50 Movie Inventions We Want To Buy

Teleporter The Fly (1986)

The Movie Invention: Invented by Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), this handy device is great for getting somewhere fast without having to catch any transport. Just don’t go in it with an insect.

What We’d Do With It: Torture our enemies by putting them in the teleporter with different animals.

Proton Packs Ghostbusters (1984)

The Movie Invention: Made specifically for the purpose of ghost-catching, the proton packs send out a jet of electricity that snags annoying phantoms. Warning: if you’ve got more than one, don’t ever let the streams cross.

What We’d Do With It: Become a Ghostbuster! Duh.

Avatars Avatar (2009)

The Movie Invention: A fully-grown alien body that’s mixed with your human DNA. With a little help from a technological whosit, you can project your mind into the alien body.

What We’d Do With It: Live out a Sim-like second life on another planet. Well, it beats this one.

The FLDSMDFR Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs (2009)

The Movie Invention: The Floyd Lockwood Diatonic Super Mutating Dynamic Food Replicato, or simply FLDSMDFR, which uses microwave radiation to transform water into food. Amazing.

What We’d Do With It:
Feed the world. Aren’t we nice?

T-800 The Terminator (1984)

The Movie Invention: A futuristic cyborg that can be programmed to target and kill just about anybody. Has a jaw like granite and an iron grip.

What We’d Do With It: Use him as the ultimate one-liner machine – this guy’s got them coming out his ears.

Lotus Esprit The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)

The Movie Invention: James Bond’s niftiest pair of wheels by a long shot, the Lotus Esprit turns into a submarine when it hits water.

What We’d Do With It: Who needs the ferry? We’d much rather travel this way. As Sebastian sings in The Little Mermaid , it’s better where it’s wetter.

The Neuralizer Men In Black (1997)

The Movie Invention: Used by the Men In Black to wipe short term memories of encounters with aliens. Spookily plausible.

What We’d Do With It: Use it to win arguments down the pub by erasing our mates’ memories of what we were actually talking about.

Rocket Pack The Rocketeer (1991)

The Movie Invention: Inspired by the comics, of course, but brought to life in the movie version. It’s essentially a jetpack with added power.

What We’d Do With It: Beat the rush hour commute by using the overground – literally.

Lightsabre Star Wars (1977)

The Movie Invention: A futuristic sword, to be honest, used by Jedi Knights and Sith Lords. Makes a lovely electrical humming sound.

What We’d Do With It: Fight our mortal enemies. And slice the pork on Sundays.

DeLorean Back To The Future (1985)

The Movie Invention: Doc Brown’s hellacool time machine on wheels, which comes with its own flux capacitor and breaks the time barrier whenever it gets up to 88mph.

What We’d Do With It: Nip back in time whenever we’ve said something that’s upset the missus. We’re gonna need a lot of Plutonium…

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.