HACK THE PLANET! - Hackers (1995) Movie Review
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Luke Lafreniere joins the podcast to talk about one of his favorite movies ever, Hackers (1995) starring Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie HACKING THE PLANET. And a mining company. And the Secret Service. Lotta stuff gets hacked
The next episode will be: The Master (2012) !
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One thing Luke missed/didn't mention. The reason that the "Gibson" interface looks the way it does is that the entire system is an homage to William Gibson who wrote Neuromancer which is one of the earliest "Cyberpunk" novels and he describes the futuristic computer interface almost exactly like what is in the movie.
Also Unix had a 3d interface like Lex used in Jurassic Park.
“It’s not just the chip, it has a PCI bus.”
“RISC architecture’s gonna change everything.”
“Risk is good.”
I forgot to mention this!
@@LukeLafreniere Did you ever see Takedown? Which was loosely based on Kevin Mitnick? For some reason I have memories that it was for some reason marketed as Hackers 2.
I’d rather live in the hackers universe than the “Metaverse”
we need the hack the planet show like a good meal and long rest.
so ....the same thing
Also, Cereal Killer’s real name in the movie was Emmanuel Goldstein, which was the alias of the editor for the magazine 2600: The Hacker’s Quarterly.
Cool!
Emmanuel Goldstein is the name of the "antagonist" in George Orwell's novel 1984 (and the film adaptation).
We really need more Luke for movie reviews. Really love the fun facts he gave, interested if he gives out fun facts with other types of movies.
Data transfer stories:
In Germany there was a software company in the 80s or early 90s that found out it is cheaper to hide a floppy disk in a train toilet and have it pick up by another person at some station, than to actually let someone make the train ride (or any other form of transportation) and hand it over in person.
Fun fact the "random concert" was the band "Urban Dance Squad". It's a dutch band formed in Amsterdam in 1986. As the story goes (but I'm not sure about the validity since I wasn't there) Rage Against The Machine went to a UDS concert and let's say, got inspired about the direction they wanted their sound to go.
Hackers and war games got me into tech. I probably watch it twice a year. I’m not saying it aged well but damn I love this movie.
You know how I know I'm old? When a few people from a tech/web company discuss common tech terms as ancient history. Some of us were online in the early 90's, BBS games, forever "under construction" websites, the dial-up "noise". All the domains were available! Waiting for 3 minutes while a single picture loaded line by line... We have it so good now!
I was in line at a doctors office last week, and stared in complete shock. Some guy 50+ years old had You've Got Mail as his alert on his cell. Ahh, memories...
On Dade "Zero Cool" Murphy, I entirely get the criticism. But I think there is a lot of misunderstanding of what his character is supposed to be, he's not the "Good Guy" from the beginning, rather he is more of the "Begrudging Hero", the introduction sets him up as a Child Prodigy hacker, and in doing so also tries to establish the core premise that he DIDN'T have a grand motivation rather he was mostly just an incredibly talented and bored individual.
This is a lot of the driving force of the movie, its Dade learning that "Being the best" alone is meaningless and that instead that he needs to use his skills FOR his friends but also that he ISN'T always good enough alone and that others actually can make him BETTER than he is alone. This is of course mirrored by the villain character of "Eugene Belford" who is also a Prodigy in his own right but only acts for his own selfish desires and thinks that everyone else is inferior and that is what leads to his loss.
Dade's entire story is meant to show a sort of realization for the "Moral obligation" that goes along with the skill he has, basically "With great power comes responsibility".
It kind of makes Luke´s hypothetical scenario where Kate is the one that saves the day better I think (maybe, idk). But great observation and insight thanks for sharing your perspective.
I never saw Dade as the guy who needs to learn a lesson about "Being the best" or embracing teamwork but someone learning to reconcile with his past and embrace his true nature as a hacker. He spends so much of the movie trying to prove himself. I always credited any whatever standoffishness he exhibited to the target on his back from that prior conviction.
"Normies just have no idea how computer works"
This is so accurate, I'm just an enthusiasts on computers but no mater what businesses I work in, I always end up being the local IT guy for basic stuff. People just use computers like they use their car, if they push start it must work perfectly otherwise they are totally lost.
And they get lost so often
Mr Robot, even though it was a show, did a pretty great job showing the "real" version of hacking. This movie is totally a classic though!
Some sweet Raspberry Pi moments
I forgot about this movie till just now but it was a big part of my childhood and was one of those weird reasons I was so fascinated with computers and the dark side of them back in the 90s and 00s. Thanks for taking a trip through time for us, guys!
Oh my goodness, this is turning out to be one of the more interesting episodes, thanks to the discussion of instant gratification on the digital space and social media algorithms alone!! Thank you for almost thinking out loud and using each other as a sounding board in the discussion, while sharing the whole thing with us.
One of my dad's friends was involved in the computer visuals, the city scape computer stuff. It was all models and done at a time when the public did not understand computers.
The main cool thing is use of social engineering to hack, that's how real hacks are done.
PS They used a early prototype for Wipeout in the film.
1:34:49 the name of the band in the movie Hackers is Urban Dance Squad, and Riley got his comment completely wrong.
Rage Against the Machine is in fact an off-brand Urban Dance Squad, As UDS was a band years before Rage Against the Machine and both their debut and second albums predates RATM's debut album and their debut album was even #26 in the US Billboard charts.
Lastly, if you listen to UDS' first two albums, you can hear the foundation of the sound in which RATM probably took influence from and perfected and turned into a superior sound, in songs such as Fast Lane from their debut album or Harvey Quinnt from their second album which when you hear, you'd think they have that slight "Rage knock-off" vibe to them until you realize they predate Rage..
p.s. personally I don't like or care for UDS, but RATM is legendary, but it's probably an injustice to those who do like UDS and I'd imagine the band and their fans have to deal with constantly people falsely believing UDS is just a wannabe rage against the machine knock-off band when in reality they've been around longer and it's the other way around.
I still love this movie. Would be excited for y’all to watch Sneakers 🥰
Don't forget how Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) got his BLT drive fried right at the beginning. hahahaha best movie.
Came here for the movie review, stayed for the enthralling conversation about the history and progress of technology of the 90's vs. Now.
This movie made computers Kool for me. Influence me to build my 1st computer at 14. Cyrix 486 DX2 66. I also named my 1st kid “Dade”. Top 10 movies.
More than the bits about the movie, I absolutely loved the unintentional social media discussion tangent. Also having Luke's specific insight was great. He should be on more. Liked those real world hacking comparisons.
I'm just happy to hear him talk more for once, instead of being talked over by Linus, hahaha
@@DizzyBusy yes as much as I admire the guy, Linus does have the tendency to do that often. and Luke is very respectful of his boss.
Love this movie. Super stoked Luke is on this one.
They didn't dig up baud in some obscure lexicon. We used that term into the late 90s. Baud was symbols per second. Depending on the type of transmission, that symbol could have been a single bit, but not necessarily. We stopped using it when we got into kilobits per second. My first modem was a 1200 baud modem. (I absolutely was online in 1995, and had been since the mid 80s.) Then it went up to 9600 baud. Then suddenly we jumped up to 14.4kbps, then 28.8, 33.6, and finally 56k. When I first saw the movie, I wondered how they were supposed to be doing all that over those cradle modems. I don't remember ever seeing one of those that was more than 300 baud. Cradle modems were definitely dated by then.
I remember people referring to the 14.4kbps modems as kilobaud as well.
@@ramavabray Correct. They did say that because they didn't realize the term had changed. So that's when we nerds would come in and start with the "um, actually..."
@@WDCallahan Interesting!
dawg I can listen to Luke talk about hacking endlessly. i have never even heard of this movie untill now, and I'm sold on it. such a good episode. Keep up the great work guys!
"Mess with the Best, Burn Like the Rest"
haven't seen that movie in 20 years but for some weird reason I still remember that line (probably because after the boast the protag gets wrecked (first time its used in movie))
This is one of my first guilty pleasures. While I know it doesn't hold up particularly well, the soundtrack is amazing and I love the overall vibe the movie presents. This movie had a larger impact on the trajectory of my young life than I'd like to admit, and I attribute much of my love of electronic music and networked devices to the many, many times I watched this movie as a teenager. I feel like a lot of the jank that you see in the movie is a result of changes made to secure a PG-13 rating - there are a few obviously edited out f-bombs and probably whole scenes were changed or dropped to prevent getting an R rating. It makes sense, given that everybody I know who likes or liked this movie was a teenager when it first came out, so an R rating would have seriously hindered its chances of becoming a cult classic. I also had a huge crush on Angelina Jolie after this movie and made sure my typing skills were up to snuff, just in case the occasion for a comparison ever presented itself. :) It's a total classic, I watch it once every few years because it holds a special place in my heart, -8 out of 10 on David's scale.
I'd genuinely love to see a directors cut version so that they could do an R-Rated cut because the original audience is all grown up now.
I have wanted a clear laptop since I saw this film. Fisher Stevens was awesome. If you want another one of his awful bad/good movies, My Science Project
i remember reading the hackers manifesto on afterdawn(i think) and thinking "omg this is so cool". Then the movie came out and I was like "whaaaaaaatttt!?!?!?" I can see young luke opening cdroms and pwning machines using netbus and sub7. Now wondering how many times he used the quote "what, did your mom buy you a puter for christmas?"
A rabbit is a real thing. It's another name for a fork bomb which is basically a process that keeps duplicating itself until it takes up all of the memory or the limit on the amount of processes is reached.
Flushot was one of the first commercial antivruses.
The cookie monster virus was a real thing and typing "cookie" would remove it.
Arf Arf is a real virus but I don't remember the specifics of that one.
Also the Director hung out with real hacker groups before making the movie. Side note they went to an underground rave which in the 90s were all age since they didn’t serve booze 😊
This movies needs a directors cut badly.
baud is roughly equivalent to bit.
And yes, in 1995 modems were:
14.4 kbps (~1.75 KB/s)
28.8 kbps (3.5 KB/s)
33.6 kbps (4.1 KB/s)
variable up to 56k (x2 and V.92 standards and line quality)
Pah 28.8, you're a whipper snapper. Try 1200 baud and get back to me ;-)
@@ffsireallydontcare I was too poor prior to that, Mr. Moneybags ;)
@@ffsireallydontcare They would when the screen of text finishes loading.
@@Leo-sd3jt Just don't turn on ANSI colour, then it'll take AGES!!! ;-)
Baud was commonly in use in the 80's. My first modem in 1984 was 300 baud ITT 1181 V.21 modem. At the time baud was translated as bits/second because the transfer rate and the modulation rate were the same. Later, when we started to go to V.24 and above, 1 baud was no longer the same as bits/second because there were more than one carrier wave modulated at the same time so there was more than one transfer channel per modulation.
It was an underground club. Which was big in the 90s in New York, gotta remember New York was NUTS in the 90s. Think the movie Kids.
Sounds weird, but the Secret Service was established in 1865 as a bureau in the Treasury Department to suppress widespread counterfeiting.
That's how they got involved with hacking and the internet. They considered anything online to be Interstate commerce which falls under the secret services purview!
I loved this film when I first saw it in the 90s, and still love it as a blast from the past of how we wished reality was. I was 19 / 20 at Uni studying computing, fascinated with the internet and hacker culture, and followed the news of people like Kevin Mitnick, Lopht etc. Even then we knew much of it wasn't accurate, but it was a fantasy of the things we loved made mainstream. Also on the 28.8kbps modem, in 1995 that was still the fastest available with 33.6kbps coming out in 1996.
We did speak the unit. When you went up from 300Baud (==300bits/s) to 600Baud (==1200bits/s) it was quite something to brag about, after all double data rate transmission was physically impossible and yet these new-fangled imported modems still did it! ;) I think we stopped saying Baud around when V.32 terbo (not a typo) came up because Baud didn't even try to mean anything anymore.
Kind of funny that we still measure network speed in bits per second, not bytes. Somewhere in the late 80s we tried to kickstart the use of "actual payload bytes" per second instead of protocol-level bps to make tech comparable for decision makers, but obviously that didn't catch on.
The sound track was ahead of its time and noted for popularizing electric music to the masses. It was so successful that it spawned 3x soundtrack releases one where is was just Hackers Inspired music. The style n fashions were based off the early rave culture. The band was also a major influence on Rage Against the Machine
The latest version of the soundtrack came out last year. David Gilmour contributed some guitar to it.
@@Leo-sd3jt oh really i need to get a copy, what did they call it
Years later I was renting DVDs and saw Hackers 2:Takedown. It was a completely unrelated film being marketed straight to DVD as part of a Trilogy. I though I saw evidence that another film, Antitrust (2001) with Ryan Phillipe and Tim Robins, was also Marketed as Hackers 3 somewhere (I might be misremembering. I couldn't quickly find a source to back that up.)
I love those movies! I’d love it if you guys cover those two with Luke!
haha as a young dude you go to download a picture with a 14.4 modem .. they woman has aged 5 years by the time the photo gets to the knees..
My dudes, I was using the internet in 95 at the local Internet cafe. 14.4 Baud was badass back then, and even managed multiplayer doom over point to point dial up. God, those were the days.
Gosh Luke made this episode fun, please make him a semi-regular guest!
Dade did not bail out on the competition. the competition was to make the life of this Secret Service guy miserable. And Dade killed him (in the system). Basically he won. There was no way to top that. The Gibson situation has nothing to do with the competition.
When you guys touched on the commonly used passwords, such as GOD, you guys overlooked in the movie or missed talking about, that's how Joey got into the Gibson in the first place..
As during the movie when they were in the club and Phreak tests Joey on the most commonly used passwords, Cerial Killer comes in and tells him, don't forget GOD, as it's what system administrators use, that whole male ego thing, followed by Phreak talking about a righteous hack, such as hacking a Gibson... that's what sets off the chain of events that got the group of hackers into the mess as it resulted in Joey hacking into a Gibson using the password GOD, as we got that cutaway of the Gibson's main screen, and GOD gets typed in (Joey typed it in during his hack) and that's followed by Joey being in the pcb board cyberspace hacker world.
I like the movie because it explains the subculture to the main public. At that time , being online was special , I was still using BBS systems instead of online. 'hacking' was very unknown to people. But the fact there was a whole subculture about it was completely unknown to most of the world. Just like graffiti movies , skate movies , ... They showed a community with its own rules and habits to a world that doesn't know about it. The first part of the movie is sort of about building this up. And yes that didn't age well.
So, Riley has never seen the "card cut thing" in movies before? Dude.
That was a great tangent on the social media stuff, Luke was a great guest!
Luke was great in this episode
Thing about this movie is it’s so memorable, it’s so bad I really want to watch it again. An unintentional cult comedy classic.
It is so weird for me to sit here and listen to these children say they are "so old" while having to look up terms such as baud or sneakernet as if they were ancient sumerian.
YESSSSSSSS I LOVE THIS MOVIE AND I LOVE THIS PODCAST! I never thought I'd see the day where you review this movie! Great to see!
Movie for consideration:
Pump Up the Volume (1990)
Gattaca (1997)
Sidetrack? Don't sweat it, we are here for that. No one is here for the actual review
Yes, "Cut Card" was a thing and they DID cut cards, but not in front of customer.
Hackers should have been a movie about Cereal and his friends.
I grew up at the birth of the information super highway promise! Dial-up was my board and 28.8 was my wave. While HACKERS is atrocious in its technical accuracy, it did allot more in its visual representation of visually showing whats happening in an albeit very stylized way. You gotta put yourself in the context of a 90's person. There was no smartphones, google, youtube are far from a thing, and the concept of two computers connecting to each-other was a difficult thing to imagine to the laymen. I spent 11 years working as a help-desk to an Systems Admin for a online travel company (a big one) inspired by this movie. HACKERS isn't a cult classic because it made fun of that culture, it a cult classic with 90's and (me) 80's kids because it showed the rest of the world a visual peak of something yet understood. I watch this movie at least 3-4 times a year. I LOVE THIS MOVIE, despite its many, many, MANY flaws.
" While HACKERS is atrocious in its technical accuracy, "
I keep seeing this claim but it's not true. It's a lot more accurate than people realize. The interfaces are just glammed up to look entertaining to the audiences. When Acid Burn first messages Zero Cool, you can see the original command line message on top of the monitor screen. Not only would not using the graphical overlays would've made things confusing for audiences, the text wouldn't be readable outside of a movie theatre screen since back then tv resolution was 480 if you were lucky.
You're both right. Many people don't get it. They take the wrong stuff too serious and miss how accurate other stuff is. Yes, there are "visual effects", but they are used to make it more visual for the audience.
I worked in a Wal-mart in 1992 in the electronics department and I had a customer whose credit card came back with some code that required me to keep the card. The customer insisted if I was going to hold on to it, I would need to cut it in front of them. So I did. Later that day, another customer had issues with their credit card and I made a comment that I had to cut one earlier that day. We both chuckled a bit. Two minutes later, I got the same code to keep this card and had to cut it also. Two in one day.
You didn't live thought 80s/90s computer culture, if you had you would know how realistic culturally this movie was.
all ages raves were a thing in the 90's so the club thing never even occurred to me.
Luke was the perfect guest for this review.
...also notice that when Riley and David say where they watched it, he keeps silent. Heh. :P
The soundtrack of Hackers it's a master piece.
Such a good vibe having Luke in the podcast:)
The conversation about hacking is awesome.
Whole reason I used to spend hours on custom boot screens and desktops.
one thing i always wondered about.. in the start of the movie, they cut to old movie/tv clips to show their thoughts... and then they just stop doing it...
Dream On was a 90s HBO show that did TV clips like that. Not sure why the movie just kinda forgets about it though.
The Bear is so good, can’t wait til the next season drops. Yeah, what dude said is accurate, if you’ve ever worked the line it is super stressful. The show did a great job at capturing the anxiety and intensity.
The actual movie is the same length as this podcast.
Riley - Still doesn't understand irony 🤣
*How he couldn't understand the negative rating system is beyond me 😆*
the emphasis of the Hackers Manifesto in this ep begs to be continued with a follow up Sneakers(1992) discussion
I want to say the last time I remember seeing baud used as a measurement for a modem. I think I remember seeing it top out at 3200 or maybe 6400 baud.
in modern use I still see it used for programming microcontrollers through com ports and stuff like that.
One thing I don't think I have seen mentioned is the use of Wipeout in the hacker den. The movie was released on Sept 15, 1995 in the US and Wipeout was released Sept 29,1995. I wonder who had connections/how that happened at either Psygnosis or Sony to get them access to the pre-release footage.
ok wipeout brought up.
if I don't comment as I listen I forget what I wanted to say. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'd love to see you guys do a review of Pump Up The Volume, also from around the same time with Christian Slater as a pirate shock DJ in a boring suburb in Arizona. It's so good.
I always loved how they used the actual hackers manifesto that circulated in the 90s
Love the movie. Possibly my favourite ever. Dont believe irony is needed to account for how good it is. The portrayal of hacking is certainly not literal, which is just as well, but the charachters are great fun and its an exciting action/romance.
The Bear is SUPER stressful, particularly in the first couple of episodes. But (no spoilers) no one needs to worry about how the constant chopping shots resemble pre-gore tension buildup (which was a big part of the stress for me).
They're only intended to add like frenetic energy, not "Jesus are you about to lose a finger?" tension, so it's not really even a minor spoiler to say that none of those shots really involve any injuries - at some point there's a very low stakes "fuck I'm bleeding" moment due to an unnoticed cooking injury, but I don't think the injury happened onscreen - it didn't read as something the audience already knew (but still not as a surprise I theoretically spoiled - the character just like notices, swears, and gets a towel).
Ohh what a coincidence I fall asleep watching these videos too
The thing is that the "Cringiest" and generally worst executed aspects are much the same ones now as they were on release.
I mean even at the time EVERYTHING is more representative of the idealized fantasy of hacking/phreaking as it was through the 80's/early 90's.
Again I don't think even at the time it was trying to be realistic, rather it was attempting to capture the spirit that a lot of "hackers" from that era felt, as though they were a fringe fighting against the Corrupt corporate overlords, only they did so by being better at the same thing that those same "corporate overlords" were using to empower themselves and control others.
If you understand what the movie is trying to do, it IS in many ways a great artistic/stylized representation of the IDEALS of the late 80's hacking scene, even if not the reality of it.
This is the first topic that actually made me watch they're just movies. Thank you guys. Hackers is definitely high up in my top list.
Hackers is a guilty pleasure movie for me on so many levels. I really enjoyed this review. Now I am going to watch another guilty pleasure film, Pirates of Silicon Valley, which was a Turner Network Television made movie that talks about the early years between Microsoft and Apple.
Sneakernet, gives example about Cuba, forgets about North-Korea.
Also the highschool scene was actually recorded at a high school and they had some actual highschoolers play extras for it
Yeah, Stuyvesant High School
I really think the wardrobe and effects people just couldn't foresee high def film scanning tech because I'm pretty sure Angelina Jolie's shirts were not that see through in VHS
The "bye" at the end sounded so familiar from listening to the wan show XD
My actual crime is that of outsmarting you....*chills*
one of my all time favourite movies.... it's sooo good with the quotes....
how many people were online in 1999?
What do you think 1999 was: medieval times?
You've got mail came out in 1998. This was a romcom with Email as a communication technique in it's center. Email and internet was not far from being mainstream in the mid 90s. It was just a different internet. dial in, no nonstop online devices, no internet everywhere. you had internet at home, maybe at work, certainly at university. but it was there. PCs became mainstream for home users. people did not play online like today. it was more about downloads, websites (some kind of knowledge), email, usenet, forums. and with AOL etc. CDs in magazines with 20 hours free internet access, many people went online just to try it out.
Baud is still a valid system of measurement. There is a difference between baud and bit/s. And in the 90s it was important to know that.
Guy Pratt & David Gilmour - Grand Central Station had to be official soundtrack!
Thanks for the effort...
As a fan of what carpool critics was....these new episodes seem like the hosts haven't even fully watched the movies.
Do you think siskel and ebert fell asleep on a sunday afternoon while watching the thing for which they will offer critiques?
Hope things get better!
Yeah, the criticisms of the movie are weird since what they say what the movie should do is exactly what the movie does.
16:00 What are you talking about Luke? I was online in 1985 using BBSes and I already had internet and email in 1992.
I was on the internet in 1995, rocking a super fast 14.4kbps modem!
@Riley & David...would you guys change your rating now that you got some "education" from Luke? Or have little different perspective on the film?
"Negative six out of ten"
Aaaand now I'm turning this off. How can you hate so hard on a classic?
You should have watched about 30 more seconds. He went on to explain that once his rating goes negative it's "so bad it's good."
'00 years in Romania, was 7-15 years old and yes, before 2008 roughly there was a sneaker net for me. Got the games and other stuff from my friends on floppy and CDs.
Never seen the movie (and at this point never intend to...) but loved the discussion of old school tech and hacking culture with Luke. Real trip down memory lane.
the speed typing to hack in older movies is based on opening a CLI on linux (vs using any mouse based interface) and hacking a SSL. Generally you need passwords for that kind of hacking, which is why Lord Nikon using his eidetic (photographic memory) is a thing in the movie.
best luke shot ever that laugh
Mr. Robot next?
Bring the podcast back
When Luke had to explain fequing I felt so old
This movie inspired people at adafruit and Hak5 which I also love!
I give it a 6, but I'll add 3 more for Urban Dance Squad being in it. ;O)-
Phreak gets arrested, and ConAir is the sequel to his story line. Joking aside, Hackers is one of my favorite movies, it's so bad it's good. But I also saw it when it came out, so... heh :D There's so much cool stuff in it, that inspired me and some friends to persue more of IT stuff growing up. There's a lot of hidden real life references like you guys have touched upon here, for sure. For example the cookie virus, it was a real virus where you had to type cookie to be able to use the computer again. And some quite funny things that's often looked over. For example, the PanAm building in the beginning of the movie. It's old stock photo, the building was rebranded to something else (I forgot now what it was) years before the movie was filmed. The frequency that the whistle Captain Crunch used, was 2600 Hz. Which was the tone to call for free back in the day. There's also an old hackerzine with that name. Also all the hacker aliases in the movie are based on real hackers, not just a few of them.
Phreaking (phone hacking), social engineering and dumpster diving was so big back in the day... today dumpster diving just seem to be to get free loot and not to find print outs of passwords and stuff. Social engineering is still a very useful thing though, very big for physical pentests etc. Very cyberpunk dresscode for the hackers...
If you want a better hacker movie, Operation Takedown is recommended. It's based on Kevin Mitnick and what he did.