As times change, and movies age, outdated technology or cultural trends can really stand out. Can you name some examples? Perhaps the best one is Gordon Gekko’s brick cell phone.

I watched Diehard last night on blu-ray, and noticed a few things that amused me:


Mcclain is seen puffing and smoking away in the airport.

Mcclain tries to locate his wife through a computer touch screen toted as high tech for the Nakatomi plaza.

All the computer screens are monochrome green on black

Movies made in the first half of the 20th century where all the men wear a coat, tie, and hat.

What's the last movie about a newspaper reporter where they still use a typewriter?

That would be an interesting thing to identify.

Or the last movie with a rotary phone.

Or the last movie where you see somebody change the channel on a TV by manually turning a dial.

Fight Club had a rotary phone...

I think Superman Returns had a typewriter in there somewhere....

Late 80s movies with brick style cell phones.

Elevator operators in office buildings

Fabric counters in department stores

Characters meeting at an Automat for lunch.

Black and white movies where literally every character smokes.

I recently saw a movie where the man broke up with the lady over dinner. My kids were flabbergasted. "Why didn't he just order a hit in Mafia Wars?"

The changed attitudes toward smoking is definitely something I notice. I watched Carrie a few days ago, and one of the first uses of her powers in the movie is when she flips the ashtray full of cigarette butts and ashes off the school principal's desk.

I also notice the lack of technology in older films. For example, characters in situations where the entire plot could be resolved if only they had a cellphone.

I always laugh at what passed for a swimsuit on men back in the 30's/40's.

I especially like when characters are smoking... IN OUTER SPACE!!!!!

Like, isn't your oxygen kind of limited on a spaceship already??? Hilarious!

"Thank God we invented the..."

I'm starting to feel a little culturally outdated myself. I don't even know what this means.

It's a text oriented game played on Facebook.

I always laugh at movies set "in the future" when they consult the computer -- and it's a room full of reel-to-reel tape and blinking lights.

The DVD commentary for A Nightmare On Elm Street pointed one out. "This dates the movie. You can smoke in a clinic?"

Lol, Battlestar Galactica takes it one step further. The doctor on the spaceship is a chain smoker.

The movie "Hackers" where they are all drooling over at 28.8k modem.

Broadband seems to have spoiled me.

How about the Iomega like zip disc in the first Mission Impossible movie or the Floppy discs in various others. (The Negotiator)

If they made another Ring sequel it would be really out of date with haunted videotapes. Maybe this time it can be a possessed Blu Ray that kills you if you haven't updated your firmware.

Lots of films from the 80s seem dated because of the fad music of the time.

Any film that takes place wholly or in-part "IN THE FUTURE" when the date is either close or has gone by altogether (2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010, Demolition Man, Terminator 1/2 [Judgement Day was in 98' iirc ], Escape from NY, and we're almost there for Back to the Future 2). I don't understand why directors don't push out the dates a little more

Smoking in space isn't a big deal... perhaps in the future smoking is more acceptable, who knows!

Love how Escape from New York has 1988 being the downfall of the U.S. and the story's set in 1997.

A reverse statement of this would be RoboCop with the DVD-like video disc Dick Jones makes for Bob Morton.

Life in general before cell phones. This is a rather good thing though.

I watch Mad Men and fantasize about living in that era.

Women having untrimmed pubes.