The computer in the 1986 movie “The Fly” didn’t have a mouse, internet connection or even decent graphics yet it was a milestone of computers in the movies. Up until then most computers were depicted as super intelligent machines with personalities that you interfaced with by sitting down and talking to them. Like HAL 9000 in “2001 Space Odyssey” or even “Mother” in “Alien”. In “The Fly” Jeff Goldblum’s character Seth Brundle not only types most commands in and just occasionally uses a rudimentary (and realistic) voice recognition interface for basic commands like “save file” he even states that computers are essentially dumb. That’s why the steak he transports tastes synthetic and it isn’t until he re-programs it does it understand the “magic” of the flesh. The one glaring error in “The Fly” however is that when the computer gets “confused” by having two sets of genetic codes, Seth’s and the fly’s, it adlibs and combines the two together when we all know from our perspective of the future that it would have simply locked up and Seth would have had to get out and hit ctrl-alt-delete to have another go at it.
