Day 296: What Makes a Good Techno-Thriller?

I've been watching a lot of techno-thrillers lately in between writing and reading. What is that you ask? It's really just a fancy term for hacker movies. Well, it's bigger than that, but mostly I think of it as movies and TV where someone uses their malicious computer skills to move the plot along. While watching 'Mr. Robot' (great show by the way) I started thinking about how divided the genre is. Somehow there are really good hacker movies and really bad hacker movies, but almost nothing in between. When I see large divisions, I see an opportunity for some informative analysis. What makes or breaks these movies must be on full display if they have such wild variation in quality, right? Maybe I can learn something from the most cringeworthy of genres.

No genre is spared from the requirement of attention to detail. A good writer knows what they know, and more importantly, knows what they don't know. It's important to steer the lens far, far away from those holes if the story wants to take itself seriously. That's why the thing about bad hacking that makes it most egregious to me is how the characters are invariably portrayed as geniuses only to highlight them doing something nonsensical. The height of conflict in these movies is the hacking. There's no way to obfuscate the main point of your movie, is there? It makes for some brutally difficult scenes, and I don't just mean to watch. To write a technical scene while keeping the tension going and make sure all the import traits of your characters stand out is really hard. That's why the juxtaposition between how the 'hacker' type character is defined and how they actually act can be incredibly jarring. When their genius is supposed to be on full display, it often just proves the writers have no idea what they're actually trying to write.

Here's one of my favorite examples:

The hallmarks of the bad hacker scene are on full display in this scene. Tons of misused jargon, random crap appearing on screen, and most egregious of all, a fundamental misunderstanding of how computers are actually networked together. If they can make random cat gifs appear on the other guys' screen, then they've already been hacked ... but the scene must continue of course. Oh and it all has to happen in real time too, otherwise, how would there be any tension, right?

Wrong. Compare that scene to the opening scene from 'Mr. Robot.'

Ignoring the much better acting, there's a lot that's different here. For one thing, there's not as much jargon for jargon's sake. Eliot, the hacker in this scene, actually uses words to make a point about something. Like how most sentences are supposed to work. The dialogue is written to constantly reinforce each jargon filled statement with something anyone could understand.

"... your wifi was good, I mean you're one of the few spots that has a fiber connection with gigabit speed, it's good."

"I started intercepting on the traffic on your network, that's when I noticed something strange ... and I decided to hack you."

"You're using TOR networking to make the servers anonymous, you made it really hard for anyone to see it. But I saw it. Whoever is in control of the exit nodes is also in control of the traffic, which makes me the one in control."

Why does Eliot speak like this? Well, because he is an expert in his field, he knows all this stuff is esoteric nonsense to a lot of people. He wants to make absolutely sure that Ron knows what's happening to him, and by proxy the viewer gets to find out as well. Compare it to the previous scene where it seems like they're actively trying to confuse you. The writers are just as confused, and want to hide how little they actually understand about the sequence of events. Sometimes a good writer can pull that off by guiding the focus away from the technical details. Instead they're forced to put it all on full display by the nature of the techno-thriller.

That's another thing I love about the opener from 'Mr. Robot,' how everything has been done already. The hacking is not really the focus of the scene at all. It's over. Ron's entire life is already up and he never even realized it was happening until it was far, far too late. This is usually how it goes when someone has their personal data stolen. It lets the scene focus on the characters rather than some random typing on a laptop. The scene builds tension in other ways, through Ron's emotional build up, his false hope when Eliot opens up to him, and the panic that sets in when he realizes nothing will save him. You can see the wheels turning in Ron's head the whole time. How can he escape from this situation? Not by typing faster. Not by spinning up a new server. Not by sending cat pics. He thinks he can save himself by getting to Eliot. Because the thriller in 'techno-thriller' actually has very little to do with the computers, just like how a war movie isn't really about the guns they're shooting, or a racing movie isn't really about the cars they're in, even if that stuff does help keep things interesting. It's about the person on the other side of the tools being used, and the person the tool is being used against, whether it be computer, car, gun, what have you.

That's what ultimately separates the good scenes from the bad ones. Bad scenes hide what happened behind confusing technical details because they don't understand the reality of the situation. Good scenes leverage technical details as flavor to highlight the impact on the person being hacked.

Thank you for reading,

Benjamin Hawley