Internet on film: A kludgy relationship

Job@Book of Job
“The Net,” released in July ’95, did OK business ($50 million) but “Hackers,” released in September, did not ($7.5 million), and Hollywood soon stopped making these kinds of movies. The Internet cache was short-lived, and anyway there’s nothing visually exciting about someone sitting at a computer — which is why you get all the gee-whiz graphics in the first place. A general rule with high-tech movies: the more exciting the graphics, the less exciting the protagonists.

But as the Internet became part of our lives it also became part of the lives of our movie characters, and began showing up, with all of our ambivalence about the medium intact, in small, supporting roles.

In “Copycat” (1995), agoraphobic psychologist Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver) uses the Internet as a means of communicating with the outside world (that’s good); but then a serial killer sends her taunting messages and videos via e-mail (that’s bad). In “First Kid” (1996), the titular brat browses the “Kid Internet” and makes online friends in a “snake chatroom” (that’s...um...good, I guess); but the online friend turns out to be a wacko who wants to kidnap him (that’s bad). The fear of what can come through those phone lines and fiber-optic cables is best reflected in a horrible B-flick called “Ghost in the Machine” (1993), in which a computer-savvy serial killer is zapped into electricity and continues killing via the Internet.

Exaggerations in these movies, obvious 10 years hence, abound. Computer programs are invariably interrupted by a bar-shaped window with a flashing red message: INCOMING E-MAIL. E-mail messages are slid into envelopes and float away on wings. When necessary, computers talk. When pressed for time, passwords are easily decipherable. Hackers tend to be fatsos with long greasy hair or nerds with oversized glasses, but if they’re lead characters they suddenly morph into Angelina Jolie or Hugh Jackman. Nice trick.

Errors in these movies, obvious 19 years hence, also abound. The insufferable teen protagonist in  “Ghost in the Machine” tells a friend, “I was just searching around on my computer? I found this great sex program!” That’s some magical computer. Did the sex program come bundled with the operating system or what?

In “Ransom” (1996), CEO Tom Mullen (Mel Gibson) receives a phone call from a subordinate telling him...he has an e-mail. Is that how CEOs worked back then? No wonder so many companies failed. The easiest error to spot is the f’ed up e-mail address. The James Bond thriller “Goldeneye” (1995) knew enough to give its hacker a proper suffix (.edu), but in “The Net” Sandy Bullock sends an e-mail to “jg@gms.wrld.” Even a year later the first “Mission: Impossible” (1996) hasn’t figured it out. At one point super agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) creates the account “Job@Book of Job” and receives an e-mail from “Max@Job 3:14.”

A dot, Ethan. Dot something. We’re waiting on a dot.

Joshua
So did the collision of Hollywood and the Internet lead to the making of any good movies? Yes, but the movie was released before we or the New York Times even knew the term “Internet.” That may be key.

In “WarGames” (1983), Matthew Broderick’s David Lightman owns a TRS-80 monitor. To connect to other computers he has to press his phone into a suction-cup modem. In an attempt to access Protovision, a computer game outfit, he creates a program in which his computer dials every phone number in Protovision’s area code and lets it run until it connects to another computer. When he needs to research a programmer, Dr. Stephen Falken, he actually researches: libraries, card files, microfiche, for God’s sake. This kind of research lent itself to a visual montage. These days he’d just Google “Falken,” which lends itself to nothing. Cue the gee-whiz graphics. Then cue you in the audience going, “That ain’t Google.”

“WarGames,” in other words, had a kind of patience the other Internet movies didn’t. More, its writers, Lawrence Laker and Walter F. Parkes, who would go on to help write 1992’s “Sneakers,” were interested in character. The flirtation between David and Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) is charming, not least because she’s the sexually aggressive one. The two teenagers feel real. Subtle things occur. She traps him between her legs and laughs at his confusion and/or her daring, but nothing comes of it.

After he realizes he hasn’t contacted a computer game company but the NORAD computer, and after the computer calls him back to “finish the game,” he not only takes the phone off the modem, he unplugs it completely and then cradles it in his arms. “WarGames” still works nearly 25 years later because it’s about people, not technology. A suction-cup modem is soon outdated; David Lightman is not.

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