The kind of liberties most filmmakers take with computers and tech geeks, is sometimes crazy and obscene.

© Endgame Entertainment

Whether you speak of Indian films or those made in Hollywood, most filmmakers often take unnecessary liberties while telling a story, and that’s fine. 

What becomes blood-curdling, is the extent to which they push the envelope, and often take things for granted.

© Prime Video

From insanely crazy hacking sequences to using buzzwords that have no meaning at all, here are 7 things that most filmmakers often get wrong about hacking:

1. Smashing The Keyboard Equals Better Hacking

© Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

How do you tell your audience that a character is a great hacker, should be employed by Google, and Apple and the likes? Show him typing away capriciously fast on a keyboard, almost smashing it to bits in the process. 

In real life, one’s typing speed has got nothing to do with hacking, it's all about breaking down data and finding vulnerabilities in systems.

2. More Applications Windows Open Mean Better Hacking

© 20th Century Fox

Hollywood films, in particular, make this mistake more often than others. 

If you’re a ‘hacker’ you have to show that they are working on multiple windows. Heck, it is even more impressive if they have more than one screen to work on. 

Now, software developers do use multiple screens to work efficiently, but they don’t work on a gazillion applications simultaneously.

3. Hacking Looks Like Video Games

© Sony Pictures Releasing

Consider this scene from Skyfall. It seems that the filmmakers here believe that hacking into a network, is like playing a video game. 

Ever seen a Linux terminal or windows terminal? Well, that’s how trying to hack actually looks like. 

4. Hackers Are Often A One Man Army

© Universal Pictures

Hackers are also often shown to be this nocturnal creature, a lone wolf of sorts who prefers to stay isolated. 

Ever heard of Anonymous? Well, they’re a group of hackers, who often work on projects in teams. And also, why is it that in most Hollywood movies, hackers are usually men? 

5. "Slowing” Hackers Down

© Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

One more treacherous trickery that some filmmakers often resort to is showing experts trying to “slow” hackers down. 

Just consider this - given how often we hear of hackers stealing private information from some of the topmost financial institutions and banks, on a regular basis, if this were to be true, wouldn’t these organisations actively try to set up systems and processes that could actually slow down an attack? 

6. Fancy Graphics & Sounds 

As we said before, hackers usually attack the code, using terminals. Terminals look just like CMD windows, they do not have any fancy graphics. 

All you get while working on a terminal is a black screen with basic text, either in white or green, depending on what sort of a terminal you’re using. 

One of the worst culprits for this is Michael Bay’s 2007 film Transformers where the FBI apparent used sound signals to detect a hack.

7. Hacking By Pointing A Camera

© Marvel Cinemas

This one’s actually our favourite. Some filmmakers have also shown that hackers can point their “specially” modified camera phones at certain devices, like CCTV cameras, servers and other systems, and “hack into them.” 

The best example of such an instance is when Tony Stark hacked into the AV system at a hearing in Iron Man 2. Although that was a joy to watch, such technology just doesn’t exist. That doesn’t mean that filmmakers haven’t used this trope anywhere else.

What do you think of the manner in which hackers are portrayed in movies? Are there any other bizarre ways things that filmmakers have portrayed hackers to be? Let us know in the comments below.

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