A list of movies about hacking | Hacker News Reader

A list of movies about hacking

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75 pointslucianosousa78 comments

This doesn't appear to be so much a curated list of much-watch movies so much as a list of all movies about hacking ever.

Here is my curated list of movies ever hacker and cyberpunk enthusiast must watch:

* Sneakers

* Ghost in the Shell

* Tron

Why is Tron there? Because the screenwriter loosely based the character around her husband. Who was her husband? Alan Kay. Tron's protagonist is Alan Kay.

For reference:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0531381/bio

I think WarGames really should be on the list. It's old, yes, but it did influence a lot of us that were in that first generation of kids growing up with computers at home (though not many homes). It definitely captures a moment of time worth thinking about.

My two bits. (I very much agree with Tron.)

Definitely. It was one of my early influences for looking into both AI and information security.

Blackhat should probably be on there for being about only one to get hacking right in recent times.

"Because the screenwriter loosely based the character around her husband. Who was her husband? Alan Kay. Tron's protagonist is Alan Kay."

Had no clue his wife wrote it or portrayed him. That's neat! Brings in some irony given Tron character is fighting the slavery of MCP but Kay told me here on HN he loved Burroughs B5000. Also implied its lead creator, Bob Barton, was a genius and revolutionary overturning all the bad software, hardware, and engineering that came before it in one fell swoop. As in, the movie could've just as easily had MCP as the hero. ;)

Sneakers is such a great movie, particularly the scene using sounds heard to track the route of a vehicle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuIheGaiFLM

Obviously watch the whole movie, but the clip gives the gist of the high quality of the script.

I'm very pleased to see a comment repping Sneakers on the top of the pile. A highly underrated true hacker classic!

Ghost in the Shell rather than Patlabor?

I've never seen Patlabor. Sounds like I should.

And Sneakers, asides from the magic, encryption-breaking MacGuffin, is some of the most realistic hacking in movies. What's the preferred tactic of these tech geniuses? Basic social engineering. Sure, they know a lot of other tricks, but why figure out a clever way through the badge system if a cake and some birthday balloons will work just as well?

Patlabor is fun, and has some cool hacker-relevant stuff, but isn't a great and serious movie like Ghost in the Shell. I do recommend watching it, but with suitable expectations!

Needs "The Conversation". A near perfect movie about surveillance, that doesn't feature a single computer.

It has "Enemy of the State", its spiritual sequel (with Gene Hackman playing an almost identical character). But I agree, The Conversation should be on there, too; I have to admit it's a better movie, even though I love Will Smith.

Seeing this list inspired me to write about the list I keep for the books I read, many of them cyberpunk/scifi. After reading so many of these types of books, you can't help notice their elements in other media.

It's interesting in seeing the print inspirations for many of these movies. The term "The Matrix" was first coined in William Gibson's Neuromancer and considered to be the seminal Cyberpunk novel, even predating Ghost in the Shell.

Definitely a must read for any Cyberpunk fan!

Just read Neuromancer this summer. One of the benefits of renting random people's places are the libraries you run across; that was a great read (though somehow disturbing, mystical/mind blowing, and hollow inducing all at the same time).

The two other books in the series (Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive) are both great as well, but I found that the first had the most magic.

In the same vein, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson is great as well. Its essentially a parody of cyberpunk but hilariously well written.

You might like Vernor Vinge's 'True Names', too. There was a PDF of the story on the web a while back; I'm not sure of its legality so I won't link to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names

And for newer stuff, Richard K Morgan's Altered Carbon (2003) and 2 sequels really hit the spot. It's hard to find good gritty cyberpunk these days.

And it's not that old works are bad, just that some of the tech misses distract and take you out of the atmosphere sometimes. Like on Star Trek, when they have to physically deliver email to people on holodiscs.

I'd also note that Asimov's Robot series are great if you like hardboiled type stuff - not cyberpunk, but has a slightly similar ambiance.

meanwhile, i'm waiting for my damn smartwheels and knight visions over here. These sumerian wizards aren't going to defeat themselves, you know!

I was very pleased to see The Italian Job make the list.

Hacking is about understanding, optimizing, and manipulating systems. One real-world analogue of a system is a Rube Goldberg machine; the dramatic analogue of a Rube Goldberg machine is a heist flick.

I'd add the Ocean's Eleven remake as an approachable introduction to the genre, and Kubrick's The Killing for vintage noir awesomeness. And maybe The Last Seduction as a curveball.

Jeez, some of those movies are dreadful, and there's almost nothing on the list from before 1990.

1954 - Gog (robots that look like robots and not people in metal suits)

1957 - Desk Set (non-stupid treadment of an early computer)

1970 - Colossus : The Forbin Project (how is this not in there)

1971 - How to Frame a Figg (silly, but it's got a computer hacker)

1975 - Three Days of the Condor

1990 - The KGB, the Computer, and Me (PBS doc about "The Cuckoo's Egg")

Also check out the AI / Cognitive Science Movie Index by Indiana University:

https://www.indiana.edu/~cogfilms/index.php

Black Mirror is missing here too, unfortunately. Several episodes revolve quite intelligently around AI, dystopian technological future, cognitive science.

It would be nice to include Black Mirror as most of the show's plots revolve around the social influence of advanced technology.

Not a movie but definitely required viewing.

I'm going to go against the grain and say: don't watch these.

Or rather, don't prioritize watching these. Try to balance out movies and books related to your profession or hobby with those outside of it.

The world already has enough stereotypical geeks loving Ghost in the Shell, Star Wars and Star Trek, it needs more geeks having an interest in what "regular people" do and like.

That is rather offensively narrow-minded to think that "regular people" don't also enjoy those those movies. That simply having a job or hobby related to STEM somehow does not make you a regular person.

I'm not saying regular people don't enjoy these. I'm saying that people in our field have a rather unhealthy fascination with a rather narrow set of topics.

Instead of having a laser focus even for our hobbies I'd advocate a wider range of hobbies.

You don't know any actual "regular people", do you? (Edit: I don't mean to put your friends down, I just mean that the people you know are probably smart, interesting people, sadly unlike a large portion of humanity.) I don't mean 'person working outside of tech'. I mean the kind of people who think Big Bang Theory is 'a show for smart people'.

Most of the world is like this. It's terrifying.

Not to mention, a lot of these movies are awful. For instance, the first movie on the list is, inexplicably, "WarGames: The Dead Code". Not the classic "WarGames", but a horrible direct-to-video sequel released in 2008.

Yes, "WarGames: The Dead Code" is indeed awful.

I'd love to see earlier movies on this list, ie The Conversation (1974) [1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation

Some of these films are extremely bad, and that's not limited to the ones with low imdb scores. This list is in serious need of pruning.

I found many must-see movies on these lists:

1. Directors Guild of America's The 80 Best-Directed Films: http://www.dga.org/Craft/DGAQ/All-Articles/1602-Spring-2016/...

2. TSPDT's The 1,000 Greatest Films: http://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films_table.p...

They aren't about hackers, for sure. But these two lists are more diverse than IMDb 250.

Try movies from the 60s and 70s on these lists. Lots of gems among them.

For action I would add Equilibrium (it has a cyberpunk feel to it) as well as the other movie he director did that I can't recall.

Also Existenz which has a female programmer and predates the Matrix and Inception.

If you're adding (the excellent) Equilibrium, I'd say V for Vendetta too due to its influence on "Anonymous". And Fight Club because of what their end goal is.

That said, I can still remember seeing eXistenZ in the cinema:

>Death to the demoness, Allegra Geller.

Off topic: Does anyone else get annoyed at bossy articles telling them what they must watch, or must read, or must do?

I know it's just an expression, but it bugs me...

That is like 80% of huff post articles.

What bugs me has to do with the authors claiming their lists are "curated" when really all they've done is collect or list.

Curation indicates that there is a selectivity involved. That is not evident with this list, that or they're using a pretty un-obvious criteria.

(note the original title of the story indicated that this was a "curated list", and the actual repo still contains that language).

I'm 0 for Thrillers on this list and only 2 for SciFi. So my word is suspect. But still, I would recommend startup.com for the documentaries.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/

I'd also recommend 2001, Repo Man, Dark Star and They Live on general principles.

What makes a movie “must watch” for “every hacker and cyberpunk”?

Two criteria come to my mind:

- The movie is likely to teach you something that will make you a better “hacker” or “cyberpunk”.

- The movie depicts what it's actually like to be a “hacker” or “cyberpunk”.

Now, which of the movies on this list are going to do either of those? Probably some of the documentaries, and probably almost none of the fictions.

Cyberpunk is a culture, a style and an attitude as much as a skillset. Fiction can convey these things, sometimes better than truth can.

cypherpunk vs. cyberpunk

cypherpunk: hacking, computing cryptography and related culture.

cyberpunk: subgenre of science fiction and related subculture.

No AKIRA? I thought this one is pretty acclaimed, and frequently hailed as a cyberpunk classic

The plot doesn't really have much to do with computers? It was perhaps the first anime to make a splash in the US, and it is worth seeing, but I don't think I'd use "hacker" or "cyberpunk" to describe it.

Well, Blade Runner or Inception are no different.

yeah same reaction here.

No Real Genius? Shame.

That movie was awesome!

Its on the list, one of my favorites from last year. ZERO DAYS (2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VgIayOpjEc http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5446858/ https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zero_days

Needs 'Triumph of the Nerds' in documentaries, and 'Pirates of Silicon Valley' needs to move to any of the film sections (it's not a documentary).

Not for the hacker or cyberpunk genre but I do think that 'Primer' needs to be in this list. Haven't seen more realistic time travel movie than this yet.

It's also a great engineering movie.

"Realistic time travel" movie?

The forward-only time machine in Futurama is probably the only paradox-free time travel premise that's possible. Even that had a giant plot hole re: the motion of the planet, solar system, etc.

there's a paradox here somewhere. ;)

No Mr. Robot?

I haven't seen enough of the titles on the list to know if any of them are series, but AFAIK this is only a list of movies.

That page ought to have a list of TV series in addition to Mr. Robot: X-Files and more so its spinoff show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen

Mr. Robot is the first "hacker" show I've watched that didn't have a single cringe moment when it comes to the "hacking".

Would be awesome to use InstantWatcher to show a link (if exists) to stream on Netflix or Amazon, etc.

And not a movie, but Halt and Catch Fire should be on there somewhere...

Or you can just watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEkrWRHCDQU

My personal favorite:

"Hackers - Wizards of the Electronics Age" Starring a bunch of old school programmers/hackers!

Magnificently produced by Fabrice Florin -http://fabriceflorin.com/

Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOP1LNr70aU

D.A.R.Y.L.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088979/

As a young nerdy kid, this movie had such an impact on my at the time I saw it. I pretended I was a robot for months afterwards :)

And the SR71 makes an appearance. This movie still inspires me. Reminds me, I should show it to my son... is 5 too young?

I think 'Real Genius' deserves a place on the list. Actual hacking is only a small part of the plot, but the rest of the movie fits the mindset well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Genius

Dot was a pretty good comedy that didn't get enough attention: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371647/

It's on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/8919323

Aw, I'm a hackerpunk so only 1/2 are watchable. I just don't know which half.

This is a trash list. Live Free Die Hard is on there, because Kevin Smith? SMH

This list should have been posted weeks ago, when the StackOverflow's 2017 survey asked us about fictional characters and I wasn't able to recall any particular title...

The social network is nothIng for hackers. Most of the facts and characters are in reality not as portrayed. And itS one of the weakest movies of Fincher.

But.... he's plugged in!

It'd be nice if you could order by column. At least let the default order be by rating or alphabetical, instead of none whatsoever?

Here's my list of must watch movies for actual hackers:

(list)

For cyberpunk, I'd add:

- Tetsuo: The Iron Man

- Videodrome

THX 1138 + GATTACA + The Element of Crime

Missing Elysium and Children of Men.

Children of Men was awful, and it had nothing to do with hacking or cyberpunk, from what I remember.

Are you talking about the book? My wife read it and said it wasn't very good. The movie was great but I wouldn't call its gritty, near-future dystopian setting very cyberpunk either. Cyberpunk is generally "high tech, low life" but 'Children of Men' doesn't really have high tech. 'Minority Report' is more cyberpunk than 'Children of Men' (but still not that cyberpunk).

ok THIS was my #1 80s TV show growing up : Autoaman

http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0084978/

Can i get an amen please?!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm sure this thread will go to the summaries:

http://n-gate.com/hackernews/

"An internet posts a 'movies for hackers' list on Git instead of using other reasonable publishing services as any human being. Hackernews spend hours complaining about how their favorite obscure movie that nobody knows or cares about wasn't included in the list"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com