The nerd factor: Technology comes to life in popular culture
Dr. Mike Robinson
Issue date: 4/3/08 Section: Columns
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Now, I'm not talking about computers or robots or things like that. The Terminators have their own prime time show now, so we've got plenty of killer cyborgs, thanks. I'm not talking about artificial intelligences either. We might be past the high point of anxieties over computers trying to replace us, but we've still got a fairly steady supply of fictional murderous computers.
What I'm talking about are the kinds of objects that really have no business coming to life at all, like vehicles. We used to get movies like "The Car," where a black sedan rode around terrorizing James Brolin. If memory serves, the car was possessed by the devil. Stephen King's "Christine" was a similar concept. King also gave us "Maximum Overdrive," but these days I like to pretend I never saw that movie where trucks menaced people trapped in a truck stop (I'm sure some King fan wants to assure me the short story was better than the movie-King fans always do). Right now I would just settle for "Killdozer." That was a bulldozer that, well, killed.
To remedy this deficit in homicidal vehicle movies, I want to pitch my own LC version. I call it "The Carts."
Basically this is the story of a group of golf carts that come to life and start going after people on campus. I don't really have the whole plot laid out yet. That's okay, it's inspired by "Killdozer," which I'm not sure actually had a plot in the first place.
What I do have are some really cool scenes. Obviously we'll have a lot of shots of these driverless golf carts zooming around after students in the Dell. Those will be set at night so we can't see how silly this all looks on film. The really great scenes I've imagined are when a group of students run into Schewel. Thinking they are safe, the students are wandering around when they discover that one of the carts is inside the building. The students run for the elevator, but unfortunately one of the students gets distracted when he stops to check out the NASDAQ on the monitors in the business classroom. That error will, of course, be fatal.
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