I'm not sure I have a coherent throughline as I ramble because I was stoned while I watched Hackers for the first time.

I have many thoughts, the first is, I had no idea how queer this movie is. Phreaker's such a fucking twink, would likely ID as Non-Binary with those kinds of outfits in 2024. I could easily see Matthew Lilliard's character as a burnout gay AuDHD Furry looking for a hookup at Furrydelphia. There's a dream sequence where Dade's in a Dress (the terms of him losing a bet he makes with Kate about halfway through the movie). The two guys who host the Hacker TV Show are definitely at least bisexual.

Angelina Jolie is here, but she doesn't look like Angelina Jolie, and I can't put my finger on why. I went "oh yeah, that was her" when the credits rolled. There's a woman that seems to always be in the orbit of the Slimeball Security Guy at Ellington whose role I'm not clear about (His boss? Girlfriend? Not boss but somehow controls funding for his department? She's in on the money-stealing worm I think?) Marc Anthony, the singer, plays a Secret Service Agent and then they give him virtually no screen time. Why pull him for this movie at all? The main character seems kind of uninteresting. For whatever reason, I'm supposed to believe this guy's a social reject when he's conventionally good looking and has huge biceps? I'm not buying it. There's a point where Kate is like "I need to go get some help" and goes to leave a train, in what seems like a move she wants to do by herself, then looks at Dade all pissed-off that he isn't coming with her and goes "you coming or what???". The lighting in this movie is distinctive because it's basically fucking insane. It's really well lit (almost to the point of blowout) in exactly half the frame at nearly all times. The other major lighting decision is that they point a pixelated projection of what's meant to be on the computer screen onto the character's faces frequently. Computer monitors don't work like that, of course, but the effect is memorable and really drives home the aesthetic they're going for. When they're targeting the director of the Hacker Division of the Secret Service as a bet why are they working together, do you not want to win your half of the bet? When Dade reveals he had to hand over a copy of the disk with the garbage file on it to the slimeball security guy from Ellingson (who sweeps in to grab it while skitching on a skateboard by the way) everyone gets rightly furious at him, and then he reveals he was Zero Cool and that's why he was contacted, at which point it no longer matters that he betrayed the group. At the end of the movie, why does he pull out a visor like he's piloting an X-Wing and going after the Death Star? Your computer has a monitor, dipshit, look at it.

This movie makes so many baffling decisions that are, in isolation, really bad ideas, but somehow they all come together & make something greater than the sum of it's parts.

I can tell Mr. Robot is made by people who loved Hackers, but hated how much computer stuff they got wrong. Mr. Robot's not perfect about it, but generally dwells in the realm of accuracy, at least as far as I'm aware. Some stuff like an OpenWRT wlan interface randomly going down just doesn't happen, OpenWRT's claim to fame is being mega-reliable. But that's for the Mr. Robot post, this is the Hackers post, a movie, about Hackers.