25 best movie gadgets

JARVIS (Iron Man)

An acronym for Just A Rather Very Intelligent System, JARVIS is Tony Stark’s long-suffering AI butler – tidying up after his messes and helping him assemble new versions of the Iron Man armour. In the comics, Tony has to make do with a mere human manservant, Edwin Jarvis. For the film, Tony's upgraded to an artificial intelligence blessed with the plummy tones of Paul Bettany – who recorded his lines without having any idea he was playing a machine.

Exosuit (District 9, 2009)

What's better than a mecha? A mecha with a gravity gun. Likely inspired by the gravity gun of the Half Life series, the gravity gun attached to this alien combat suit in District 9 packs a mighty punch, flinging nearby objects and debris towards foes at bone crushing velocities. So naturally, our hero Wikus uses it to weaponise a pig. Was there nothing more suitable to chuck at his assailants?

Motion controls (Minority Report, 2002)

When Minority Report burst onto cinema screens back in 2002, the gesture controls used by Tom Cruise’s pre-crime agent seemed impossibly futuristic – and yet less than 10 years later the Nintendo Wii and Xbox Kinect had made them a reality (albeit one slightly less accurate and impressive). With tech like Leap Motion coming to our computers, it's only a matter of time before we’re sifting through huge amounts of data using little more than our mitts.

Hoverboard (Back to the Future Part II, 1989)

We all wanted a Hoverboard as soon as we laid eyes on them – and the producers of Back to the Future Part II didn't help matters by claiming that the fictional gadget from the year 2015 was real. With non-functional replicas of the Hoverboard and Marty McFly's Nike Air Mag trainers on the market, we've got two years left to perfect the technology. Get a move on!

Bat-Shark Repellent Spray (Batman: The Movie, 1966)

Possibly the most fondly-remembered Batman gadget from the Adam West era, this spray saved the Caped Crusader from an unexpected Great White assault; the fact that it just happened to be in the Batcopter at the time is a perfect example of the self-aware absurdities of the 1960s Batman – something much missed in the why-so-serious age of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight.