30 of the Coolest Movie and Television Gadgets

It’s no secret that science fiction has paved the way for technology. Sci-fi authors are scientifically-inclined by design and they often introduce the world to concepts that they know will come to fruition at some point down the road. What’s always fascinated us, however, are all the things that science fiction has promised that haven’t come to fruition. It’s just human nature to want what you can’t have and books, television shows, and especially movies have introduced us to a host of must-have gadgets, if only they existed.

These gadgets aren’t strictly science fiction, some aren’t even “gadgets” per se, and some of them even exist in some form or the other, but everything listed here – mainly from movies, some from television – appeals to the geek in all of us.

Batman’s Batarang

Full disclosure: I’m a huge Batman nerd. That said, batarangs are objectively awesome. Whether using them to pin a creep’s jacket to the wall or just showing off your accuracy on the dartboard at the local watering hole, batarangs are multi-purpose. Heck, some of them even come back to you, just like a boomerang. I mean, the “arang” is right there in the name.

Now, when I list the batarang, I’m going all-inclusive. I’m talking about the explosive batarangs, tracker batarangs, shocker batarangs, the works. In Batman Returns (and various videogames), Batman even uses a remote controlled batarang. But while all of these variations are cool, there’s something so elegant and appealing about the simplicity of the standard batarang. Cut to perfection, thrown with precision. There were a lot of bat-gadgets to choose from, but I had to go with the classic, even though it’s not really a gadget in the classic sense.

Star Wars Lightsaber

While the concept of an unstoppable blade of energy can be traced back to sci-fi pulp from the early 1900s, it was Star Wars that brought the weapon to prominence, displaying it visually for the first time. Jedi knights have been known to use blue, green, yellow, orange, and even purple sabers, the latter thanks to Samuel L. Jackson’s Mace Windu. The color of the blade comes from the crystal used in the creation of the lightsaber. Sith lightsabers are always red, due to the synthetic crystals they use in their weapons.

Over the years, the Star Wars films, television shows, videogames, and novels have introduced different builds of lightsaber, most notably Darth Maul’s lightsaber staff from Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace and Kylo Ren’s cross-hilt lightsaber from the newer Star Wars films.