An user was posting about this yesterday, so I watched it. Hilariously bad "hacking" -- sorta.
All of the onscreen stuff was bullshit video game hacking but a lot of weird details -- phishing boxes, rainbow books, vampire tap on phones, hackers manifesto -- are surprisingly accurate.
What gives?
An user was posting about this yesterday, so I watched it. Hilariously bad "hacking" -- sorta
Henry Allen
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Jose Howard
It's a jokey time capsule and not to be taken seriously.
Carson Martinez
did you watch sneakers yet? mission impossible is better but it's fun watching what people thought was impressive hacking,
Thomas Taylor
It was a different time
Hollywood never gets technical information right
Easton Rodriguez
mess with the best, die like the rest! - z3r0c00l
if you want real exploits and stuff try mr. robot
Jackson Bell
How are these beginners supposed to figure out
what a real computer wizard is?
However, they recognized den Zeitgeist
well and tried to use them as bait in these films.
Jaxson Young
They needed to balance it out, keep normies entertained, which is why all cheesy stuff is there, but also pay homage to the actual hacking culture.
In contrast
>mr. robot
Tried to keep it as real and as grounded as possible, and it turned out pretty good indeed, but even they needed to throw in some angles to give it a minimum of appeal to normies, things like his hallucinations and other surreal stuff.
>Sneakers (1992)
Thanks for the tip, user!
Jonathan Roberts
Computers were new and exciting
They wanted to make things look more interesting than sitting at a command line so gave it crazy interfaces
Joseph James
I saw this movie in the theater when I was 15, came home and immediately plugged my modem in and went online for the first time.
It was Prodigy Classic, and it cost $1.99 a minute to browse the web, BBS and use chat. It was nothing like the movie and I didn't care. I was hooked.
Within six months I'd written my first program in vb. Two years later I was on IRC with Slackware.
That movie seriously jumpstarted me.
Aaron Brown
>All of the onscreen stuff was bullshit video game hacking but a lot of weird details -- phishing boxes, rainbow books, vampire tap on phones, hackers manifesto -- are surprisingly accurate.
>What gives?
That's precisely the point of this masterpiece. Like 80s action movies involving cops or soldiers, Hackers is a cartoon version of computer culture that's fun to watch and makes enough references to real-world things and common anecdotes within tech communities to not feel completely disconnected from reality. It doesn't try to impress you with real-world accuracy because actual hackery is a boring and depressing world of scumbag criminals and unlikeable genius programming weirdos with mental issues. This movie is a goonies-like adventure involving a ragtag group of teens with strong hacking powers who hack the big bad Gibson in the end.
Mr. Robot tried to impress the audience by doing a more realistic depiction and fell flat because of it. Nerds found it necessary to stroke their fragile ego online by pointing out minor inconsistencies as they always do, while normies found it to be a somewhat odd crime show with cringe angsty moments about "society".
Ian Powell
the music's good though
Tyler Allen
>did you watch sneakers yet?
any good?
John Garcia
The first track is classic techno from the time.
Funnily enough, this music always takes us back to 1996. As if our entire emotional world were anchored in that time.
Sitting on a school roof at the Loveparade in Berlin and getting the biggest laugh flash was awesome.
Jacob Lee
Also something else to mention - the more you look into the movie you start to notice details that aren't immediately obvious.
- The game they play at Cyberdelia is a pre-production pitch video by Psygnosis for their game Wipeout which hadn't come out yet at the time of the shooting:
youtube.com
- The clear plastic Powerbook which Dade gets from Plague is actually a real engineering sample from Apple with which they tested airflow and dust buildup.
- Cereal Killer is actually homeless, that's why he's constantly "crashing" with somebody else and always carries a toothbrush around. His father is likely in the military as his coat is a collage of sewn-on military patches. Matthew Lillard often got his lines wrong and would often ad-lib in his performance but the directors just rolled with it because it had good on-screen energy.
- The phantom phreak ("king of Nynex") is from Venezuela and as his name suggests, does actual phreaking on-screen to call his home country for free using a pre-recorded DTMF sequence emulating what would be sent over the phoneline when coins are put in the payphone.
Brandon Powell
>but even they needed to throw in some angles to give it a minimum of appeal to normies, things like his hallucinations and other surreal stuff
it's not just for normies. without that the show would be boring. if you're looking for something completely realistic just watch some "let's hack" video on youtube.
Noah Young
>mr robot
im sorry but mr robot fucking sucked. i do not understand how people actually liked that pile of garbage. they were more focused on the end and not the means.
Andrew Perry
the thing about movies is, you need to watch it like its the year it was released, you cant watch it with your l33t 2024 eyes, watch it like its 1990s or whenever it was released
Jacob Jones
they steal a decoder from a guy who wants to end the fed and use it to steal money from the republica party and give it to an african american foundation and the democratic party. apart from that it's fine
Jonathan King
Sneakers is a well made, well written movie with solid actors. It's not very accurate, but it's a lot of fun. It's more of a spy movie than hacker movie, it's just the lead characters do cybersecurity.
Hunter Evans
As a 90s era person, everybody loved Hackers. It was never meant to be accurate but they did have quite a few hacker dogwhistles normies didnt know about. And it even captured the personalities of different people. Most were kids having fun and it actually inspired people to make the more fantastic elements a reality.
Mr. Robot was accurate but also overwhelmingly Jewish and boring. Hackers actually nailed the motivations. To have fun, to eat junk, vibe to music, and to one up your friends.
Carson Young
Yeah I stopped Mr.Robot after the first season things just got really cringeworthy after that