Everyone calls while he's watching a film that it's unbelievable or unrealistic. Sometimes that is annoying, other times funny. As an IT-prof you know how good hacking or other computer art should look like. But there are many films that didn't understand that quite well or just run into a creative take.
The evolution in ICT are that fast, that when you go to a movie from ten years ago, the ICT is laughable obsolete. In addition, scriptwriters and directors do not take it so strong to create a realistic portrayal of ICT in movies anyway. Here are seven films that do not comply with reality, but despite they have earned tracks in the genre.
Youth Dream: War Games (1983)
War Games is about a smart kid who is very good with video games. Quite by chance he leaves his computer to connect to a military computer from the U.S. Army and miraculously still recommends the password. Then it appears that the military computer games also holds, but from a slightly more dangerous nature.
While the guy thinks he's a nice game of thermonuclear war, is playing, the U.S. firing almost all their nuclear weapons, because they seem to be attacked by the Russians. After a while, the computer finally understands that a nuclear war can not be won and the boy will become a savior of the planet.
The classic: TRON (1982)
Every self-respecting IT specialist who grew up in the eighties, knows the mother of all ICT fearing film TRON. The computer genius in this film is captured by a supercomputer.
He is beamed through the digital brain and is in a fully digital world where he can not escape. Except when he a super digital engine computer can quickly be in a maze of ones and zeros. This film is cult and B-movie in its purest form.
The new generation: Swordfish (2001)
Swordfish is about a notorious computer hacker who is no longer allowed to touch one because he is too good. A super criminal, persuades him however to slip his fingers once again over the keyboard
He should break a 128-bit encryption within one minute with a gun on his head and will be orally satisfied. All this as job interview. The hacker is immediately employed.
Team sport: Hackers (1995)
Hackers are often portrayed as lonely hermits. In the movie Hackers this is quite different. Hacking is a team sport and that will everyone know. A group of young hackers are tricked, so the authorities think they have planted a virus into an oil tanker to make him sink.
The hackers get caught up in a fight with a master hacker who is better than they are individually, but will lose against the combined forces of the young hackers together. The images of computer screens we get to see around the film, are mostly unrealistic scenes, contain all the colors of the rainbow and cookie monster viruses.
GodMode: The Lawnmower Man (1992)
Stephen King film The Lawnmower Man is about a child in the body of a grown man. He wears his life by the occasional cut grass, until he asked a professor to participate in an experiment with virtual reality. The professor wants human brains to evolve through a virtual reality world.
The subject will become smarter indeed, but a side effect is that he will begin to show megalomaniac traits and prefers the virtual above the real world. The bad computer effects of that time will create a ridiculous unrealistic atmosphere, but this will give the movie a massive cult status.
Published on September 27, 2010 in 
Don't forget 'Live Free of Die Hard'.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337978/