Tech Goes to the Movies

We’ve been hearing buzz for quite some time now that Rovio will make an Angry Birds movie. We also recently learned that Zynga may also be making a film based on FarmVille, the somewhat-fizzling Facebook game. Perhaps the minds at Rovio and Zynga are hoping for the same box office success as 2010’s wildly successful The Social Network (you know, the Facebook movie). 

As readers of Tech world, your taste in movies is probably pretty similar to ours. Though you may end up waiting for FarmVille to come out on video before you see it, we’re guessing most of you have seen the usual geek flicks: Star Wars (all of them), Star Trek (also all of them), Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tron, and even the newer ones like The Matrix, Iron Man, Avatar, and Minority Report. These great films truly appeal to our inner-nerds, but unfortunately, none of them are actually based on technology that we actually use in our daily lives.

However, there are plenty of movies based on real-life technology that should not go overlooked by Sci-Fi enthusiasts. If you have any inclination to learn about of the evolution of technology, specifically computers, tune in to these nine movies. They may answer some questions about how we graduated from using mammoth computers like the Altair 8800 to typing on today’s ultraportables. There are films about the start of major tech companies, such as Microsoft and Apple, and others about the venture capitalists that funded some of today’s tech behemoths. We found movies documenting the creation of Linux and the free software movement, movies crowdsourced by YouTube users, and we even threw the highest-grossing movie ever to be adapted from a video game into the mix.

Take a break from movies about aliens and teleportation and check out nine films based on real-world technology.

Steve Jobs Biography (No date set)

With former Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ passing last week, it was only a matter of time before one of the major film companies swooped in to buy the rights to the Steve Jobs movie. Sony allegedly offered to pay as much as $3 million to purchase the feature rights to Steve Jobs, the official biography written by Walter Isaacson. Set to be released on October 24, 2011, Isaacson’s book has been in the number one spot on Amazon’s bestsellers list since Wednesday, and also tops Barnes & Noble’s bestsellers list. Jobs was known for being a very private person, so many people are looking forward to reading the biography, for which Isaacson spent three years conducting interviews. The Steve Jobs movie will likely be a huge success; after all, plenty of people out there will pass up the book and wait to see the movie. Sony Pictures was also behind The Social Network. 

Something Ventured (2011)

Something Ventured tells the story of a group of risk-takers who, along with great entrepreneurs, created revolutionary companies like Apple, Intel, Cisco, and Google. These people had the foresight, good timing, and sometimes just pure luck to start the venture capitalism industry before the term “venture capital” had even been coined. The documentary features venture capitalists and early investors like Arthur Rock, Tom Perkins, Don Valentine, and Dick Kramlich. Intel Founder Gordon Moore, Atari Founder Nolan Bushnell, early Apple CEO Mike Markkula, and Cisco Co-Founder Sandy Lerner are just a few more names in the film. These people backed and built companies that led to the growth in areas like personal computers, microprocessors, and the Web. The film covers what these venture capitalists and entrepreneurs went through to build some of the top companies of our time

The Social Network (2010)

Not many films about social networks win Best Motion Picture (Drama), Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Original Score at the Golden Globes, nor do they get nominated for eight Academy Awards and win three of them. However, Director David Fincher managed to turn Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay about the founding of Facebook and resulting legal problems into a hit. The Social Network was a huge success, grossing $224,920,315 worldwide at the box office. An adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires, the film follows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), as he starts Facebook as a Harvard sophomore and turns it into something bigger than anyone ever imagined. However, the Winlkevoss twins and their partner Divya Narendra accuse Zuckerberg of stealing their idea. His turbulent relationships with Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and Napster Founder Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) are also prominent subplots of the movie. Rotten Tomatoes rated The Social Network a 96 percent out of 272 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. If you’re one of the 800 million active users on Facebook and you haven’t seen The Social Network, it’s worth a watch to know the story behind the site you spend so much of your time on. 

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)

When most of us think of video games that have been turned into movies, we think of Mortal Kombat, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, or the fine Super Mario Bros. However, the film that did the best in the box office was actually 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which became the highest-grossing movie ever to be adapted from a video game. Worldwide, The Sands of Time grossed $335,154,643, trailed by Resident Evil: Afterlife, which raked in $296,221,663. A buffed-up Jake Gyllenhaal plays the role of Prince Dastan from Ubisoft’s third-person action-adventure video game, released back in 2003. Made for Disney by Jerry Bruckheimer’s Studios, The Sands of Time was created by the same team as Pirates of the Caribbean. Generally commended for its graphics, Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was rated a 9.6 out of 10 by IGN and was voted the PlayStation 2 Game of the Year in 2003. Though the movie itself got less than stellar reviews—a 36 percent rating on the Rotten Tomatoes scale—it still was received well by the audience with a 71 percent audience approval rate. 

Welcome to Macintosh (2008)

Welcome to Macintosh looks at how Apple has changed the world through its computer line. The title comes from the original welcome message that users would see during start-up of older Macs. The documentary features the company’s employees, including engineers Andy Hertzfeld and Jim Reekes, and former Apple advocate Guy Kawasaki. Neither Steve Jobs nor Steve Wozniak are actually in the film, though Ron Wayne, an original co-founder of Apple Computer, appears. Ars Technica said that if you were a fan of Pirates of Silicon Valley, Welcome to Macintosh is another film you’d probably have fun geeking out with. After viewing the film, Wozniak said the movie was “actually so on the mark” and that it was the best he’s seen out of all the independent films he’s been involved in. 

Revolution OS (2001)

Microsoft’s Windows may hold the majority of the market share of the client operating systems, but there are some people who prefer to use an OS that can be freely modified, and redistributed. Revolution OS tells the inside story of the hackers that created GNU/Linux and the open source movement, something that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches." Shot on 35mm film in Silicon Valley, the film stars the people that made Linux and the open source movement happen— including Richard Stallman, Michael Tiemann, and Linus Torvalds—and details how and why Linux became such a huge threat to Microsoft. Of note, The New York Times called it a “David and Goliath” kind of story, but found the film to be biased, told “almost entirely from David’s point of view.” The Times also claimed Revolution OS had too much jargon, so it may not be the best pick for those who are unfamiliar with the free software and open source movement. 

Track Down (2000), Freedom Downtime (2001)

Track Down tells the story of infamous computer hacker Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick spent three years as a fugitive after a warrant for his arrest was issued for a host of hacking, cracking, and phreaking crimes. He was actually the most-wanted computer criminal in the U.S. at the time of his 1995 arrest. Mitnick spent a total of five years in jail, eight months of which were in solitary confinement because, as he said, a judge believed he had the ability to "start a nuclear war by whistling into a pay phone." Mitnick felt similarly maligned by Track Down, which was based on the much-disputed book Takedown by John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura, two of the men who helped the FBI track down Mitnick. A documentary that followed, Freedom Downtime, did a little to mitigate that. But for the lowdown from the man himself, reading is required; Mitnick just published his own account in Ghost in Wires. 

Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)

After the unfortunate death of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs on October 5, TNT paid a tribute the next day by airing a special presentation of the TNT Original film Pirates of Silicon Valley, not once, but twice. Noah Wyle, known for his role in ER, plays Jobs, while Anthony Michael Hall, known best for his roles in Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Weird Science, plays Bill Gates. Based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, the film documents the rise of the personal computer and the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft. If you want a somewhat humorous take on what the early days were like at Apple and Microsoft but can’t wait for the official Steve Jobs’ biography to come out, flip on Pirates of Silicon Valley. If you missed TNT’s presentation last week, the film is streaming on Netflix Instant Watch. 

Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of the Accidental Empires (1996)

This three-part documentary first aired on PBS in June 1996, hosted by Robert X. Cringely, the pen name of technology journalist Mark Stephens. A play on the 1984 title Revenge of the Nerds, Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of the Accidental Empires takes an in-depth look at the rise of Silicon Valley bigwigs. It follows geeks who start out programming in garages and end up co-founding Microsoft and owning professional sports teams (ahem, Paul Allen). Viewers peek into the lives of tech greats like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Steve Wozniak, and see the life of the PC starting in the 1970s with the Altair 8800, Apple I, Apple II, and VisiCalc. You can buy Triumph of the Nerds from PBS, or you can watch it on Netflix.