Posted: . At: 4:32 PM. This was 11 years ago. Post ID: 5719
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Iron Man 3 computer portrayal and the use of IP addresses in the movie.

IP addresses in Iron man 3.
IP addresses in Iron man 3.

The Iron man 3 movie shows Tony Stark using a computer with IP addresses that have numbers greater than 255. This is not possible; the largest number you can have is 255.255.255.0 There is another scene where he is using Speedtest.net. This is a strange thing for a defense login screen to have. The main computer screen shows the IP address as 934.554.32.3. This is way outside the normal IP addresses that we see in everyday Internet usage. And if we are setting up our own Local Area Network where we might use IP addresses like 192.168.1.3 or 10.0.1.3. But this is a movie and they do not always have accurate portrayals of the usage and workings of computer networks. I think that the computer interface in this movie with the tabbed windows that allow the user to perform various tasks with the same window is pretty good though. It is very usable. TRON legacy had a very accurate depiction of the workings of the UNIX command-line; but the computers in Iron Man 3 are not using a UNIX based operating system as far as I could tell.

Iron Man 3 computer interface.
Iron Man 3 computer interface. This is showing the IP address that Tony Stark was accessing in the movie.

Tony Stark describes the satellite dishes on the top of the television broadcast van as “ISDN`s”, when ISDN uses a telephone line to provide a high-speed Internet connection rather like ADSL Internet does. The passwords used by the characters in the movie are not very complex either. You would think that people that are high up in the military would have more security than that. Sometimes the portrayal of how computer networks actually route data is very wrong in movies. Especially in the horrible movie “The Core”, this involved a virus that would get into any computer and website on the Internet and remove all mentions of certain information. This would be quite a feat to actually pull off. And how can the Iron Man suits actually fly? Are they using technology from alien civilizations? The whole arc reactor thing does not make much sense to me at all. The computer usage is one thing that is grating; they do not even show IP addresses that are within the proper range. It is a good thing that pepper survived her fall into the fire and becomes super pepper. She can destroy Iron Man suits with one hand. That is one strong woman.

2 thoughts on “Iron Man 3 computer portrayal and the use of IP addresses in the movie.”

  1. Hey, Someone else that caught that one as it whizzed by.

    One thing that always kills me in movies is when they ‘enhance’ and image.

    Reply

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