Top 10 Fictional Movie Inventors

If there’s a message behind the Goonies, it’s this: If you’re gonna go on a quest to find a long-lost pirate treasure to get the funds needed to save your entire town from foreclosure, you’re already done for – that is, unless you’ve got a boy-wonder-inventor along for the ride. Data provides the titular Goonies with a gadget to get out of any scrape or situation, in addition to offering his trademark one-liners, of course. A worthy inventor, a worthy friend, and a worthy entry for number ten.

This one’s tough to explain without spoiling too much. Just know this: In “Meet the Robinsons,” a young inventor named Lewis who strives for acceptance is brought into the future by a newfound friend. Once there, he meets another brilliant inventor, who gives Lewis everything he could possibly ask for, and teaches him and the audience that sometimes what we are looking for is actually within ourselves. Yah, you guessed it, Cornelius is actually Lewis from the future!

Have you ever felt like you were too smart for your own good? If you have, then you know what Jimmy Neutron, the literal boy-genius feels like. Struggling for his independence and freedom, as well as the ability to fit in with kids at school, Jimmy Neutron is constantly reminded that he’s out of place, and his inventions get him into more trouble than they are worth. But his enormous brain comes in handy when he has to help his friends build spaceships to save their parents, finally showing his true value.

Another inventor whose creations cast him out instead of helping him to be accepted, Flint Lockwood lives on a small island that desperately needs a change. After years of eating nothing but sardines, Lockwood gives the people the “FLDSMDFR”. What this vowel-less acronym actually represents is a machine that converts water into food, allowing the people to eat to their hearts’ content. But it’s not all candy rainbows and ice cream sunshine. When Bill Hader’s Lockwood learns a valuable lesson about greed and over indulgence, he must use his inventions to put an end to the out of control food machine.

When souls start to come back from the dead, who ya gonna call? On second thought, why bother asking? A formidable scientist in his own right, Spengler uses his technical savvy to develop the tools that New York’s finest and only Ghostbusters use to deal with the spirits wandering the streets. His inventions bust ghosts and save lives, in that order. Just don’t cross the streams...

A lot of inventors have brains, but Doc Brown’s got style, hence the DeLorean time machine. He never made much of himself as aninventor, until 1955, when he slipped off the toilet and hit his head on the sink, and had a vision of the flux-capacitor, the device that allowed the DeLorean to travel through time. Now that’s heavy! What’s even more impressive is that when the machine becomes stuck after traveling back to 1955, he’s able to engineer the car to harness the power of a bolt of lightning in order to send it back to the future. At eighty-eight miles an hour, he’s leaving flames at the midpoint in our list.

In a film for which the title, tagline, and plot are all exactly the same, Rick Moranis builds a machine to shrink things, and accidentally - you guessed it - shrinks the kids. The adventure that follows is that of the four children who must now survive in their now tiny state, and their father who must fix his machine in order to bring his family back together. Wayne, just like the movie itself, is sweet, wacky and funny.

In the worlds created by Roald Dahl, there is a thin line between magic and science. So when Willy Wonka’s secretive factory opens its doors to five lucky children, we see both through the eyes of young Charlie. Through the adventure, Charlie connects with the withdrawn inventor, and his karma points pay out for all his previous hardships. In turn, the kindness he shows Wonka allows him to have faith for something that he had all but given up on.

Before he was a philanthropist, he was just a genius billionaire playboy who invented and sold things that go boom to the U.S. Military. It was after being wounded by one of his own weapons, however, that he had a change of heart and decided to make the world a better place. The glowing light in his chest is a miniature arc reactor, which not only keeps the shrapnel out of his heart, but also powers the Iron Man armor. With this high-powered prosthetic of sorts, he is able to join the ranks of Earth’s mightiest heroes, and save the world on his own from time to time.

Before we analyze our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
- Bolivar Trask
“X-Men: Days of Future Past” (2014)
- The Inventor
“Edward Scissorhands” (1990)
- Buddy Pine / Syndrome
“The Incredibles” (2004)

Now pay attention, viewer. We’ve seen James Bond get out of more scrapes than we can remember, and it’s not because of his charm. Well, not always. Most of the time, it’s thanks to the tools given to him by the Quartermaster himself. Whether it’s providing him with the gadgets hidden in his watches and the like, or outfitting his Aston Martin with the latest in techno wizardry, Q is one of 007’s closest allies. All he asks is that it be returned in pristine condition. Recently, we’ve seen a younger and fresher incarnation of Q, and we can’t wait to see more of him.

Do you agree with our list? What genius inventors from the silver screen is your favorite? For more gadget-heavy top 10s published every day, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.