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Line 6: A 1995 movie about a small group of [[Playful Hacker\|underground computer hackers]] who discover a scheme being run by the security chief of a large corporation. In a prologue flashback, lead character Dade Murphy, age eleven, is found guilty of crashing 1,507 computers. Fast forward seven years, where his mother has just moved both of them to New York. Dade, reluctantly at first, falls in with a new hacking crowd. One of the hackers breaks into a supercomputer where, in a [[Contrived Coincidence]], he downloads a virus/worm program that the aforementioned evil security chief is using to steal many millions of dollars. In response, the security chief tries to frame the hackers for both the theft and a planned environmental disaster. Thanks to assistance from hackers world-wide, our heroes manage to prevent the disaster, clear their names, and Dade gets the girl. '''''Hackers''''' is known for referencing top-of-the-line computers of the time (now [[~~Tech~~Technology Marches On\|horribly, horribly outdated]]) and [[Hollywood Hacking\|unrealistic depictions of hacking]], but it nevertheless remains quite entertaining. It's also notable as one of the earliest roles for [[Angelina Jolie]]. While real computer hackers will sneer at the movie in public (except for those who find the [[Did Not Do the Research]] to be funny as ~~HELL~~''hell''), secretly they desperately wish that it were true: it's a world where hackers are slim and trendy, hackers save the world from evil corporations, and most importantly, Angelina Jolie ditches her jock boyfriend for a hacker. ~~----~~ {{tropelist}} * [[Analog Punk]]: When it isn't indulging in flights of technological fancy, ''Hackers'' is very firmly anchored to the end of the Analog Punk era. * [[Anti-Hero]]: Our heroes are, after all, guilty of numerous computer crimes, many victimless and harmless, others not so much. They're just not nearly as malicious as the bad guys. * [[Big Damn Heroes]]: Razor and Blade get their moment, leading an army of hackers from around the world. Line 28: ** [[Blessed with Suck]]: Actually, what he says is "It hurts", and he seems to be being literal. When he spends a day skimming passwords from glancing at peoples' keyboards as they type, he literally gets a headache from trying to sift through all the data he's retaining. * [[Cyberpunk Is Techno]]: The soundtrack (released over ''three volumes'') was pretty much a pantheon of 90's electronic music. * [[Did Not Do the Research]]: On purpose. The hacker hired by the studio as a technical adviser wanted to see how much BS he could spin, all of which was unquestioningly accepted. That hacker was none other than Eric Corley (a.k.a. Emmanuel Goldstein), founder of the legendary hacker magazine "2600: The Hacker Quarterly". "It's got a 28.8 bps modem!" He meant Kbps, right? ''300'' bps wasn't all that great even in 1985, much less 1995. Also, "Habeas Corpus" has absolutely nothing to do with dead bodies. * The legal concept, no. However, literally translated from Latin, according to [[The Other Wiki]], it means, "you may have the body." So, kinda. ** They did ''some research'' - the "P6 chip" they mentioned was the soon to be launched Pentium Pro processor, however it never made it to laptop platforms (and on closer inspection the laptop in question was a [[Everyone Owns a Mac\|Mac]]), wasn't RISC, and wasn't as fast as they seemed to think it would be. * [[Dueling Hackers]]: Part of the climax. ** Earlier, the duel between Crash and Burn. Line 59 ⟶ 55: * [[Rapid-Fire Typing]]: every main character in the movie does this, but one particular scene is notable: when Dade uses Kate's new computer and the camera shows us that he's operating several [[Viewer-Friendly Interface]] programs at blinding speeds. {{quote\|'''Kate''': "I hope you don't screw like you type."}} * [[Romance on the Set]]: Leads Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie got married after the movie's release, but divorced a few years later. * [[Rule of Cool]]: Since a realistic movie about how hacking works would be agonizingly boring to everyone but hardcore hackers, the movie pretty much runs on this. * [[Samus Is a Girl]]: For the first half of the film, neither Dade nor the audience know that Acid Burn is actually Kate Libby. * [[Shout-Out]]: Kate's boyfriend refers to Dade and his friends as 'Leopard Boy and the [[Transformers\|Decepticons]].' Cereal Killer's real name is "Emmanuel Goldstein," likely a reference to 2600 founder and editor Eric Corley, who himself uses the name as a reference to the figurehead enemy of Big Brother in George Orwell's "[[Nineteen Eighty-Four\|1984]]." Plague's alias in the aircraft was "Mr. Babbage." Charles Babbage was credited as the originator of the concept for the programmable computer. The elite [[Master Computer\|supercomputers]] of the movie are called "Gibsons" which is a nod to [[William Gibson]]. ** [[Taxi Driver\|''You talkin' to me?'']] * [[Spell My Name with a "The"]]: He's "The Plague," not "Mister Plague." (At which point, Penn follows up with "Mister The Plague") * [[Tech Marches On]]: 28.8 Kbps used to be fast. No more. Line 77 ⟶ 66: * [[The Nineties]] * [[Two-Person Pool Party]]: How Dade and Kate celebrate their victory. * [[Wager Slave]]: Dade and Libby face off in a head-to-head hacking contest, with the loser ending up as the loser's slave or date respectively. Either way, they have to wear a dress. * [[What Happened to the Mouse?]]: Phreak's last appearance was his phone call to Acid Burn, and he's never mentioned directly. * [[Wrongful Accusation Insurance]]: {{spoiler\|Although the heroes stopped the tankers from capsizing and exposed Plague's embezzlement scheme, they had to trash a supercomputer to do it. Apparently, the FBI didn't bother prosecuting them for that.}} ** {{spoiler\|1=[[Fridge Brilliance]]! Not only had "The Plague" been plotting to steal millions of dollars and cover his tracks with a global environmental and economic catastrophe - '''[[Police Are Useless\|he'd used the Secret Service as his henchmen in the process!]]''' And the Secret Service had been attempting to spin the arrests into a hacker [[Witch Hunt]] on national television when Cereal [[Do Not Adjust Your Set\|exonerated them to the entire planet]]. They had caught the heroes moments too late to keep them from [[Saving the World]]. The Secret Service's own personal D-Day had just become [[Scandalgate\|the new Watergate]]! Imagine that the FBI had arrested Woodward and Bernstein for treason, then attempted to spin it into restart the McCarthy trials just as others released the papers exposing Nixon - actually it's worse, Nixon was President, The Plague was a (falsely) rehabilitated crook! This is about the only way to justify Wrongful Accusation Insurance - smear the cops so badly that if they try to hold you the public will either laugh or lynch them. Agent Richard Gill, hardass agent in charge of the operation, screamed '''''[[Precision F-Strike\|"SON OF A BITCH!"]]''''' for a reason.}} {{reflist}} [[Category:Films of the 1990s]] [[Category:~~Hackers~~{{PAGENAME}}]] [[Category:Film]] [[Category:Cult Classic]]