Hackers
Hey, Do You Remember...?
Christopher Schrader
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 3 April 2020
⏱️ 88 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The mid-90s saw a wave of cyber thrillers that seemed fearful and paranoid about the decade's emerging new technology - The Net, Johnny Mnemonic, Disclosure, Virtuosity, etc.
At first glance, Hackers probably seemed like it was just trying to cash-in on that trend. The reality is that had the studio not gotten cold feet, it would have been the first one out of the gate. There's no guarantee that would have helped it fare any better at the box office, but it might have prevented the film from getting lumped in with its more pessimistic contemporaries.
Because that's the key distinction with Hackers - this isn't a warning, it's a celebration. It has a genuine affection for this subculture and wants the audience to be just as excited about it as these characters are. That's a big reason the movie still has a following 25-years-later.
So what's the verdict? An ahead-of-its-time cult classic or a crash & burn? Let's find out.
Topics include: the studio's unexpected support for casting unknown actors in the lead roles, the teen movie tropes that work against one of the larger themes they're exploring, why The Plague never really registers as a credible threat, the point where the film becomes concerned with plot over character, why this all still ultimately works in spite of that, and much more!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, do you remember hackers? |
| 0:06.5 | Hello and welcome to Hey, Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose tinted glasses to see how it holds up. |
| 0:32.0 | I'm Chris. |
| 0:32.7 | I'm Donna. |
| 0:33.5 | And I'm Carlos. |
| 0:34.6 | And today we're revisiting hackers. |
| 0:53.3 | Thank you. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting hackers. Back in 1992, Charlton Heston was one of the shareholders of Time Werner, and at one of the |
| 0:59.3 | company's annual meetings, Heston stood up at the podium and started reciting lyrics from a |
| 1:04.4 | recently released iced tea album called Body Count. He wanted to make sure they understood how |
| 1:10.1 | explicit these songs were and shame the |
| 1:12.5 | company for distributing this material. I'm pretty sure there are still clips of this out there. |
| 1:16.6 | You can probably find it on YouTube if you don't believe me. Now, why am I bringing it up here? |
| 1:21.8 | Because Charlton Heston, matter-of-factly reading the lyrics to edgy hip-hop songs, that, to me, is what a lot of |
| 1:30.1 | these mid-90s cyber thrillers feel like. I know it's an unusual comparison to make, but whether |
| 1:35.8 | it's gangster rap or hackers, there's always a certain amount of fear and panic that surrounds |
| 1:40.5 | an emerging counterculture. And the fear-mongering that a guy like Heston was trying |
| 1:44.9 | to fan the flames of there, that feels like the exact same point of view that a movie like |
| 1:49.8 | The Net was written from. So look, I know it's going to be very easy to poke fun at hackers |
| 1:55.3 | and a lot of the decisions they made about how to present all of this. But here's the single |
| 2:00.4 | biggest difference between this |
| 2:02.0 | movie and similar films from the era. Hackers very much wants to celebrate this subculture. |
| 2:08.4 | It's optimistic about the technology, not afraid of it. A word the filmmakers kept using to |
... |
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