It has long beena struggle in Hollywoodto depict computer hacking on film in a way that doesn’t come across as absurd to people familiar with coding, while not being painfullyboring to a casual viewer.Oftentimes, movies will skew more towards the latter option, for fear of alienating the majority of their audience due to how dull the visual act of “hacking” really is.
RELATED:Games To Play If You Like The Matrix
However, there are a few movies that get it right, at the very least for a scene or two and demonstrate how exactly hackers go about their business. Even then, there aren’t many movies that are willing to make hacking a central focus. Here are the best movies that get it right.
8The Matrix Reloaded (2003)
Shockingly enough, despitethe famous “scrolling green text"that is synonymous with the franchise, resident hacker Trinity actually makes use ofreal exploits in bothThe Matrixand more prominently inThe Matrix Reloaded.
Specifically, she used a real scanning tool known as Nmap to search for a vulnerability in a computer she is targeting, then uses a fictionalized version of a real-world loophole known as “SSH1 CRC32” to remotely take control of the computer. While these programs and loopholes are now wildly outdated, at the time it was all based on reality. The creator of Nmap, known as Fyodor, reportedlydanced in the aislesof the theater when he saw Trinity using his program.
7WarGames (1983)
Considered by many to be the first hacker film ever made,WarGameshas since become a cult classic. The film was so startling upon its release that it even had aninfluence on U.S. Government policyknown as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984, which cited the film as a realistic example of thecapabilities of the modern home computer,and was enacted to ensure the events of the film were never replicated in real life.
The film follows a teenager, David Highman (played by an up-and-coming Matthew Broderick), who is adept at hacking into his school’s database to alter his grades. While digging for new video games, David hacks into a company called Protovision and unwittingly gains control of a U.S. supercomputer programmed to simulate, and eventually execute, a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. While the accuracies in the film are a far cry from modern hacking, in the 80s it was as realistic a portrayal as anyone had ever seen.
6Ex Machina (2014)
There isn’t a ton of hacking going on inEx Machina -a movie about a computer programmer who is hired by his boss to see ifan artificial intelligence is truly sentient- but there is still one scene that features true-to-life coding.
RELATED:Science Fiction’s Uploaded Consciousness Trope, Explained
Specifically, in a scene where Caleb (Domnhall Gleeson) is trying to pull up archived video from Nathan’s (Oscar Isaac) computer, he writes a short Python script to do so. It’s nothing fancy, but it is actual Python code, and when run in python2.7 it spits out the following: ISBN: 9780199226559. That ISBN is for a book by Murray Shanahan called “Embodiment And The Inner Life,” which is about crafting a scientific theory of consciousness. It’s a great little Easter egg from the director.
5Hackers (1995)
Hackersis one of those movies that struggles with representing its characters' hacking in a way that is realistic and also interesting to the audience, and it strikes an unusual middle ground that doesn’t work for everyone. It was one of the pioneers of the idea that when someone is doing important or intense hacking, they type “aggressively” to show as much.
Funny enough, the montage scenes where a character is staring at a screen for hours are a fairly honest depiction of actual hacking. It just isn’t very exciting to watch. Instead,Hackerstried to offset this by designing a visual representation of the hacker’s thought process. It’s not something that worked for everyone. However, where the film is most accurate is in its inclusion of several ideals written in the Hacker Manifesto - also known as “The Conscience of a Hacker” - which are stated by the film’s characters.
4The Fifth Estate (2013)
This shouldn’t be much of a surprise sinceThe Fifth Estateis a semi-fictionalized biopic about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The now infamous website that sought to skirt the mainstream by releasing stolen classified documents to the public is still marred by controversy, but WikiLeaks remains one of the top-end digital watchdogs of the modern era.
Much of what happens in the film takes place after all the hacking has been accomplished, given most of what Assange released to the public was purchased from hackers, rather than acquired by his own hand. It does, however, do a fine job of showing the life of people who work closely alongside hackers, striving to maintain their anonymity while also seeking to acquire their stolen data.
3Who Am I? (2014)
This lesser-known German film may be the most modern hacker film that strives for technical accuracy. Benjamin, an anti-social hacker from Berlin, forms the group CLAY (Clowns Laughing At You) and they begin performing hacks as pranks on the public. Eventually, a rival hacker group called MRX - with whom Benjamin is obsessed - mocks CLAY’s childish endeavors, causing them to ramp up their hacking ventures. They choose to target German Central Intelligence as a response and get themselves labeled as a domestic terrorist group.
While there aren’t a ton of lengthy “hacking scenes” in the film, the ones that are there attempt to be as accurate as possible. More so, the movie tries to be detailed in its depiction of cybersecurity. It was one of the first movies to popularize theuse of a secure VPN,and it is accurate enough that audiences can actually learn a fewreal-world details about cybersecurityfrom watching it.
2Halt And Catch Fire (2014-2017)
This AMC series, which chronicles the exploits and struggles of a small-time computer company at the dawn of the internet in the 1980s, took a different approach to showcase hacking on-screen. The show’s writers chose to focus on reaffirming theintelligence of their charactersand worried less about their audience’s ability to understand the technical aspects of computer programming.
Essentially,Halt and Catch Firedidn’t strive for or shy away from technical accuracy. Some elements are accurate, while others are fictionalized. Instead, the writers chose to rely on their character’s portrayal of these actions to make them believable and focused on making a show about regular people approaching personal problems through the perspective of a hacker.
1Mr. Robot (2015-2019)
A list about realistic on-screen hackers that featuresMr. Robot? No way!This show’s inclusion here should come as no surprise. Not only is it (by far) the most realistic portrayal of hacking ever put on screen, but it’s also the best narrative included on this list. In fact, it transcends even that categorization and is often ranked as one of thebest TV seriesof all time.
The story of the gifted and troubled Elliot Alderson is deeply affecting. His struggles with mental health, drug abuse, and social anxiety translate very clearly to millennial and GenZ viewers. Then there are his personal goals, which he shares with hacktivist group fsociety, who seek to cancel all consumer debt by encrypting the financial records of the world’s largest mega-corporation: EvoCorp.
The methods of both Elliot and fsociety are as realistic as possible. This is due in large part to the presence of several hackers in the writer’s room, who would design hacks around the events in the show, then go out and actually perform the hack in the real world, and use the documentation of their process to influence what the hacks looked like on-screen. That degree of integration is extremely rare, and it’s what setsMr. Robotapart as having the best hacking ever portrayed on film.
