Ask HN: Favorite hacker movie | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Favorite hacker movie

26 pointsConceitedCode27 comments

What is your favorite hacker movie?

Mine is Swordfish (2001)

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Primer (2004) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/

Classic entrepreneurs hacking in the garage, with some unanticipated science fiction side effects.

Sneakers (1992, still holds up perfectly) and Hackers (1995, probably doesn't hold up quite so well).

edit: I'd also like to add The Social Network (2010) ... completely forgot about that one!

Sneakers as well. The world of cryptography is still as murky and interesting as it was back then. Doubt we'll find a key to everything in an answering machine though. :D

Sneakers and Real Genius are my favorites.

The hacking scenes in 'Hackers' are completely off, but it's still one of my favourite movies. Maybe because of the age it's set in, or the 'feel' of the movie.

Pirate of Silicon Valley http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=440334862070787846#

One of my favorites. The quote "Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?" has stuck with me since middle school.

Gotta be Sneakers. Incredible cast and well written.

What's not to love about Darth Vader answering "We are the United States government, we don't do that sort of thing." to the simple request for "Peace on earth, good will towards men" seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHsUYF5VfQ0

Hard to top Wargames.

Tron: Legacy (2010) - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/

"I was asked to record myself using a unix terminal doing technologically feasible things. I took extra care in babysitting the elements through to final composite to ensure that the content would not be artistically altered beyond that feasibility."

"So we went with posix kill and also had him pipe ps into grep. I also ended up using emacs eshell to make the terminal more l33t. The team was delighted to see my emacs performance -- splitting the editor into nested panes and running different modes. I was tickled that I got emacs into a block buster movie. I actually do use emacs irl, and although I do not subscribe to alt.religion.emacs, I think that's all incredibly relevant to the world of Tron."

Source: http://jtnimoy.net/workviewer.php?q=178 Quite genius actually.

Oh, man. Those apps would make GREAT screen savers.

Office Space

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0126765/

Con artists are hackers too: Catch Me If You Can, Matchstick Men, I Love You Phillip Morris

Swordfish? Surely you're joking, Mr. ConceitedCode? Such as faux pas :)

Hollywood is almost universally terrible at hacker movies, unfortunately, dating back to when they perverted Frankenstein. I haven't seen Swordfish, but what I've heard doesn't make me optimistic.

Real Genius and Ghostbusters are two pretty good hacker movies. I hear Buckaroo Banzai is in the same ballpark, but I haven't seen the whole thing. I also enjoyed Flight of the Navigator, but it's really more about magic than about hacking.

Very true. Actually, unmentioned here yet is "The Social Network (2010)" which has one of the most realistic scenes of coding I've seen. The problem is that it takes David Fincher and a script by Aaron Sorkin to make someone sitting at a computer both realistic and interesting.

and Hollywood isn't the only place where movies are made

Real Genius is first, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/ This portrays nearly everyone's ideal undergraduate experience.

Then Sneakers.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450702

Real Genius by a hundred thousand miles.

Hackers, primer and antitrust

Antitrust & Startup.com

I like where Scottchin is going with this one, Ghostbusters.

The first $20m is the hardest (based on Po Bronson's novel)

That would have to be antitrust and wargames

Ghostbusters :)

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