Hacking Hollywood

More than anything else, movies have created the stereotype of the hacker. We look at the films that helped shape the cultural image of hacking.

No doubt you remember Matthew Broderick's portrayal of a hacker in the movie War Games. That film launched hacking as a popular pastime--at least for a specific demographic of teenage males. But it wasn't the first film to feature hacking, or the last.

Movie hackers have had many faces: one-dimensional clowns, nefarious villains, mischievous geniuses, anarchic heroes. And as hackers and their motivations in the real world have changed, so have their counterparts in the movies. In more recent films they're more unrealistic, cartoonier, angrier, and able to perform completely impractical or impossible acts.

One constant among the movies, however, is the depiction of hackers as lone wolves acting independently to thwart (or in some cases, execute) a malevolent scheme. While some hackers have been presented as warriors fighting an epic battle in distant, unfamiliar realms, more often than not the Hollywood hacker is the buffoonish comic relief.

Following is a select list of hacking-related films (some primarily about hacking, others featuring a prominent hacker character), illustrating the evolution of the film industry's portrayal of hackers as it paralleled the public's changing view of hacking.