

Engineers as Heroes - kevin_morrill
http://refer.ly/engineers_as_heroes/c/2f05ba284d5d11e2b5ab22000a1db8fa

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Dove
It should have Iron Man. Maybe also A Beautiful Mind.

Closer to home, if we're doing documentaries, Revolution OS maybe ought to be
there.

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dmor
Feature 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?

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rdl
I'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.

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Ogre
You could make a case for putting Star Trek on that list. How often were
Scotty and Geordi, chief engineers, literally heroes on those shows?

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kevin_morrill
Yeah how did I miss that one! Just put a solid Geordi centric episode up
there. Him and Data are my favorite STNG characters.

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nickmolnar2
Should 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.

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kevin_morrill
I 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.

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Tichy
I feel uneasy about this - pushing affiliate links to HN? Oh well, if the
crowd likes it, you win :-(

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dmor
This 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.

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Tichy
Lists 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.

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dmor
Haha okay, I told him he needs to make the list better

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krs
Flight 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.

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kevin_morrill
Thank 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.

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jimminy
Minecraft: 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>

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alrs
Steve Jobs was a great salesman. I've never encountered any record that said
he was a great programmer, let alone a shitty one.

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kevin_morrill
It'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.

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nos4A2
Pirates of the silicon valley, a must add..

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joshmangel
The fact that you recognized 21 is a win in itself! One of my favorites!

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vanessa
Batman 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.

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afarrell
He 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.

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kevin_morrill
Yeah, 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.

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tzs
If 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.

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dysoco
I.Q. is a nice one <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110099/>

Although not sure if it qualifies as "Engineers as Heroes".

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kevin_morrill
Some 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.

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rdl
While Contact may be inspirational, for me, it's also one of the saddest
movies I've watched more than once.

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dmor
I agree, I wonder why they decided to end it the way they did.

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rdl
I've never read the book; not sure if that is how it ends.

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dmor
Neither have I, downloaded!

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bcl
I'd add Numb3rs to this list.

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kevin_morrill
I 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.

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AnthonyMouse
Numb3rs 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.

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laktek
Wonder how the obvious qualifier, Social Network misses the list.

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dmor
Mark Zuckerberg is a badass, but I hardly think that movie portrays him as a
hero

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rdl
The Aviator?

