It’s done the way it’s done because most people don’t know the difference or much less give a shit anyway and all the research you suggest costs money and last but not least, it doesn’t usually affect the story line of the movie. Besides, are you trying to tell us that to hack a high security system a dialogue box that says “type in super secret password here” doesn’t really show up?

@ k00pa:
That video gave me near fatal facepalm attack. 1337-speak made me go – wtf? “Yeah I can listen to them, but only in 1337-speak.”
@ Luke Maciak:
Yeah Hackers is without doubt best movie involving hackers.

@ road:
Never thought about it that way, but now it makes sense. Damn you, now I’ll be going crazy too.

But the biggest annoyance in any movie ever, was Independence day. Lets send a virus to spaceship from another galaxy, because surely all universe is running windows 95.

Nice post. This reminds me of something that’s been driving me crazy for about 20 years: Every time somebody is talking on the phone and the person on the other end hangs up, it goes strait to a dial-tone. This is so common in movies that you usually don’t even notice it, but if you think about it, THIS IS NOT WHAT HAPPENS. What happens when the person you’re speaking to hangs up is that it goes ‘click’ and then silence. NO DIAL TONE.

I don’t understand why every film-maker does this. Maybe the phones in Hollywood work differently. But as you said, it’s no harder to make it realistic than to make it unrealistic!!! The only thing it does is snap my attention away from the scene for a moment and make me think about how it’s not a real phone. Drives me crazy.

Rant over.

i think the biggest problem is Hollywood’s obsession with “epic” scenes, hackers might be able to do a lot of things but none of them will set anything on fire so they will keep portraying them like ridiculous underwear models punching keyboards Zoolander style while blowing up huge alien spaceships running windows me.

I’d agree with you, but I think presenting hacking the “real” way would confuse viewers more than anything else. The audience has been used to these weird 3D animations that don’t make sense or serve any purpose, and not just for hacking, but for anything computer related. Every computer in TV shows/movies has its own custom operating system that doesn’t resemble anything real. When a tech wants to prove his point, he can instantly fires up a 3D animation of the scene and make adjustments in real time.

Showing things any different would look either dull or confusing to people who wouldn’t recognize what’s real and what’s not anyway. About the whole “show actors instead of screens” thing, I think they already do that. Hacking scenes I’ve seen rarely focused on the computer screens for more than a minute and usually ended in a victory dance, or at least a smile of satisfaction. Having a big green “ACCESS GRANTED” flashing on a computer screen in the background just serves to give this smile some (more) context.

Agree on the character thing. Case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXW02XmBGQw (I might have uttered “I am hInvincibol”(sic) a time or two myself after that).

I wonder if all the worlds fencers are up and about raving and ranting, complaining about every swordfighting scene ever made… ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flynning )

@ tash:

Ok, I admit – I had moments when I would do some of the stuff he did while coding. Admittedly not as ostentatiously – but I’ve been known to throw my hands up in the air, and do a little victory dance upon fixing some annoying bug that I have been tracking down for the last 2 hours. Or go “come on, come on, comeoncomeoncomeon!” while watching something compile.

But yeah.

@ k00pa:

Girl: I speak 1337.
Guy:That’s so hot!
Me: ಠ_ಠ

Seriously!

I think while Holywood movies miss the point entirely, some good old TV shows get it quite right. I love how it is done in Criminal Minds, for instance. Of course, it is sexed up a bit (way too many screens and too much fast typing too), but in general, they show fairly normal stuff like googling things, breaking passwords with small utilities and so on. And most of the time, they show the face of the IT girl doing it (can’t remember her name) and not her redundant screens.

@ Craig A. Betts:

Antitrust lost me when they revealed that the Bill Gates analogue was using hidden cameras to steal open source code. That made me face palm so hard I blacked out and I don’t even know how the movie ended. :P

@ Adrian:

True, but isn’t the “awesomeness” of hacking more about the results rather than the process? I mean, whether you show a character typing commands into a terminal or playing 3d Tetris should be irrelevant as long as something cool happens as a result.

What makes hackers cool is the image they project themselves – not the actual process, which on the screen is incomprehensible anyway.

Btw, the only “hacker” movie that does not annoy me that much is Hackers which ironically has all the silly video-game like hacking sequences I love to complain about. But, they did get a lot of things right – they got the jargon down for the most part, they show real books and real techniques (dumpster diving, social engineering, visiting the office dressed as a repairman and writing down passwords from sticky notes attached to monitors).

Oh and it did have young Angelina Jolie.

I agree.

It can’t be so hard to add some kind of realism to the computer systems.

But this is so far my biggest /facepalm moment I have had: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rGTXHvPCQ

The 1337-speak part on it is just so dump…