20th anniversary of the teen cyberpunk thriller "Hackers"
On September 15, 1995, Hackers was released in the theaters to a relative thud, recovering less than half its production budget at the box office. But the tale of a group of high school hackers-with cool-sounding hacker handles like "Zero Cool" and "Acid Burn"-stumbling upon a grand corporate conspiracy found a second life on home video, becoming a cult classic two decades later.
Directed by Iain Softley the film is all sorts of dated. There's some unknown punk named Angelina Jolie, the nebulously famous Fisher Stevens. Matthew Lillard's in it, and so is Marc Anthony. Everyone rollerblades or skateboards. Visually dazzling and oddly optimistic, Hackers is more than a cheesy techno-thriller from the mid '90s, it's a smart, energetic story about teenage rebellion with a genuine interest in what was once a small but thriving subculture.
The Internet and technology have changed greatly since Hackers' release, yet even with 20 years of technological progress, code still doesn't float around your screen as mathematical functions in 3D. And the prominently featured payphones, floppy disks, acoustic coupled modems, techno-arcades and pagers are becoming a bit difficult to find for today's aspiring hackers.
Directed by Iain Softley the film is all sorts of dated. There's some unknown punk named Angelina Jolie, the nebulously famous Fisher Stevens. Matthew Lillard's in it, and so is Marc Anthony. Everyone rollerblades or skateboards. Visually dazzling and oddly optimistic, Hackers is more than a cheesy techno-thriller from the mid '90s, it's a smart, energetic story about teenage rebellion with a genuine interest in what was once a small but thriving subculture.
The Internet and technology have changed greatly since Hackers' release, yet even with 20 years of technological progress, code still doesn't float around your screen as mathematical functions in 3D. And the prominently featured payphones, floppy disks, acoustic coupled modems, techno-arcades and pagers are becoming a bit difficult to find for today's aspiring hackers.
A couple of episodes in, I did wonder if Christian Slater. (Those who've seen it will know.) I didn't realise that the guy in the finale was from the hard drive shop.
Of course, there was a movie from a few years ago (one that nobody talks about) that has the same premise.