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Comment by throw7 | Hacker News Reader

Do you love the movie Hackers? I submit there are two camps of moviegoing nerds: those who love Sneakers and those who love Hackers. I will admit though, many many years later I softened to the sheer goofness of Hackers (which offput me much initially).

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I love both, for similar but different reasons. Hackers captures the naive idea of the scene really quite well. It's goofiness allows the naivety to remain, past the overwrought characters and Hollywood's downright misunderstanding.

It feels like it's accidentally great.

But then again, maybe it just tickles to the surface the sense of wonder I had way back then.

It helps to know that the swirly equations on the screen were meant to be the director’s interpretation of the characters’ internal mental model of what they were seeing and not some magical UI trick on the computers of the time. The wall-attached phones near the end didn’t suddenly become spinning glass phonebooths either, but you’ll seldom hear the movie bashed for the lack of realism there.

Accidentally great, yeah. If I allow myself to believe that the producers of Hackers knew they were making a spoof of Hollywood hackers in general, I can sit back and enjoy it as a masterpiece.

But at the time, that was not at all clear. And I'm still not actually convinced. It certainly wasn't marketed as a comedy; it seemed to be drinking the same drama-aid as The Net and other breathless wankery at the time. In which case it's a terrible movie that only becomes watchable as an exhibit of wankery.

This feels like a special case of "suspension of disbelief".

I really disliked hackers when it came out, except for the sound track. Never saw it again until some twentieth anniversary watch party, and from that distance saw it for what it was and found it amusing. ... I still wouldn't call it a great movie, but enjoyable enough or at least I now get why people like it.

Certainly far better than The Net, as low of a bar as that is.

Hackers had more of a cheesy feel to it, for sure. Sneakers felt more serious and believable.

This comment is one of the best examples of understatement I've ever come across.

(This is a compliment by the way. I agree, but with at least 10x more force than I feel from your comment ;)).

Haha. Thanks. I enjoyed both those movies

I saw it when it came out, and the love for it was completely unironic. Yeah, "The Plague" and the skateboards and that were silly, but somehow we still bought it. Not that we thought it was accurate, of course, but that it was heightened reality, maybe.

I still say things like "We're in" every time I login to a system with people looking over my shoulder.

It's really hard to believe that anyone took "The Plague" seriously as a character.

You haven't watched movies with my grandma.

Edit to add: Now consider the age and tech-savvy of most lawmakers.

I enjoyed both of them. Also, War Games... That was the reason I wanted a modem in the first place.

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