Cinemagoers are happy to suspend their disbelief for a few hours if they’re transported to a galaxy far, far away or in an action-packed movie featuring outrageous stunts.
However, some movies try to be more true to life.
But producers and directors seem to really struggle with aspects of modern work, and often get modern job roles wrong. Granted, modern audiences probably don’t want scenes of workers creating databases or having meetings about corporate strategy, but Hollywood often gets it very wrong.
Here are eight job roles Hollywood always gets wrong.
Medical Professionals (Doctors/Nurses)
Shows like Grey’s Anatomy or House portray doctors as charismatic heroes who save people’s lives with their maverick thinking. In reality, a lot of the tasks shown in TV shows are done by nurses.
These shows and movies also have a very generous depiction of the amount of time doctors have.
In real life, medical work involves a lot of very unglamorous tasks. Nurses tend to look after patients and doctors have incredibly busy schedules, which are packed with patient consultations, surgeries and a lot of paperwork.
Scientists and Lab Technicians
Movies like Jurassic Park make us think scientists are lone geniuses who suddenly make incredible discoveries that generally take a few days to come to life. In reality, scientific research is unbelievably slow. It takes years of work from teams of people to make any progress at all.
Admittedly, teams of white coat-clad workers examining data probably wouldn’t make for a compelling movie storyline.
Law Enforcement
Police and detectives are hugely popular characters, which invariably portray the roles as incredibly exciting.
In movies, detectives in particular are nearly always unhinged individuals battling crippling personal issues, who are obsessed with their job.
They regularly break the law to get their results. They usually spend their time getting yelled at by their boss for their illegal methods.
The boss then conveniently forgets about this when they bring in whichever evil drug lord they’ve been hunting.
And there’s always a both a huge body count and an enormous amount of damage to public property that never gets mentioned.
In reality, these people would have almost certainly been fired as their cases would collapse due to their illegal actions. Real detectives also rely heavily on teamwork and spend hours gathering evidence.
Complex cases can take years to solve.
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Lawyers and Legal Professionals
Lawyers in films are often geniuses who win cases through brilliant monologues having found some obscure aspect of the law no one else had considered.
Or they’re portrayed as sleazy, moral-free con-artists willing to lie through their teeth to win the case.
Movies usually show lawyers spending all their time in court.
In fact, law work is much more about research, writing documents and working with their clients.
Real trials tend to be a lot more based on factual questioning than flamboyant speeches.
Also, TV and movies also speed up the process of legal proceeding. One scene shows a suspect being arrested, and a week later they’re on trial.
In the UK, suspects can often wait for two years to face trial.
Hackers and IT Professionals
Hackers in movies are nearly always geeky teenagers who have managed to hack into the Pentagon using their home laptop. A quick bit of typing means they can access top-secret files in a matter of seconds.
Real-life hacks take a lot more effort and often rely on human error.
But it’s not just criminals.
There is actually a job role known as an “ethical hacker” whose job it is to find potential flaws in hi-tech security systems.
Archaeologists
Indiana Jones is the quintessential example of the swashbuckling archaeologist, discovering ancient treasures and fighting off villains.
In fact, archaeology is a meticulous field that involves careful excavation and analysis of historical sites. It’s more about piecing together human history from artifacts and ruins than about action-packed adventures.
Teachers
Films like “Dangerous Minds” or “Dead Poets Society” portray teachers as inspirational figures who transform students’ lives dramatically over the course of a single school year.
This does happen in real life, a lot of teachers are truly brilliant at what they do. However, the cameras don’t focus too much on the admin, planning lessons at home, and hosting parents evenings.
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Journalists
Movie and TV journalists are almost always portrayed as immoral scumbags who are completely and utterly willing to break all sorts of laws to get their story.
They also invariably have some sort of personal demons and conversations with their bosses about “being too close” to the story. They also have no other work to do apart from relentlessly pursuing one story.
In reality, particularly at a local level, journalists spend a great deal of time producing far more mundane content in vast quantities.
