For anyone that hasn't watched this movie, watch it. It is one of those quirky gems from the 80's. Well worth watching.

I was born in the early 60's so I was in my 20's during the 80's. Oh how I miss the 80's there was not another Decade like it. So Free so Original like everything was Brand New especially in Computers and Science. I bet I have seen this movie over 500 times. I remember seeing it in the Theater when it opened and I love it as much Today as I did then. A very Underrated great Classic. Thank you Val Kimer, and Long live the 80's

Val Kilmer was brilliant in Real Genius!

Such an underrated movie. One of my favorites of all time. Also the 2nd best role Val Kilmer ever did imho. Best role being Doc Holiday.

The look on Hathaway sells it. He's knows right from the beginning it's not just a potential solution but one of the best solutions as because it's frozen it's perfect to work in space. You don't even need a special environment for it. Hathaway's eyes tell all and Atherton played it beautifully here. Oh... and the added beauty that the thing is small... very small. Getting into space won't be a problem. Update: Watching this again... look at the way Atherton plays it off the first minute of the scene. He's just annoyed of hearing Knight being pompous. The looks stays on the face until Knight explains the physics. You can see in his eyes Hathaway working the variables. Let's not forget the man has a PHD in this stuff as well. He may not be on the level of IQ of Knight, but he understands the physics. Notice how Hathaway goes from annoyed to 100% interested in everything Knight now has to say the minute he understands what Knight is trying to accomplish. Atherton deserves a LOT of kudos for this scene. What could have been overplayed, he underplayed it and just used his eyes to convey his emotional state.

"Put simply, in deference to you, Kent, . . . ." Classic. I love this movie. Cheers.

"My wife and I.....we had just left the bar and then......this purple laser beam came and........" **breaks down sobbing**

STILL on of my all time favourite 80's movies of all times!

I love this movie so much... I love how we all just totally disregard the fact that a killer laser burned its way across campus, somehow without incinerating a single student, lol... I miss 80's cinema

Damn lucky that laser didn't kill anybody walking across the quad.

This was basically my nonlinear optics grad school friends & profs in mid 1990's ! . . . Amazingly True to Reality !

"Would you classify that as a launch problem or a design problem?"

"5 megawatt laser" of a cryogenic exciton crystal core is of Patent #3557370 by Lawrence Peikenbrock of January 19, 1971 Colorado.

You did it. You graduate. You get the job. Love this movie.

I was Born 1958 But I Loved the 60's 70's and Not knowing The 80's were my Last Happy Decade before My Parents Died and a Girl who was 12 Years Younger Played Me

An overlooked gem of the the eighties. Great sound track and musical score as well.

Thank you for a more realistic portrayal of laser warfare instead of a campy "phasers on stun" where they cleanly vanish.

I love how the geniuses never thought how that laser could have killed scores of people on campus.

My favorite Val Kilmer movie. Love it!

Deborah Foreman fell off the face of the earth after this flick.......she was ULTRA cute in this film

I love how Kent reacts to the whole situation.

I love Thomas Newman's film score in the background. It reminds me of Tangerine Dream. Why didn't they ever release an official soundtrack for Real Genius?

My mom LOVED this movie and so it grew on me in my youth, 80s gem ,:(

"Put simply, in deference to you, Kent."

This type of laser was actually considered at the time the movie was made but scattering losses in the matrix prevented it from acquiring the energy levels that are shown here

"I Passed...BUT I FAILED!" "Well then I'm happy and sad for you"

love the score music, here. Thomas Newman is sheer genius. Great movie, too!

These little setbacks are sometimes what we need to make a giant step forward, right Kent ? Lol 😆😆 this is one of my all-time favorites but if you want to see another good one with Val kilmer , check out " top secret " it's hilarious.

A lot of people criticise the 80s, and for different reasons. But make no mistake, the 80s was a fantastic decade to be a kid. Saturdays you could watch TV all day and never get bored. Cinema was great too with non stop classics. If I had to put my finger on it I would say that the reason the 80s stand out was because they gave birth to the digital age.

I never understood why Susan reacted that way to being told to take a cab

"Listen to me you grovelling bug, I have exams....!"

My favorite movie. It was made 1 year before I was born but I watched it when I was 5 and have continued to love it since at 36. I roll coins and a bunch of other stuff between my fingers because of this movie.

20 people did not graduate and didn't get the job

Completely forgot about this movie. I’ve it a few times as a kid. So long ago lol.

One of my old time favorite flicks that sends me back to the 80s. =)

damn i love this movie.

"Take a cab." That's just cold! Ha!

Everyone in this movie is an incredible actor!

The 80s had the best Sci/fi movies ! I'm going back to 1985 after my time machine is done !

The music definitely adds to the tension...

FWIW, 600 nm would be orange light, not violet as depicted in the movie.

That EMP-like shot sound at the end of that blast is friggin cool.

Grad school was totally like this :)

i always thought Kent looked like a geekier ver. of John Tesh from the old entertainment news broadcast

Everyone play their part in this movie so well - Awesome

I just HAD to buy this DVD years ago. One of the best cult classics ever. I've been obsessed with lasers ever since. btw, looks very likely that Ron Howard / Brian Grazer are doing a SEQUEL / remake of Real Genius!! (Take a look at Brian Grazer's IMDB page, or on Pajiba.) I think the cast will be replaced by new youngsters though, so it might suck. :(

I crunched the numbers back when I watched this film as an engineering student, and although I've forgotten the exact figures, I remember that 1 megajoule per liter is roughly the same amount of kinetic energy as a mid-sized automobile traveling at highway speeds. All that concentrated in a beam of light no wider than a salad plate. What a truly terrifying weapon.

After all these years, I still wonder: what was the equipment and the shield supposed to protect them from?

25 trees across the quad did not like this.

So you'll HAMMER later , LOL !!!! Classic line from a great movie ,Ha,Ha....

That scene is a perfect metaphor for the recklessness of some tech bros today, so happy their machine works, so unconcerned about what it destroyed down the road.

One of the best movies ever made. HATHAWAYYYYY is one of the best villains ever

Loved this movie as a kid still love the movie watch it whenever I find it on or just once in a while. It is possible to synthesize excited Bromide in an Argon matrix, love it... classic!

Who WOULDN'T want to hammer Deborah Foreman?

Look at this mirror. Look. LOOK!

I would love to see Legal Eagle or any other law channel tackle this film.

it's hotter than the sun but.... we didn't need protective clothing from 5 feet away! BRILLIANT!

That's a real lab, or at least all the equipment from one. The optical table, the connectors, the big old Tek on a cart, etc

I always loved this movie.

My favorite movie of all time.

That's just the fuses at the substation, they'll have them back on in a couple of minutes... maybe I shouldn't have shorted across the transformer... Beautiful lines! :)

Every time I see a catcher's mask, I think of movie rather than baseball, and I like both very much.

Absolutely love(d) this movie. One of my only problems with it -- and, yes, this is nitpicking -- is that all of these kids are super geniuses at (presumably) Caltech (DEI, BTW). They're probably all in the top 5% of their class. Kent would have had no worries about landing a killer job after graduation. His problem wouldn't be finding a job. It would have been filtering and digesting the offers.

My favorite scene from a very inspiring movie!

I find how lasers and light pads through various mediums… and the same for sound and overlay of insights and information gathered over time… fascinating.

Hathaway reminds me of a professor named Bob Prowell who asked me to design a laser pistol weapon so I suggested Femto pulsed flash cubes so I would like to thank him for encouraging me to go into nuclear aerospace and cryogenic laser fields to overcome my hangups about biology and egotistic self. Hathaway also reminds me of a snobby professor who would point their thumb at a steel mill to make condescending aspersion epithets of "Think of all those Archie Bunkers to say the very least" while I do appreciate how he congratulated me on my MIT work.

In this movie, Real Genius (Val Kilmer), there is a reclusive genius named Lazlo - who avoids others. They see him entering a closet, and he disappears. After a while, they realize the closet has a secret door to another entrance, which leads to... The point is, though it appears that Lazlo prizes his privacy (for why else would he hide from the others) they are not quite sure... So, they attempt to make contact, seeing how Lazlo has not explicitly said, No Contact is permitted... It is a very fragile line, between invading another's space, and saying, Hello... attempting to make, First Contact... This movie, is basically about social "misfits".. Also, the laser was really cool. I still remember that line, "It will be like lasing a stick of dynamite". I think they used a Bose Einstein Condensate, "as a primer" in a single atom laser... but that's a guess.

Best movie ever

This movie came out when I was born I never seen it. I just watched it and it is a really good movie.

Kent's cronies prove they're serious about the science by shushing Kent when Chris is explaining the power source. They're friends with the wrong guy, but they still NEED TO KNOW how things work.

Best Lines = So You will hammer Later! God Let Me have It!!!

2021 and laser weapons are still being researched as the next breakthrough in warfare ...

Since the entire idea is BS, it's ok that the story was inconsistant with the violet color of the beam. Perhaps the theory, while a success, did not accurately describe correct freq. I just wonder and worry about the students asleep in their dorm rooms that got toasted by the errant laser beam, which evidently still had deadly energy after penetrating the taget, the window, wall tree, statue, etc.

Amazing scene. What a triumph.

an underated under viewed teen masterpiece

"Take a cab" Hathaway does not play!

love this movie!

Ironically laser weapons are today's social norm so who is nerdy?

This is one of my favorite movie when I was younger, still shocked no one got killed from the laser.

"So you'll hammer later"

All I could think about was “it’s all fun and games until your little laser kills a bunch of random students across campus.”

The 80’s rule forever!

"Excited" bromide in an argon matrix... So, bromine ionized to the point of becoming argon? Perhaps with the same quantum # but with a nucleus of bromine.

Nowhere near enough vengeance in that ending. They should have "accidentally" lased off some of Jerry's anatomy. Whoops.

1:54 say "and Go ahead and stand in front of it"

Chris Knight > Elon Musk

They could've killed someone. As a kid i didn't think about they're lack of safety. Eh, it's still an awesome movie.

Hathaway's very relieved he's not facing being audited anymore...

so you'll hammer later. Classic

What was a movie in the 80s I've always loved, the laser the mitilary has today goes far beyond the scope of this movie capability Making other first strike weapons obsolete . At a fraction of the cost to make and operate. In just 40 some years we gone from dreams to reality. Now to make a jiffy pop popcorn house burst at the seams. Don't hold back on the butter and salt.

I applied to go to Stevens Institute of Technology because of this movie..

real genius laser final clip popcorn house ending

And Maui is confirmed

I want! tapioka...for lunch! turn my brain to mush!

Saw this for my 11th birthday party

Val Kilmer reminds me of used car salesman about a Keijidosha van I was interested in to test x-rays on hafnium Valveless pulsejet since only problem is my family is hostile and will not drive me to such a dealership.

Would love to know who produced this instrumental beat 😊

i love this movie, but 25 years later i have no idea what chris is talking about! so not a science person!!

So Hathaway accepts a government contract to make specific tech for the government. He approves university admission for genius kids to create the tech. He ends up profiting in the end. Is any of this legal? How many times has he done this in the past?

©1985 TriStar Pictures, Inc.