Google Car Movie

I started reading this news release:

Google is driving head first into more controversy after revealing it has been testing its innovative hands-free car technology on California's roads.

It wasn't talking about keeping hands off the phone or the GPS. Alarmingly, it was testing cars driven with hands off the steering wheel.

Road safety experts were raising questions about the robot-driven cars after Google revealed it has logged more than 225,000km around the state – almost all of them on auto-pilot.

Now my first thoughts were that this would be handy (excuse the pun). I've always thought my hands got in the way when driving.

But then my mind switched to the next logical conclusion... car hacking.

Imagine this...

A computer hacker (played by Jeff Goldblum) is hacking cars across the USA and driving them at high speeds into symbolic structures, killing the passengers.

People are indescrimately being killed every hour on the hour, and the hacker states this will continue unless a large sum of money be transferred into an offshore account.

But the president (played by Antonio Banderas or Catherine Zeta-Jones or Stephen Hawking, or some other representative of a demographic who has not been president - a plot ploy to highlight to the audience that this event happens in the future) does not negotiate with terrorists, or bad drivers. The president will not bend on this hard line despite the insistance of their vice president (played by Jason Alexander).

Naturally, there are no records of the computer hacker, because they all have been deleted. And the country is on their knees.

So they turn to a "loose canon" computer genius (played by either Hugh Laurie, Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman or Chuck Norris) fired by Google for objecting to the cars and "holding the company back" with his proposed safe guards.

This loose canon is the only guy who has the ability to hack past the hacker and into the computer network controlling the cars. The President calls the "loose canon" in despite his disregard for authority, and being labelled as "dangerous" by Jason Alexander's character.

It takes a lot to bring him in as he has lost the will to live, lost touch with society, and hasn't touched a computer since he was fired from Google. But when the president comes into his apartment, this loose canon's patrioism kicks in and he nervously starts cleaning up all the takeaway boxes readying himself to be taken to the White House by Airforce 1.

"I'm going to the White House," he excitedly squeals to the audience's amusement. This moment is then quoted by movie goers for a few years, and becomes to Hugh Laurie, Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman or Chuck Norris, what "I'll be back" is to Arnie.

(Extra Fact: "I'll be back" is the exact opposite of what Arnie's wife said to Arnie. Snap!)

Then of course we find out he is the sole parent of a boy (played by Haley Joel Osment or Jaden Smith) and that his son has been trapped in his son's friend's mother's car.

We also discover that the computer hacking terrorist will drive the car off a bridge if he tries to stop him. But with 24 hours before the hacker will pull the plug on the country's electronic cars, our hero realises the hacker will kill his son anyway - and never planned to release him... in fact, the amount of oxygen in the car is being used up and he is only a few hours to override that car.

Plus he is being tortured with the Country and Western station on the radio. No kid should go through that!

The "loose canon" computer hacker (played by either Hugh Laurie, Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman or Chuck Norris) then brings in an IT woman he once loved but broke up badly with to help him (played by Jessica Alba, Jessica Mauboy, Jessica Simpson, O.J. Simpson or Lisa Simpson).

This woman is the only one who can help him pull off this operation in that amount of time, even though they hate each other.

Inevitably sparks fly, but before they do, they pointlessly bicker quite a bit and suspend the obvious more pressing concern that the US is about to overrun by a mad computer hacking terrorist.

The audience then are left to wonder if these characters really do cut the time of task when they work together, or whether bringing in this IT woman was more of a cheap ploy by the script writer to add romance and character development into an action driven blockbuster.

Anyway, the IT woman then says something corny like "well, you could've at least called me in that time." And he says something corny like "I wanted to, every day since our break up. But I had this late power bill you see, and..."

Then they save the day, they capture the bad guy terrorist by trapping him in his get away car, the IT woman becomes the adopted mother to the boy of the loose canon, as well as the loose canon's girlfriend.

And the movie misses out on an Academy Award, but gets an above average rating on Rotton Tomatoes. And Jessica Mauboy makes a song with Jessica Alba and Jessica Simpson and Lisa Simpson that goes platinum.

It's almost too easy!

I don't know about you, but that was the logical progression for me when I discovered Google was making cars that drive themselves. Stay tuned (and subscribe to this beautiful blog) for more logical progressions.