I recently noticed the narrative power of montages and just how "movie magic" they are, as opposed to being based in reality, when I watched the BlackBerry movie. There's a really great montage near the beginning of the film where they're cobbling together a prototype device in one night for an important meeting the next day. Watching it, I couldn't help but get hyped up and excited.

As a dev, I love watching other technical people do the impossible and create something great. At the same time, the logical part of my brain kept thinking, "This is really cool, but obviously this is total fiction. No way anybody, no matter how smart they are, can put together a device like that in one night." But I went along with it because it was fun and got the narrative going. So even with my critical brain, I couldn't help but "believe" the fantasy a little bit.

On the whole, it made me reflect on how movies really do present a fictional view of reality and that's kind of the power they have. And what about all those times where I watched a movie and didn't have a background in what they were presenting and just ate it up wholesale?