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Engineers as Heroes
- kevin_morrill 14y agoSome context on this: I found myself really loving movies that were able to tastefully dramatize engineers and the work they do. There are precious few movies that do this. Let me know if I missed any good ones. Hopefully it will be some inspirational fuel going into the New Year.
- codewright 14y agoThank you for sharing this, I'm the programming son of an engineer and grew up watching Apollo 13 and Sneakers. :)
- larrydag 14y agoCheaper By the Dozen http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042327/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042327/, The Aviator http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338751/
- nhebb 14y ago> Cheaper By the Dozen The remake had Steve Martin cast as a football coach, though.
- lotharbot 14y agoHave any of the Howard Hughes documentaries or dramatizations been any good? I've seen some fairly positive reviews of "the Flying Scotsman", about a bicyclist (Graeme Obree) who built his own rather innovative designs and broke several world records.
- rdl 14y agoWhile Contact may be inspirational, for me, it's also one of the saddest movies I've watched more than once.
- larrydag 14y agoThe Right Stuff http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197/
- Tichy 14y agoI feel uneasy about this - pushing affiliate links to HN? Oh well, if the crowd likes it, you win :-(
- dmor 14y agoThis comes up every time we post a collection from Referly to HN, regardless of it being very relevant to the community here. I think it bears pointing out that every content site makes money from getting traffic on HN - for us we make money if people purchase products but don't have any ads. For Techcrunch, CNET etc. they primarily make money from ads. Furthermore, most writers don't ever see the proceeds of these ads (they do far better as full time writers). In our case we pass through revenue to our contributors directly (in this case Kevin is a cofounder of Referly so his earnings go to the company). If the argument is that the content is somehow altered because of affiliate links, to guarantee some better payout or something - pretty much ANY movie is covered by affiliate programs these days and payouts are all about the same (even on the front page this article only stands to make ~$10 in commissions). As always, the content has to stand on its own, and we hope that Referly could be a new format for product/list blogging.
- Tichy 14y agoLists are discouraged on HN anyway, iirc. That list just didn't seem so impressive to me, so I suspected it was less made out of passion and more out of "let's see if we can get on HN for fun and profit". Anyway, as I said, if the crowd votes it up, you win. My complaining is irrelevant.
- dmor 14y agoHaha okay, I told him he needs to make the list better
- bcl 14y agoI'd add Numb3rs to this list.
- kevin_morrill 14y agoI just added it to the list. Perfect timing, because I need a new TV series to get addicted to now Dexter and Homeland are over for the season.
- AnthonyMouse 14y agoNumb3rs fits with the genre of the list, but it's kind of meh as a show. If you're looking for something to watch that's actually good, try The Newsroom. I think the entire first season is available on HBO on demand.
- joshmangel 14y agoThe fact that you recognized 21 is a win in itself! One of my favorites!
- Dove 14y agoIt should have Iron Man. Maybe also A Beautiful Mind. Closer to home, if we're doing documentaries, Revolution OS maybe ought to be there.
- dmor 14y agoFeature idea: make it so other people can add stuff to collections and then the article's owner can moderate it in or out. Would you use that?
- rdl 14y agoI'd use that. It would also be nice to be able to suggest better versions of products to replace the products in some people's lists.
- sethbannon 14y agoCollaborative list building is a great idea.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- kevin_morrill 14y agoI just added it based on his comment. It inspired a Surprise Endings collection too: http://refer.ly/surprise_endings/c/5ecdc9fc4ceb11e2b5ab22000a1db8fa http://refer.ly/surprise_endings/c/5ecdc9fc4ceb11e2b5ab22000...
- Ogre 14y agoShoot, I figured out that's what happened and tried to delete my comment. Too slow!
- toomuchtodo 14y agoIron Man is by definition what a heroic engineer is (with a lot of sex and addiction issues along the way).
- dysoco 14y agoI.Q. is a nice one http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110099/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110099/ Although not sure if it qualifies as "Engineers as Heroes".
- Ogre 14y agoYou could make a case for putting Star Trek on that list. How often were Scotty and Geordi, chief engineers, literally heroes on those shows?
- kevin_morrill 14y agoYeah how did I miss that one! Just put a solid Geordi centric episode up there. Him and Data are my favorite STNG characters.
- nickmolnar2 14y agoShould definitely add Primer to the list. I've never seen another movie that uses scientific language that is not dumbed down -at all- for the audience.
- kevin_morrill 14y agoI love the first half of the movie, because it shows a lot of what a real startup is like. It's incredible how they did the overlapping dialog to show the fast pace of thought. Adding it right now.
- nos4A2 14y agoPirates of the silicon valley, a must add..
- alrs 14y agoSteve Jobs was a great salesman. I've never encountered any record that said he was a great programmer, let alone a shitty one.
- kevin_morrill 14y agoIt's evident from the interview he actually did program, granted no where near as well as Wozniak. I think he easily makes it on the list as a leader of engineering organizations.
- vanessa 14y agoBatman movies would be great for this list - he's one of the few superheroes that doesn't claim to have any actual super powers, but rather derives his power from kickass, well-engineered gear.
- afarrell 14y agoHe derives his power from engineered gear, but he himself isn't an Engineer. Also, the batmobile is rather poorly designed. With its underbody being so flat against the ground, it is incredibly vulnerable to IEDs, to say nothing of a stray bit of rubble.
- kevin_morrill 14y agoYeah, I don't know much about the comic, but at least in the latest Christopher Nolan movies the engineering is all behind the scenes by Morgan Freeman's secret division. No slight to the series, just saying.
- laktek 14y agoWonder how the obvious qualifier, Social Network misses the list.
- dmor 14y agoMark Zuckerberg is a badass, but I hardly think that movie portrays him as a hero
- tzs 14y agoIf you are including fictional engineers, I'd suggest Hiccup from the "How to Train Your Dragon" movie. It was basically through his engineering skill that he captured Toothless. It was also engineering to provide Toothless with a prosthetic tail and figure out how to fly with him. Learning how to train dragons was a mix of science and engineering. He's continued demonstrating an engineering and scientific approach to problems in the "Gift of the Night Fury" short and several of the "Riders of Berk" cartoons.
- jimminy 14y agoMinecraft: The Story of Mojang[1], just released this morning, is really good. It looks at Markus' original idea, the expansion of the company, the small team environment working on something huge, and lots of the other areas that the game has infiltrated in the past 3.5 years. If you're including The Indie Game Movie, I'd say it's as least as qualified. [1]: http://redux.com/minecraft-movie http://redux.com/minecraft-movie
- rdl 14y agoThe Aviator?
- krs 14y agoFlight of the Phoenix (1965) - The heroic engineer is a German model airplane designer who rebuilds a crashed air freighter. Threshold (1981) - Jeff Goldblum plays a biomedical engineer who designs and builds the world's first self-contained artificial heart. Buckaroo Banzai (1984) - A stretch, I think, but BB and the Hong Kong Cavaliers are all techies to one degree or another. Real Genius (1985) - The heros are physics and CS majors, but that's close enough.
- kevin_morrill 14y agoThank you sooo much for recommending Flight of the Phoenix. I just watched it last night, and it's one of my new all time favorites.