Hackers



"Hack the planet!"

A 1995 movie about a small group of 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Hackers is known for referencing top-of-the-line computers of the time (now horribly, horribly outdated) and unrealistic depictions of hacking, but it nevertheless remains quite entertaining.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), 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.

"Blade: "Are we fashionably late?""
 * Big Damn Heroes: Razor and Blade get their moment, leading an army of hackers from around the world.

"Lord Nikon: Eidetic memory - it's a curse..."
 * Blatant Lies: Cereal Killer fingers Joey as the fiend who finished all the french fries. Nobody falls for it, since Cereal has been munching on them for an entire scene.
 * Buffy-Speak: "It's in that place I hid that thing that time!"
 * Phreak was using his one prison phone call to tell Acid Burn where he hid the disk. Probably being deliberately vague, since he has no idea who's listening in on his call.
 * Incidentally, "that place" is behind a condom dispenser in the boys' bathroom. What exactly was he hiding?
 * A hacker named Plague?
 * The Plague. Mr The Plague is also acceptable.
 * Chekhov's Gunman: "Welcome to Hack the Planet..."
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Cereal Killer, partially crossed over with Bunny Ears Lawyer.
 * Contrived Coincidence: Joey finds the worm before it finishes his run - and can't complete the download because his mother switches off his computer.
 * Coolest Club Ever: Cyberdelia, an appropriate 'cyber-nightclub that has a full complement of skate ramps, a video game console about as large as a mid-sized room (featuring an alpha version of Wipeout), and of course, techno music ("Cowgirl" by Underworld). It's also by invite only.
 * The Cracker: The Plague.
 * Cursed with Awesome: Lampshaded by Lord Nikon regarding his Photographic Memory, after he explains that he has memorised the addresses and phone numbers of every girl at the party they attend:

"Anarchists of the world, unite!"
 * 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 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.
 * Everything Is Online: Including school sprinkler systems.
 * Expecting Someone Taller: A Running Gag. Whenever Dade confesses he used to be Zero Cool (his hacker alias when he crashed 1507 computers), the other hacker says, "I always thought you were X." Where X is black/a girl/some defining feature of the other hacker.
 * Funny Background Event: When the FBI agent is being interviewed on the news, he is going on about how hackers are dangerous criminals, while the guy they just arrested can be seen in the background sucking his thumb.
 * Gondor Calls for Aid

"Lord Nikon: Eidetic memory - it's a curse..."
 * Hollywood Hacking: The Movie. Not just Rapid-Fire Typing, but in spinning phone booths with VR goggles!
 * Hot Mom: Dade's mom is still pretty good looking.
 * It's Personal: Dade, having an existing criminal record, avoided getting involved... until The Plague threatened his mother.
 * Kick the Dog: Does the FBI really raid hacker dens with SWAT teams and rip computers apart to the individual boards?
 * Yes, they actually do.
 * Meaningful Rename: The whole point to hacker handles.
 * Dade got arrested ("crashed") but now he's back ("override").
 * Also, 'Lord Nikon', to reference the hacker's photographic memory'.
 * Mobstacle Course: The heroes use the crowds at Grand Central Station to their advantage against the FBI who are coming to arrest them.
 * Ms. Fanservice: Kate
 * One Phone Call: When Ramon gets arrested.
 * Online Alias: Most people use two word phrases, like Acid Burn or Crash Override.
 * Photographic Memory: Lord Nikon has one. Among other things, he has memorised the addresses and phone numbers of every girl at the party they attend.

"Kate: "I hope you don't screw like you type.""
 * Portmanteau Couple Name: Played with, as parts of Dade's ("Crash Override") and Kate's ("Acid Burn") handles come together to make an amusing title. ("Crash and Burn")
 * Playful Hacker: There's even a quote from Loyd Blankenship's famous "Hacker's Manifesto".
 * 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.

"The Plague: Someone didn't bother reading my carefully prepared memo on commonly-used passwords. Now, then, as I so meticulously pointed out, the four most-used passwords are: love, sex, secret, and... GOD. So, would your holiness care to change her password?"
 * Romance on the Set: Leads Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie got married after the movie's release, but divorced a few years later.
 * 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 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 "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 supercomputers of the movie are called "Gibsons" which is a nod to William Gibson.
 * This also counts as Did Not Do the Research, as such machines are more typically called "Big Iron".
 * 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.
 * Also, crashing 1507 computers in a day is no longer that impressive.
 * Dade did that ten years earlier. In The Eighties. And he hit the market so hard the NYSE dropped four points across the board. Nowadays he'd be in Gitmo until his hair fell out.
 * Or working for the NSA, FBI or some other special government agency, using his powers with other collared hackers to fight cyber-criminals.
 * The Password Is Always Swordfish: Or at least it is when whoever chose the password Did Not Do the Research.


 * The Nineties
 * Two-Person Pool Party: How Dade and Kate celebrate their victory.
 * 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: