone as they did try to call people using phones at the airport including Kevin himself but the people they were trying to call were already out of town

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Wasn't one of the theories that Kevin's neighborhood had been hit by an ice storm and damaged a trunk line, so that no one in that neighborhood could get calls?

by Anonymous 1 week ago

It's not a theory, it's explicitly explained in the movie.

by hgleason 1 week ago

Except Kevin uses that phone to order a Pizza

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Pizza place was inside the circle of functioning lines.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

These ancient lines right?

by Anonymous 1 week ago

As the guy says here the phone lines are a mess. considering he said ma Bell this movie was probably originally written with the 1981-1982 deep freeze as the back drop. That year ma bell had a surge in phone line destruction due to weather related damage in Chicago, people could call out but no one could call in.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

And also the phone lines were down

by mitchellbud 1 week ago

But if you have a mobile you're never "out of town".

by rosenbaumfreder 1 week ago

No you are still out of town. You can't just walk next door from Hawaii to Northbrook Illinois to go grab Kevin

by Anonymous 1 week ago

"It's all about shot placement bro"

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Hello, this is Army? Im stuck on an island with dinos. Can you please help me… Hello…. Hello? Also good luck trying to kill a grizzly with a pistol.

by NecessaryYear1024 1 week ago

A handgun may not be the most ideal way to fend off a bear, but they're certainly capable of getting the job done.

by kassulkezakary 1 week ago

Eh, the characters would simply decide not to utilize their phone in critical moments. Similar to how they fail to just talk to someone when they're caught doing something that looks way worse than it is. The old "Wait! I can explain!" And then he never explains. And the characters are left with that easily resolvable misunderstanding just hanging in the air for an hour. Superhero movies are notorious for forgetting that they have some power that could end the plot immediately. Often it's a power they already used in that same movie.

by DiscussionReady9951 1 week ago

force speed has entered the chat

by Pale_Fail4563 1 week ago

Pretty much every episode of the flash where the bad guy isn't also a speedster.

by MusicianCold8419 1 week ago

Many would end after five minutes if the main characters would be honest with each other.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

TV Tropes probably has a page about scenes where the one character with a phone on hand can't get service, their phone is dead, or something similar that's preventing them for calling for help.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

I've been in Africa for two weeks now. I think I've been out of phone service for about 15 minutes (on roads between towns that were far apart). (Phone service meaning at least 3G, mostly 4G).

by rosenbaumfreder 1 week ago

It's why a lot of movies where cell phones are the answer get rid of them in some fashion to get back to good ol' fashioned "what now?" storytelling. Battery's dead. Forgot it at home. Dropped and broke it. Etc.

by Lueilwitzmaymie 1 week ago

‘Phonebooth' would now be ‘man on the corner with a moblie'

by aprice 1 week ago

"The call is coming from inside the house!!!....or somewhere within 150 feet, depending if you have GPS activated!"

by Edhuels 1 week ago

Quick! Let's open the FindMy app to make their device ring, so we can find the murderer!

by Lumpy_Honey 1 week ago

Nah it's fine - no one under 40 is picking up that phone call and they'll see your text and won't respond for 3 to 5 business days

by Anonymous 1 week ago

That's why you Whatsapp them

by rosenbaumfreder 1 week ago

You can set a movie in any time period, or write a reason they can't use their cell phones if you need a story in a time with cell phones. Now those plots that could be solved if the characters actually talked to each other for 10 seconds, ain't nothing we can do about those.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

If they'd had radio during early history, wars would be very different too.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Battery dies, no signal, or can't log into WiFi.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

When the power goes out so to the cell phone towers.

by santino12 1 week ago

Cellphone towers don't have backup power? Here in Africa they do.

by rosenbaumfreder 1 week ago

Cell towers here only have about 8 hours of backup power.

by santino12 1 week ago

My wife and I just watched the first episode of Sopranos last night and I was thinking how funny it was that they could get away with chasing a guy down in a business park with their car and then beating the piss out of him while surrounded by people because no one had phones. Mafia life must be so much harder now with phones everywhere.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Scripts don't care. Look at shows like Star Trek TNG. Many of the plots boil down to "man, if we just had cameras around the ship, we'd have figured this out in three minutes!" Even today, many shows and movies just have the phone dead, no signal, or even as simple as "nobody is answering."

by Anonymous 1 week ago

Harry Potter and the Wizarding world would get exposed

by Anonymous 1 week ago

I'm still not waiting for a movie that uses cell phones as a main gadget/prop that's vital to the storyline/plot. It'd be pretty boring because we'd read what's on the cell phone via the movie screen and it wouldn't be more compelling than the actor just saying the line out loud to the other actor.

by Anonymous 1 week ago

they can just have the character not have reception, or leave their phone somewhere, or out of battery.

by Daynemurphy 1 week ago

Phone Booth with Colin Farrell just wouldn't have happened at all

by Anonymous 1 week ago

The entirety of Seinfeld would never have happened had mobile phones been more accessible at that time

by Hunterleffler 1 week ago

80s and 90s sitcoms suffer from this far more than films IMO.

by Any_Possession 1 week ago

With the bad reception one has in some countries, like Germany, some plots still work.

by Live_Anything 1 week ago

Not getting service is still common though

by Wonderful_Flight 1 week ago

Halloween 3 could have had slightly better results, given a phones capability to record. Hell, at least Dan could have somehow saved his children.

by New_Mastodon2038 1 week ago

It's kind of the opposite but there's a hilarious scene in HIMYM where they are all arguing about something but then one of them Google's it on their phone and puts an end to the argument. Before phones they would have massive discussions about something but then phones made their debates boring as they could find the answer immediately.

by Hayleegerlach 1 week ago

At my film school they literally say the greatest difficulty to write scripts nowdays is cellphones. That's why in most media the phone is casually out of battery,no signal,etc

by Anonymous 1 week ago

There's a reason some shows and movies pick a certain time period before the mass adoption of cell phones.

by InternationalBoat148 1 week ago

The movie red eye is also obsolete because of cellphones

by AttitudeDifferent 1 week ago