My favourite visuals in Hackers (1995)

I was not expecting to enjoy this movie so much. I typically read the label “cult classic” as “terrible except as fuel for in-jokes”. Hackers was more than that. The biggest thing I noticed was that I couldn’t stop taking screenshots and sending them to my friends. Here are the best of them.

I like the way they translated the classic image from the cover of Mirrorshades:

It’s comforting to know early on in a piece that the filmmakers have done some reading. Like that moment in Fellowship when Bilbo hides from the Sackville-Baggins.

The next one tickled me because GUIs (like a bunch of tech featured in this film, including “RISC architectures”) didn’t come close to delivering on their promise. I wonder if misapprehensions like this are what got Neal Stephenson to write “In the Beginning… Was the Command Line” in 1999.

The following is the first time we see anything but smug boredom in the protagonist (it’s after he gets booted from a system by another hacker), and his face here is almost identical to how it is when he first meets his love interest in meatspace:

The name of the hacker hangout “Cyberdelia” made me chuckle, because although I know it’s supposed to be a portmanteau of cyber and psychedelia, it just made me think “cyber Delia”.

(Delia is the Roman version of Artemis, the hacker goddess featured heavily in Cryptonomicon. Pretty sure that’s just a coincidence though.)

So much ‘tude, and great suspenders:

More Mirrorshades, and what feels like a super early example of a main character in a big film being positively portrayed as genderqueer:

Felt a pang for the way I imagined my young adult life being when I was a kid:

Bars like this don’t exist, and if they did I wouldn’t be cool enough to get an invite

(Despite my mad gaming skills)

I think Joey’s the guy I identified with the most in the film. Great contrast here between his nonchalant cigarette and babyface:

Foreshadowing millions of hipster T-shirts to come, decades later:

Sick wristwatch, which unfortunately doesn’t get used:

More GUI-related optimism:

Also tickles me that for decades people would’ve scoffed at the idea of hackers using a Mac, when these days lots do. Who knows, maybe someone will find the right abstractions that make GUIs unilaterally preferable to the command line, and this part of Hackers will be seen as before its time, rather than dated?

Love this t-shirt, but have no idea why, or what it’s communicating. What did happen to your hand?!

This one made me jealous, and wish so badly I’d had a four-person possé in university or high school to trade hacking manuals with:

This next one I took just to remind me of the quote that comes with it:

“You wanna be elite? You gotta do a righteous hack.”

This one partly for the quote, partly for the suitably weird sexual expression that accompanies it (check out what his hand is doing):

“Wouldn’t you just love to get in one of those Gibsons, baby?”

The image of sysadmin as lazy security guard is just so off-base, along with the way the filmmakers couldn’t resist manifesting what seems like every part of the system in physical space, despite it kind of missing the point that the only way to understand what’s going on would be to abstract it more:

The arrogant corporate types hosed by the their hubris:

Who do they think they are, anyway?

This is pretty close to what my workspace looks like after a coding session:

Except the jar of lollies is empty of course

And I couldn’t help rip and upload this twenty second scene, for the choice quotes:

“Uh, Mr. The Plague, something weird’s happened on the net.”

“As in what, you hapless techno-weenie?”

I like this for trying to capture what it’s like when you’re in a flow state:

And I’m kinda sad that the phrase “garbage file” never made it into today’s lexicon:

The evil hacker skateboarding in to save the evil corporation:

Got Deus Ex vibes in this scene.

Interesting keyboard design, and early example of pair programming:

Love the image of stashing away a floppy disk in a hidden compartment. Makes me wish I had more files to hide from the government:

I’m still trying to work out the accuracy of the recurring implication that hackers were the precursors of the next wave of youth culture (in the way that hippies at woodstock were for boomers):

Pretty sure the barrier to entry is higher for hackerdom than rock ’n’ roll and hippie culture? But maybe not: growing your hair long and smoking drugs is harder to hide from your parents than explorations of the dark web.

Hacker as Jedi knight ties into the young male power fantasy so well:

I’m a big fan of running things through blurry CRTs as in this next shot. It reminds me of what John Oswald said about sampling.

First mention of the movie’s refrain: “Hack The Planet”

These guys are known as “Razor and Blade”, and are impossibly cool. Good example of asians in film who aren’t just into kung fu, opium and arithmetic?

Can very much relate to how Joey feels when they come to take his computer away:

“Lucy!”

Love his choice of clothes for his being-dragged-away-by-the-cops moment:

Great colours, great hair:

That skateboard, even better when surrounded by the monoculture of grey suits in this scene. Fairly prescient too: despite suits remaining standard across most industries, in 2017 if you get good enough with computers, no one cares what you wear.

Great mashup of tough and cute, hard and soft, and the mirror enabling the visual metaphor of him (her) showing his (her) two aspects:

So amazing to me how well accurately people in the 90s imagined VR hardware:

Or maybe it’s the other way around: sci fi representations shaped the way our VR hardware looks today, and it’ll take time for real-world usage to reshape it out of practicality

The secret service boss’s reaction is pretty close to what it’s like to watch someone in VR and try to engage with them while their headset is on. So counterintuitive that their reality doesn’t match yours when they’re standing right in front of you.

I want to be brave enough to wear this, and also want to understand what the text is a reference to:

Another top I’d wear if I could find it:

Yes! Split keyboard! This made me root for The Plague and know that he was the most elite hacker, even if he got ganged up on in the end:

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Angelina Jolie gets an awesome new laptop that can handle “a million psychedelic colours”, and it’s so good how her hacking software knows how to use them straight away (unlike e.g. older Gameboy games on the Gameboy Color):

Meditating before a marathon hacking session, critical:

I guess meditation and zen were a little more countercultural back then than they are now.

Using capitalism against the capitalists:

Camouflage laptop, tiny colour display, sexy sexy website:

Naughty! I wonder if they weren’t allowed to write out the full “transvestites welcome” to match the line in the film:

Can anyone translate the following for me?

The face imposed on his face is a great image, especially when you think about the scenes where The Plague tries to convince CrashOverride that they’re not so different, Doctor Evil styles:

Translucent case reminds me of my first Gameboy

Throwing in Joey’s mum for the top notch glasses and shirt:

I asked for a pager for Christmas once, still kinda bitter about never getting it:

Imagine being such a fan of your “sex wax” brand that you put it in prime sticker position on your hacking machine:

In comparison, I buy my sex wax in bulk off Amazon. Maybe it’s time to seek out quality over quantity?

Skateboarding again, this time to quickly snatch away the hot floppy:

And we’re back in the zone:

Even cooler pager, with the kind of call to action I always wanted to get:

I couldn’t get enough of the floppy disks, they really resonated with me. This one’s kept for good luck:

Like the lucky egg in Cool Runnings?

I have no idea what’s going on with this keyboard, but if I saw someone with it I’d know they were 1337:

Drug culture sneaks its way in at the film’s edges. A more ballsy take would’ve dealt with it head-on, but they were probably right at the edge of a higher maturity rating. I find it hard to seperate in my mind hacker culture from that of psychonauts.

And, finally, the adorably romantic end scene where the male and female leads’ hacker aliases are spelt out in the Manhattan skyline:

When I was in my teens, I wanted nothing more than to have a hacker girlfriend. It blows my mind how much this film tapped into my secret yearnings. I get the feeling that if I’d come across it earlier, I would’ve started exploring its references (Gibson, Unix, NEXT, psychedelia, the MIT hacker culture) sooner, and maybe I’d be even more elite by now. Who knows?