I love movies, especially great movies, but I have almost no patience for bad flicks. Lots of people can watch any movie and pick out a good bit here n’ there, but when I watch something like the Fantastic Four sequel, I want to gouge my eyes out. How do I manage to not gouge my eyes out? Just like kids make up little games to play during long car-rides, I play a little game with bad movies.
Take a steaming pile like “Mission to Mars” for example. This 2000 flick starring Gary Sinise should have been titled “Mission to The $1.99 Bin At Walmart.” With no concrete plot line, ridiculously long zero-gravity scenes, and character depth along the lines of Archie Comics, this movie made me want to gouge other people’s eyes out in an act of mercy. When a film is this bad you have to find some way to pass the time, so I play the fun family game for all ages, “What computer hardware is taped to the walls?”
Films that have a “hi-tech” premise, especially science fiction movies, are always using strange items for set construction. In the original Star Wars movie (“Episode IV: A New Hope”), for example, the Death Star was constructed using bits and pieces from hundreds of model battleship kits. These days, it’s easy to find stuff that looks hi-tech by digging in the bargain bin at Staples or Circuit City, so you will often find computer hardware all over the sets of sci-fi movies.
In “Mission to Mars” for example, there is a scene where the stars are watching an incoming transmission from a previous Mars mission. As the camera tries (and fails) to capture Jerry O’Connel (My Secret Identity) looking concerned, you can see an item on the wall behind him.
I spotted it immediately only because my former employer used them exclusively in our servers, and I even use a couple of them myself. What is it?
It’s a removable IDE hard drive kit, which converts a 5.25″ drive bay into a handy little receptacle for a 3.5″ hard drive so you have easy access for swapping out hard drives. It just happened that the set designers for Mission used the exact same model I use.
Have you ever spotted a piece of familiar hardware in a set? Have you ever noticed that in many films and TV shows that good guys always use Macintoshes while bad guys tend to use Windows/PCs? If you’re watching a horrible movie, have fun playing this game and keep your eyes peeled for junk in the background.
