A movie exists in the logic of its time, but more particularly, in the technology of that time. So pre-war movies were big on telegrams, but you never see one now – even though it is still possible in many countries to send a telegram (lawyers use them because they're official, copied, and have a record of delivery). Letters are incredibly important to the plots of 18th-century English novels, as the Pony Express was to westerns. These technologies often directly effect the plot: the letter arrives too late to save X, Y or Z, or it arrives in time and saves the fortunes of A, B or C.

Until 30 years ago, communication technologies were relatively stable and tethered. When a phone rang, it had a cord and it needed a building around it – or a phone box. The mobile phone changed all that, in ways that scriptwriters have come to hate. Once a person can be reached at any time and in almost any place, a huge raft of story devices disappear. John Hughes would have been in big trouble: Jake would have called Samantha on his cellphone in 16 Candles, trashing the third act; Kevin's mum would have called Kevin from Paris, after she realised he was Home Alone, because it would not have mattered that the storm had cut the lines to the house.

John Candy and Steve Martin might have solved their Thanksgiving transport problems in Planes, Trains and Automobiles if they had mobile phones, but in 1987, hardly anyone did. Michael Douglas used one that year in Wall Street: there's a scene of him on the beach talking into the first US commercial mobile phone – the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, which went on sale in 1984. It was known as "the brick", and at $US3995, only Gordon Gekko could afford one.

The first Lethal Weapon came out six months before Wall Street. Danny Glover used a two-hands monster – a box with a handle and receiver on a cord. That's sometimes cited as the first mobile in movies – but it depends how you define it. Maxwell Smart had a mobile shoe phone in the 1960s, and James Bond had one in his car in From Russia with Love. Those radio phones existed but were only as mobile as the car. For handheld cellphones that actually worked, 1987 was year zero in movies, which makes sense. It would take about two years for movies to come off the production line, once writers realised how they could change the game in terms of plot.

The question now is whether they have gone too far. Answer: absolutely. One of the biggest impacts has been in the way that mobiles have quickened the pace in action movies and thrillers, to a ridiculous degree. Bourne or Bond or John McClane just needs to call in the SWAT team/satellite imaging/drone strike/helicopter rescue and everything's dandy. Smartphones mean that nothing takes very long any more. Facial recognition? Easy, take a picture, upload, magnify by a zillion times and bang – "that man is Abdul bin whatsisname, number three on the wanted list …"

Fighting terrorism has never been easier – at least in movies. The bad guys might use mobiles to set off their bombs, but the good guys now use mobile phones to guide Hellfire missiles into their houses (eg: Eye in the Sky, now showing). I blame Jack Bauer for a lot of this: the man made an art form of just-in-the-nick-of-time phone calls in the never-ending series of 24.

Plotting has not just become faster but lazier – lulling us into a fictional version of the world where technology solves all our problems, political or temporal. It's a doddle now to order a take-away pizza or take down a Middle Eastern terror plot, as spy boss Russell Crowe did largely by phone in Body of Lies (2008), with Leonardo DiCaprio. It's probably true that real spying has changed a lot with mobile technology. It's certainly true that the movie version of those same changes is completely fanciful, and driven by wishful thinking. We'd like to believe our technologies will save us, but the bad guys have a lot of the same technologies.

In a genre like horror, the mobile phone is a pest. Scriptwriters have to think of a way of taking them out of use, in order to maintain jeopardy. It's become a new cliche: "Damn, no signal, and there's a zombie crawling through my window …" In a nice twist, Japanese horror has pioneered a strain where spirits arrive through the technology itself, adapting to the modern world: ighosts for the iphone generation. Lack of coverage is less of a problem when a ghoul is sucking your brains out through your ear.

Twitter: @ptbyrnes