From Monica: Probably surprising no one who has listened to our many episodes about super spies or franchises with nine-plus installments, I love Mission Impossible movies. Tom Cruise can build new elaborate ways to not kill himself and I’ll eat it up every time. But perhaps because he is so insistent on doing things “for real,” the moments where viewers are asked to suspend disbelief are so much harder. I believe Cruise jumped out of a helicopter for 16 takes without a parachute. I don’t believe he knows how computers work.
In the two part Ghost Protocol/Final Reckoning, Tom “Ethan” Cruise finds himself battling an all-powerful AI known as The Entity with the ability to mimic or transform video and audio recordings, so that nothing can be trusted as real. In order to evade tracking by The Entity, Ethan employs two techniques: either trying to choose the action that he believes The Entity would deem least probable to surprise it, or by evading the use of technology altogether. He delivers a handwritten secret message from the President. He tracks down a submarine that dives so deeply that it exists undetectable by radar. His team has to find secret data stored on a floppy disk….
The plot doesn’t really matter– we know he will wear the face-skin-mask, the bomb will be disarmed in the last 2 seconds, and he will single handedly be the only one who can be trusted to save the world– but these action movie trope-y plots also depend a lot on either pseudo-technology or pseudoscience. And usually the best way to defeat a genius development is instead to do things “the old fashioned way”: finding an analog radio transmitter, an old airplane without GPS tracking, etc. There’s an assumption that the character finds the old technology simpler or easier to operate, yet that the audience might be even less familiar with an old machine than the advanced pseudo-future-tech, allowing for better suspension of disbelief Or further, that human traits or capabilities will always surpass machine ones; his pickpocket cohort is somehow faster and better at “good timing” than a literal processor. A job that Ethan assigns to her based on his faith in friendship. Or something.
So let’s talk about tropes with the analog, or technology that is purposefully positioned as old within media. As anyone who has ever blown into an N64 cartridge can attest— sometimes old stuff really isn’t more durable. Chunky doesn’t always mean stronger. iPhone 7 was the first to even be remotely water resistant. Archivists often have to consider technological obsolescence when debating on the risk of storing or updating media at the risk of corruption. Most of these literal signal waves aren’t actually “off the grid.” There’s a lot that can go wrong with the analog, but not in the movies. Analogy technology is a convenient plot device, but what exactly is it doing? What does it represent?
Call For Comments: Retro Technology Worship
June 10, 2025
From Monica: Probably surprising no one who has listened to our many episodes about super spies or franchises with nine-plus installments, I love Mission Impossible movies. Tom Cruise can build new elaborate ways to not kill himself and I’ll eat it up every time. But perhaps because he is so insistent on doing things “for real,” the moments where viewers are asked to suspend disbelief are so much harder. I believe Cruise jumped out of a helicopter for 16 takes without a parachute. I don’t believe he knows how computers work.
In the two part Ghost Protocol/Final Reckoning, Tom “Ethan” Cruise finds himself battling an all-powerful AI known as The Entity with the ability to mimic or transform video and audio recordings, so that nothing can be trusted as real. In order to evade tracking by The Entity, Ethan employs two techniques: either trying to choose the action that he believes The Entity would deem least probable to surprise it, or by evading the use of technology altogether. He delivers a handwritten secret message from the President. He tracks down a submarine that dives so deeply that it exists undetectable by radar. His team has to find secret data stored on a floppy disk….
The plot doesn’t really matter– we know he will wear the face-skin-mask, the bomb will be disarmed in the last 2 seconds, and he will single handedly be the only one who can be trusted to save the world– but these action movie trope-y plots also depend a lot on either pseudo-technology or pseudoscience. And usually the best way to defeat a genius development is instead to do things “the old fashioned way”: finding an analog radio transmitter, an old airplane without GPS tracking, etc. There’s an assumption that the character finds the old technology simpler or easier to operate, yet that the audience might be even less familiar with an old machine than the advanced pseudo-future-tech, allowing for better suspension of disbelief Or further, that human traits or capabilities will always surpass machine ones; his pickpocket cohort is somehow faster and better at “good timing” than a literal processor. A job that Ethan assigns to her based on his faith in friendship. Or something.
So let’s talk about tropes with the analog, or technology that is purposefully positioned as old within media. As anyone who has ever blown into an N64 cartridge can attest— sometimes old stuff really isn’t more durable. Chunky doesn’t always mean stronger. iPhone 7 was the first to even be remotely water resistant. Archivists often have to consider technological obsolescence when debating on the risk of storing or updating media at the risk of corruption. Most of these literal signal waves aren’t actually “off the grid.” There’s a lot that can go wrong with the analog, but not in the movies. Analogy technology is a convenient plot device, but what exactly is it doing? What does it represent?
Is anyone out there listening?
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