Yesterday I was watching a series called "Legends", which is a about an undercover operation to annihilate drug cartels and is playing in the early 90's.
The team is made of ad-hoc trained civil servants, custom officers and the situations they got themselves involved in give you a heart attack sometimes, but not because those are so good, but because of how our mind works today. At least mine I'd say.
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As I said earlier, the series is featuring life in the early 90's and the undercover agents get themselves in all kinds of unexpected situations, like it happens when you infiltrate a criminal gang.
You are watching them breaking into warehouses or flats by picking a lock with two pins and the first thing you think of is "you stupid idiot, the CCTV is recording you". But is it? Nope it isn't as there were no cameras back then or video surveillance was not so wide spread and not available for everyone.
Picking a lock is one thing but when they open the door, the first thing you think of is "the alarm is going to go off" and you expect to hear the sound of it. That is not happening as there was no alarm system in every location back then.
Today I was wondering how much these things change your movie watching experience. Are you able to disconnect your brain from reality and focus only on what you see, without noticing these things?
Another funny thing I have to mention. The undercover guy steps into a phone booth and calls his wife. He has a mobile phone as well, one with an extendable antenna as those were the latest back then, but that phone is for communicating with his underworld contacts only. So the guy makes the call, exits he booth and he's safe. His suspicious business partners can only trace his call if they bribe someone at the telecommunication company as there was no redial the last number option. Today you can have as many phones you like, or as many as your pocket can afford, but can you make a call from a public phone? Do you know any working payphone in your area? I don't.
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I'm not a spy, even though some say I am, because of my language skills, but was thinking how much difficult it is to be a spy today, compared to what it used to be before the digital era. You need a lot of skills and I think many are still using old tricks as those are untraceable, or more difficult to detect.
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There's something new every day and what was top technology yesterday, it is obsolete today. You watch these situations in different movies and you know at least five better solutions for that matter and you don't even know the half of it, you only know what you see in the movies.
A couple of years ago I saw a Bond movie from the early times, with Sean Connery starring and the feeling I had was very different from what the director wanted to achieve in people with the movie. It was the 60's, obviously life and technology were very different, but it shows you how far we've come.
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You need to disconnect the present from your brain and just enjoy what you see, without thinking I guess. Otherwise it's going to ruin the whole experience for you. Or maybe it's just me, who is thinking this way. Who knows?
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