One of the staples in any good geek-tastic film is unusual gadgets. How many of us lust after lightsabers? You know you’d love to have a real one, so would I. But not everything that screenwriters, producers and directors come up with for films carry the same cachet. In fact, some fake gadgets are so lame that they become legendary.
This list is not complete, far from it. I encourage you, the reader, to add your own favorite lame gadgets in the comments. And feel free to disagree with me. Some of the entries in this story have a way of being both lame and not lame at the same time, but for whatever reason, they make it onto the list.
10: The Hoverboard, as seen in Back to the Future 2, Transformers: The Movie, etc.
I’m sorry. I know that this first entry is going to get me some old-fashioned Internet flames, but these suck. They’re a bad idea in so many ways. They always look bad, are always portrayed wrong, and never, ever help the plot. Technically they might be cool, but only as a novelty. Because it doesn’t come in contact with the physical surfaces it “skates” over, you lose the ability to do all the crazy tricks skaters are known for, not to mention the chance to have your own lame show on MTV2.
In addition, you just know your nuclear hydro aero fuel cell is going to run out of power when you’re blocks from your destination, meaning you’ll have to carry the hoverboard the rest of the way. We’re guessing these weigh in at about 20 pounds each. Have fun, Marty.
9: Combing the Desert Comb, as seen in Spaceballs
The Imperious Forces have giant combs to help look for things. Ha ha. Ha. The joke falls flat in the otherwise perfect “Spaceballs.” OK, I get it, it’s a pun. But the thing about puns is they’re almost always better heard, not seen. Much like children, and the opposite of Jennifer Lopez.
Now, Mel Brooks could have done something here. Maybe the comb would find the roots of, I dunno, something, to find out the planet wasn’t a real blonde. That would lead them to Yoghurt. Having a gadget just to have one is stupid, and I’m sorry to say it’s a blemish on Brooks’ career.
8: Inspector Gadget (movie version), as seen in Inspector Gadget
It pains me, as I like Matthew Broderick a lot, but man, was the walking convergence device misused in the film. Inspector Gadget has everything including charisma. Not so when up against the forces of Rupert Everett, it seems. Every use of a gadget was for a sight gag, and never part of the overall plot. Lame.
7: Standard Imperial TIE Fighters, as seen in the Star Wars trilogy (the good one)
I know I’m going to take some heat for this one, but from a pilot’s point of view, it’s a death trap. Were Ralph Nader alive in the “Star Wars” universe, many things would be different, including TIE Fighters never making it off the drawing board.
The craft have no shields, minimum armament and no hyperdrive. If a couple of X-Wings have you cornered away from your squad, you’re dead in space. The idea, of course, was to overwhelm the enemy, as the TIE Fighters were disposable. And, presumably, so were the pilots. So not cool.
Also, Ralph Nader would have stole a critical 8 percent of the Emperor’s votes.
6: The Thing Batman Uses to Call the Bats (“Back-up”) That He Kept In His Boot, as seen in Batman Begins
OK, I get how it helps the plot. He’s surrounded, and uses a swarm of bats to cover his escape. Smart move, Wayne. But you’re Batman. Batman has a utility belt, in fact, he’s quite famous for it. So why would he keep an ultrasonic transmitter in his boot?
Seriously, one wrong step off a curb and every dog for blocks is in pain here. The lesson, Bats = Gadget + Utility belt. ‘K? ‘K.
5: X-Ray Sunglasses, as seen in Goldeneye
I firmly believe that “Goldeneye” is one of the better, new Bond films, but the X-Ray sunglasses are just stupid. Yes, they allow Bond (and us) to see the hot chicks in their underwear with their guns. But, again, they do nothing for the plot. Had he used them to tell that Famke Janssen was really a man (see: “Nip/Tuck”), then I could see the point. Otherwise, it’s just gratuitous. And not in the awesome way.
4: KITT 2000, as seen in Knight Rider 2000
KITT was awesome. It was a car that could talk, had turbo boost, had grappling hooks, made lattes, cured cancer, and had that neat whooshing light at the front. The body was based on a modified Pontiac Trans-AM, but yet it was still kick-ass.
In the ill-fated update, KITT was a Pontiac Banshee, and other than the voice and the nose light, nothing was the same. I’m all for upgrading, but Knight Rider is all dark and, well, night-timey. A red super sports car doesn’t fit.
3: The Terminatrix, as seen in Terminator 3
Of all the things to loathe about this movie (and there are many), the female terminator stands head and shoulders above the rest. Yes, I liked the twist of a girl killer robot, but the idea of combining the best of both models of Terminators into an oh-so-sexy frame doesn’t work. And, in all, she wasn’t that tough.
Again, I’m blaming the writers. She has, what, two lines of dialogue? That a villain does not make, friend. There was so much this character/gadget could do, yet it was all squandered. Nice ass, though.
2: The Advanced Space Shuttles, as seen in Armageddon
No no no no no. If you think these are cool, you seriously need to think about, I don’t know, everything. Sure, they were needed for the plot, but when the plot sucks as much as this one did, it doesn’t help any at all. Not even Liv could make these things attractive.
Space Shuttles are bombarded by all sorts of badness in orbit. Why, then, was one of the drilling jeep things able to shoot through the bay doors of one as if it were aluminum siding? I know why, because Michael Bay is the worst director working today.
We almost went with the new Megatron here, but we’ll spare him until after the film comes out.
1: The Stealth Boat, as seen in Street Fighter
It’d be easy to make fun of the writers and director here, but that wouldn’t be fair. You imagine them smoking cheap cigars on the patio of some LA swank café, brainstorming plot ideas, and some idiot says, “I know! I’ve got the perfect ending! The miswritten characters make a final assault on a stealth boat!” And then you imagine the others saying things like, “That’s genius!” or “Man, perfect!”
Sadly, this never happened. The finale was filmed on-location in Thailand. The producers, however, forgot to ask the Thai government permission to use its airspace for the finale that featured stealth fighters, very cool gadgets.
When the gov said “no,” the vehicles were changed to one stealth boat. This makes the gadget lame not just for us who have to watch it, but for the people who made the crappy film, too. For them, we feel bad. But congrats for making it to the top of this list.
Honorable Mention: Most things in “Real Genius.” Really.
Anything we missed? Feel free to fill us in in the comments. We’re sure there’s something obvious we left out, but, ya know, it’s Friday.
I am pretty sure you have never seen “Agent Cody Banks” … Your list would have been quite a bit longer.
Seriouly, Matt. I was with you all the way until you dissed Real Genius. Come ON. A laser that shoots a hole the size of a fist in everything in it’s path for miles? How is that NOT a fantastic idea? Totally useful, totally safe.
Really though, I’m mad you felt the need to bring Real Genius into this. We will have words.
Also, I haven’t seen Back to the Future in a few years… Wasn’t the hover board pretty crucial to the plot?
I gotta agree with Real Genius being.. err.. Real Genius.
“It’s a penis extender. Wanna try?”
The hoverboard?… you have really lost it… the tricks are aerial, they were never shown, marty used it as a skateboard since it was what he knows from the past but we are never shown how you do tricks in them do we?..
And he didn´t even used a proper hoverboard if you recall griff ad the gang hoverboards, it was little girls hoverboard BASE if you remember correctly..barbie branded no less..
And yes ilya, the hoverboard is crucial to BTF II and even III… it seems that Matt don`t remembers the movies at all..
The “lame” ’stealth’ boat is a real boat: http://www.fresh99.com/james-bond-boat.htm
There are a few Star Trek things I never really understood:
> Communicators. If Capt. Picard says, for example, “Picard to Worf,” only Worf hears it. How does the communicator know to only route the audio to Worf’s comm? All he does is tap his comm badge thing, says “Picard to x,” and only x hears it. I guess I could presume the comms are smart enough to understand the name that is spoken, and would then route the audio only to the comm assigned to that individual, but that would require at least a slight delay… And if I’m not mistaken, haven’t there been occasions when X was speaking to Y, and in mid-conversation, X or Y asks Z if he heard what was being said? And if Z is able to hear what X & Y said–without being included in the initial prompt, wouldn’t that presume that everyone can hear it? If so, wouldn’t we frequently hear chatter between individuals not on-camera?
> Phasers. Phasers set to “stun” will start a fire, or burn a hole in a substance, or cut through metal, etc., but the same setting will merely incapacitate a biological being. Bullshit.
> Those auto-opening doors. If you walk up to it (and it’s not locked), the door will open. After you walk though it, sometimes it closes immediately after you’ve passed the threshold, and sometimes it “knows” to stay open when a person on the other side of the opening is speaking to you as you’re walking away. And what about the fact that a locked door opens automatically when you say “Come,” or “Come in,” or “Enter,” etc., but if you don’t want the door to open but you want to say something to the person outside, speaking those words in your sentence doesn’t open the door.
I won’t even get into the cool-but-inconsistent-and-impossible universal translators…
On a side note, did anyone else ever wonder why the audio quality of the communications systems on Battlestar Gallactica sounds so horrible–worse than the audio quality of present-day communications devices?
Lame as the movie was, the new KITT (aka the Knight 4000) in Knight Rider 2000 was emphatically NOT a Pontiac Banshee, though it certainly stole its styling cues from it. The donor car was a 1991 Dodge Stealth…see it here I wish I didn’t know that…
> Because it doesn’t come in contact with the physical surfaces it “skates” over, you lose the ability to do all the crazy tricks skaters are known for [...]
Bollocks; so you’re grinding over the rail instead of on it–big whup. You’d still be able to do almost every single trick, and at speeds more likely to cause grievous physical injury: win-win.
I do believe that based on the Websters dictionary of English and all standard grammatical rules in every human language state that the words “hover” “lame” and “fake” cannot be used in the same sentence.
OK, how about the whole Ripley clone thing in the fourth Alien movie. They might as well have blamed magic fairies for Sigorney Weaver’s presence–it’s just as biologically possible.
Well, the anything that happened after Aliens never existed, as far as I’m concerned. So I really don’t care how they try to explain her presence in that abortion masquerading as a movie.
The X-Ray glasses are not from Goldeneye, they are from The World is Not Enough.
Ha, I have another observation of the Star Trek doors. Most of the time someone walks up to the door and just as they get there the door opens. But sometimes, just as they get to the door and it normally would have opened, someone from off camera says ‘excuse me Captain’, so the captain turns around…..and the door never opens. Even though he is standing RIGHT in front of it. When the conversation is over the door opens very conveniently.
But i won’t lie to you when I say as a kid growing up we pretended our sliding closet doors were star trek doors, we even made the noises PSHHHHHHHT.
As far as useless gadgets, I would have to say R2-D2. Think about it, every thing he did could have been incorporated into Threepio. The computer plugins, the scanners, all could have been Threepio. R2 was pretty much useless.
I know the post I’m responding to has been up there a while, but R2 saved a lot of people in each movie… several times (2 or more in each) btw.. Even if 3PO had whatever R2 had, he still got dismembered and R2 had to save him then.. and 3PO walked slow anyway.
R2 can’t be classified as ‘useless’ because he played an important part, and if he wasn’t there.. I don’t think 3PO could get the job done
You have the wrong Bond movie listed for the x ray Glasses, It is not “Goldeneye” it is “The World is not Enough” that they are in.
Just so you know about the hoverboards.. THEY WERE REAL! NOT FAKE!!! Look at the special material! They show and talk about it a lot! They did exist but American moms thought it was to dangerous for kids to be on them because they don’t have wheels so they got baned but they found some for that movies.. SO the special material!
Im not 100% sure but that was not the stealth boat used in “Street Fighter”. That boat was used in “The Island”.
The comb in “Spaceballs” was awesome! I would’a used it to beat you with down dude.
Man dude, Lame movie gadgets? What have you invented? What ideas do you have? Maybe you could write the people at the movie studios and see if they will take your ideas. But for some reason I think you’re only going to get dissed, just like you dissed their ideas. And it’s sad that someone more than enough time to come up with an idiot article like this one.