I have observed that movies used to be about other things, but now phones and apps and social media are recurring central elements crucial to their stories.
James Bond villains used to have orbital space lasers and bioweapons and nukes. Superheroes used to have guns and gadgets. Comedies and romances used to feature people interacting in real (and interesting) social environments instead of narrating what somebody wrote on their blog pages. Action films used to have action with muscles and guns and martial arts instead of with virtual reality phone toys.
But now the villains have nefarious plans to hijack everyone's smartphones, disrupt society by hacking everyone's social medial. The heroes use everyone's smartphones for surveillance. The good old microfilm or container full of pandemonium is always replaced by encrypted data carried around on a smartphone. And there's disgusting smartphone product placement everywhere. The holographic artificially-intelligent iPhone or Samsung Galaxy of future decades is emphasized everywhere, the old sci-fi gadgets (cool future guns and scanning instruments and black box infiltration gizmos) are secondary, if they're featured at all.
I get it, movies have to include contemporary references to be relevant. And they want to showcase contemporary interests to impress audiences, the newer and edgier the better. But this whole obsession with phone-online culture is somewhat alarming and (to those of us who remember the dark ages without it) it's also a bit ridiculous.
I don't personally see any merit in children's movies or fantasy/medieval movies somehow shoehorning smartphones into their settings.
