25 Years Ago, ‘Hackers’ Introduced Movie Audiences to the Internet

It’s wild to think that the internet has only been a part of the public consciousness for a few decades. When the movieHackershit theaters in September 1995, only 14 percent of Americans had access to the web, according to Pew Research, and the vast majority were on achingly slow dial-up. But the online revolution was just around the corner.

One person who had a pretty prescient idea of what a digitally connected world could mean was screenwriter Rafael Moreu. He’d been paying attention to the nascent world of computer networking since the US government started cracking down on phreakers (telecommunication hackers) in the late 80s, and considered these digital natives the next phase in human evolution.

After meeting and interviewing some of the scene’s luminaries, he began penning a script that would take a convoluted course through Hollywood to the silver screen. Now, 25 years later, let’s run a traceroute on howHackerscame to be and its legacy in the years that followed.

Log On

Moreu’s major link to the hacker world was Mark Abene, who went by the handle Phiber Optik. Abene had been associated with some of the most legendary cyber criminals of the 1980s, and in 1990 his exploits caught up to him when his house was raided by the Secret Service. The government claimed that Abene and his cohorts had crashed AT&T’s network earlier that year, though the company would later admit it was the result of an internal error, not hacking.

Moreu started going to meetups hosted by influential magazine2600, getting to know some of the public faces of the hacker movement. He conducted hours of interviews with these secretive personalities to learn what drew them to illicit access of computer systems. He found that they represented a diverse variety of interests and backgrounds, and built his characters out of composite elements of some of the most notorious digital explorers of the day.

Because he was working with people immersed in the subculture, the technical aspects ofHackerspassed the sniff test. He just needed someone in Hollywood to take a chance on the production. Moreu’s wife had met former Paramount exec Jeff Kleeman at a party, and eventually Moreu worked up the nerve to ask him to read his screenplay.

Kleeman loved it and got Moreu signed with the powerhouse CAA agency. After a game of studio ping-pong that lasted a few years, the project got picked up by MGM / United Artists, who hired director Iain Softley, fresh off of his debutBackbeat. Softley was attracted to the script because of how it fused this bold new cyber-world with a very human story of exploration and curiosity, and he immediately leapt to the challenge of creating a world that seemed like “15 seconds into the future.”

What's Your Handle?

The cast came together quickly. Softley interviewed Jonny Lee Miller for the lead, Dade “Crash Override” Murphy, in London. Then, after seeing a tape he made with Angelina Jolie, Softley cast her as Kate “Acid Burn” Libby.

Having the film anchored by two virtual unknowns was a massive risk for the studio, but they trusted the director’s judgment and let him proceed without any bigger names. Long-time character actor Fisher Stevens was hired to play antagonist “The Plague” and production began in 1994, with the leads spending time with real hackers as well as typing coaches and pro rollerbladers.

The story ofHackersfollows Dade as he finds his tribe of computer enthusiasts. When one of them accidentally downloads a malicious software worm planted in an oil company’s server by a black-hat-hacker-turned-security-expert planning to defraud his employer, it kicks off a cascade of events as the bad guy tries to keep his plan secret and the feds get involved. Along the way, they commit a series of cyber crimes, including ruining the life of a Secret Service agent and mustering a global army of phreaks to take down the bad guy.

Creating a conflict that took place entirely in the abstract world of computer data was a challenge, but the script cleverly worked around it by showing the many real-world applications that hackers had already found for their skills.

创建一个可视化表示的网络空间,Softley didn’t opt for the primitive CGI that was starting to find purchase in films at the time. Instead, he went old-school, having his team create miniatures and models that felt more tangible, coupled with traditional optical animation. The end result delivered a visual vocabulary that would inspire dozens of depictions of the computer world in the future.

Virus Spreads

Hackerswas ahead of its time in multiple ways, but the movie-going audience of 1995 wasn’t ready for it. The film stayed in theaters for only two weeks, received middling reviews, and grossed just $7.5 million on a $20 million budget.

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You can’t completely blame unfamiliarity with the concept forHackers’ commercial failure. Just a few months before, Sandra Bullock'sThe Nethit screens. The thriller cast the actress, then red hot fromSpeed, as a systems analyst who becomes embroiled in a conspiracy involving a backdoor access program to the world’s sensitive databases. It was a much more traditional plot, featuring a plucky heroine and copious chase scenes.

Hackers, on the other hand, seemed almost like a fantasia with its neon color scheme, asymmetrical haircuts, tweaked fashion, and psychedelic vibe. It treated the internet not as a sterile medium for exchanging data, but as an environment with its own aesthetics and culture. The web was something to be feared and distrusted in most of the mainstream fiction dealing with it, but Softley’s movie saw something different—a new place for personal expression and exploration.

One of the most iconic parts of the movie wasn’t originally from Moreu’s pen. At numerous points, characters read from an essay originally titled “The Conscience Of A Hacker” by Loyd “Mentor” Blankenship. Published in the journalPhrack, it positioned the new generation of digital natives as transcending all existing boundaries to become something new:

“We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.”

Twenty-five years later, nobody really remembersThe Net, or similar early internet-adjacent movies. But that quote helped create a fanbase of young people who grew up to code websites, build apps, and transform the internet into that potential-filled wonderland the movie made it out to be. Of all Hollywood’s early attempts to define what the internet could become, this goofy caper hit closest to the mark.

Looking to revisit Hackers? Stream it now onHBO Max(Opens in a new window).