Catch Me If You Can (2002)
The Movie: Youthful con artist Frank Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio) forges millions of dollars worth of cheques and lives the life of riley.
The Tech: 3D Printers.
If Frank could achieve all that he did with little more than printers, ink and sets of paper, imagine what he could do with a 3D printer.
He’d be the ruler of his own nation within weeks.
Blow (2001)
The Movie: Johnny Depp is George Jung, a drug dealer who takes it all too far.
The Tech: Ebay.
George initially realises the value of money when his father is declared bankrupt.
Today, George could have set himself up as an eBay entrepreneur as a youngster, making his fortune early and avoiding all of those naughty drugs.
The Ten Commandments (1956)
The Movie: The prophet Moses climbs Mount Sinai and receives God’s laws on two stone tablets.
The Tech: iPad.
It’s a fair bet that deities keep up with our technological innovations.
After all, what’s the point in being a god if you can’t skip the queue at the Apple store?
One thing is absolutely certain though: Moses would have lacked gravitas descending from the mountain with this sort of tablet.
The Jungle Book (1967)
The Movie: An orphan boy is found in a basket, and raised by wolves deep in the Indian jungle.
The Tech: Infra-red camera.
If any child went missing in dense woodland today, we have the perfect tool for tracking them down: infra-red.
More commonly seen being used to capture petty thieves hiding in bushes on late night TV shows, it could nevertheless have brought Mowgli back to civilisation.
Toy Story (1995)
The Movie: A child’s toys come to life when he leaves the room.
The Tech: Web cam.
If would only have taken the slightest of suspicions, followed by the installation of the cheapest of computer-based video cameras, for Andy to have had footage of his toys walking and talking.
Then we’d have been looking at a very different Toy Story , full of government testing and gruesome experiments.
High Fidelity (2000)
The Movie: The owner of a music shop pores over his old relationships in order to find out what he’s been doing wrong.
The Tech: MP3s.
It is the tragedy of our times that music shops such as that seen in High Fidelity have, by and large, gone the way of the dodo.
Would John Cusack’s Rob Gordon have been the man to swim against the tide and keep his store open in the face of the digital revolution?
With his blatant lack of business sense and service like that provided by Jack White, almost certainly not.
Gladiator (2000)
The Movie: A former general is disgraced and forced to fight as a gladiator in the Roman arenas.
The Tech: Stab vest.
Oh Maximus, if only you’d had a bit of Kevlar wrapped round your belly, Gladiator could have ended so differently.
Instead of going off to Elysium to be with your family in the afterlife, you could have stayed in Rome and gone to orgies. Tough break.
The Ninth Gate (1999)
The Movie: Rare book specialist Johnny Depp attempts to prove that a client’s rare book is a genuine 17th century work.
The Tech: Amazon Marketplace.
Need one of those old fashioned things made from pulped wood and ink? Amazon’s the place! There’s nothing they don’t have is there?
Johnny could surely have tracked down a couple of other copies to compare with his boss’s book in a jiffy, and had them delivered the next day.
True Romance (1993)
The Movie: Comic store clerk and film fanatic Christian Slater meets the woman of his dreams at the movies.
The Tech: Netflix.
Would Clarence have bothered going to the pictures when he could have stayed at home and watched the same movies, wearing nothing but his pants and a smile?
Ferris Buellers Day Off (1986)
The Movie: Three teenagers skip school and have a day to remember.
The Tech: iPhone.
Ferris Bueller would have been caught a thousand times before lunch had he - or anyone around him - had an iPhone.
He’d have been tweeted about, had his picture posted on Facebook and been on Youtube larking about singing The Beatles long before he got home.
