most comments about realism of genre fiction don't make positive case about what realism would add beyond satisfaction of nerds

that's a pity because the best case for it is that it would force writers to discard lazy hacks they use and tell different stories

purely aesthetically, for example, you don't get the iconic "heat" final shootout without michael mann's often obsessive interest in the actual mechanics of a small firefight, which he uses to build camera work around

its a perfect example of how the prior lack of interest in the specific details mann used was something that actually held other directors back from thinking about a novel set piece they could have done.

ironically, mann's disinterest in the details of computer security in 'blackhat' means that the computer scenes end up just being filler for what he really wants to film -- the action scenes he loves so much

narratively, another example is the execution of dounat in 'army of shadows'. one of the constants of anything involving insurgent activities is the difficulty of performing even minor activities in an occupied environment

so gerbier and a few of his men must find a location in marseilles to kill a man (dounat) that has betrayed them to the germans. they have to find a location to perform the act in which it will go unnoticed, and they cannot use guns because it would be too loud.

they end up not even having appropriate knives among them and are forced to literally strangle him to death. the scene conveys not only the danger of what they are doing but the tedious, disgusting, and dirty nature of it.

in both cases a mechanism -- shooting and moving or the dirty work of internal security -- that otherwise would be waived away is extended and used for innovative storytelling.

the point is not to impress technical fetishists as much as achieve something in film that previously was not attempted, or at least attempted as well. https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1342566818259607554

this is probably also the best pitch subject matter experts can make to creatives, that if you dive into the details you have more possibilities to work with and in particular the possibility of doing something that the competition cannot

relevant comment but in a different context https://twitter.com/enkiv2/status/1342586350093160450