Hackers (1995)

“Remember, hacking is more than just a crime. It's a survival trait.” — Razor

“This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud.” During a rare quiet moment in Iain Softley’s rambunctious 1995 film Hackers, a Secret Service agent sits in a car on a stakeout, reading a section of The Hacker Manifesto aloud. Written in 1986 by The Mentor, the essay was as fundamental to hacker culture in 1995 as it is today.

It’s also the philosophy that runs through Softley’s hacksploitation flick and cult phenomenon, starring the fresh-faced and soon-to-be-wed Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie. The early moments of the film establish the antagonism of the story with a bang: the Secret Service knocking down the door to arrest eleven-year-old Dade Murphy on charges of hacking. After he has been whisked away in a slow-motion flurry of flashbulbs and credits, we next see Dade in the air, staring down at the narrow streets and wide avenues of Manhattan, gliding towards a new life and one hell of a MacGuffin.

The soundtrack to the scene is the blissful and wordless “Halcyon & on & on” by Orbital, one of the most gorgeous songs of the ’90s and a classic of the era. Propelled by Kirsty Hawkshaw’s ethereal vocals and that unshakable bassline, the track carries Dade and the viewer forward as the familiar forms below shift from city into circuitry. Here it is: the world of the electron and the switch. Cooler than our own. More vibrant. With more rollerblades, pleather, and ugly red books that won’t fit on a shelf. Where you don’t have an identity until you have a handle, man.

For a generation coming of age in the mid-’90s whose moms actually did buy them a ’puter for Christmas, Hackers was an intoxicating elixir. It was a raucous combination of cutting-edge graphics, electrifying soundtrack, flashy cyberpunk costuming, terrific supporting cast, and keen attention to detail, with references to everything from Metropolis to Boy Meets World. Though critics glommed onto its slang-laden dialogue and computational kitsch immediately upon release, its aesthetic endears and the film endures in part because of its sly intermingling of the familiar and the unknown, of past and future tech. It predicted the rise of the Internet, the demand for streaming services, and the importance of open access to information. It tapped into a real counterculture that over the last 20 years has become increasingly sophisticated in both technique and technology.

We may no longer have ubiquitous payphones, floppy disks, or our tapes of The Greatest Zukes Album, but we have the Internet, and therein lies Hackers. It’s in that place where I put that thing that time.

A discussion with Title Designer RICHARD MORRISON.

So it’s been 20 years since Hackers first hit theatres. What’s your relationship with the film been like since then?

It’s one of those films, when I’m teaching and stuff, a lot of youngsters ask about it because it’s obviously turned into a cult film.

Did you have any idea that that’s what would happen?

No, none at all. None of us realized what was going to be happening with computers at that time. We were still doing so much work in analogue.

What was the first meeting about this project like? How…

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