Looking back on '90s movies is always fun, from the height of the cheesy action movie era to how bad some of the CGI was back then. One thing that gets overlooked at times is how goofy these movies got about the internet and computers. While it was new, many movies went full doomsday mode about it.
Internet was going to take over our lives and put them at risk. There was also this fascination with hacking, making it seem more glamorous than it is. Outside of being able to order pizza online, there is little the '90s got right about the computer age.
10 The Thirteenth Floor Thought We'd Be Able To Time Travel Through The Internet
The Thirteenth Floor is a film that's hard to even describe, and at the peak of '90s movies had no idea how the internet and virtual reality worked. It starts with a Douglas Hall being accused of murder and having to travel into a 1937 virtual reality of Los Angeles to uncover who the real murderer is.
Only he finds out he's actually a program, and the 1999 version of Los Angeles he thought was real is virtual as well. The movie then starts to introduce a form of time travel and programs taking over people's bodies.
9 Virtual Reality Gaming Can't Enhance A Person's Intellect Like In Lawnmower Man
The entire concept of Lawnmower Man is off the rails. For whatever reason, the film thought virtual reality would help improve a person's cognitive functions to the point they'd grow smarter. So naturally, they try to prove this point by using it on Jobe Smith, a mentally challenged groundskeeper.
The tests end up working, Jobe grows intelligent beyond comprehension and ends the movie merging with the mainframe to become a cybernetic being. It's a concept that didn't make sense back then and makes even less sense now.
8 Brainscan Involved A Computer Game That Could Mind Control You Into Committing Murder In Reality
Violent games have been talked about in the media for ages, always championed as the cause of violent acts and the reason kids are desensitized to violence. Brainscan took that concept and ran wild with it. Michael Brower gets a new game that's supposed to be the peak of horror, and it ends up being the case as the murder he commits in the game happens in reality.
The game seemingly controls his mind, bringing out his evil side and forces him to commit murders. There's also a demonic-looking being called Trickster who can come out of the television, Ring style.
7 Hacking Into Top Secret Files Isn't The Breeze Films Like Hackers Make It Out To Be
Movies have a bad habit of making it seem like anything in the world can be hacked in a matter of minutes. While nothing is completely safe, top-secret government files are a fair bit harder to get than your average person's computer.
Hackers isn't the only film that made this mistake because at least they made their protagonists a group of skilled hackers rather than an average Joe. It's still silly how easily they can do things, barely running into any roadblocks beyond the police chasing them.
6 Hacking In Hackers Doesn't Transport You Into A World Of Data Skyscrapers
The movie Hackers may as well have been a PSA for how cool hacking was. Not only did all of the characters look like the typical rebellious youth of that era, but the movie made hacking look far more interesting than it is.
In reality, hacking is merely staring at lines of code and lots of typing. The movie made it seem like you'd be zooming through cyberspace with massive skyscrapers of data surrounding you. It made it seem like hackers get transported to a completely different world.
5 Data Files Can't Be Uploaded Into Our Brains Like In Johnny Mnemonic
Johnny Mnemonic is a movie that plays with a lot of ideas that wouldn't be plausible a century in the future, let alone the few decades the movie employed. In the movie's version of 2021, everything is run by a virtual internet, allowing people like Mnemonic to carry information through data chips implanted in their brains.
It's a strange future that obviously didn't come to pass but did introduce a rather funny scene where Johnny had to hack his mind to extract the information.
4 There's No Way To Spin An Image To See The Other side As They Do In Enemy Of The State
As far as '90s tech movies go, Enemy of the State is one of the better movies. It's one of Will Smith's better films, following his character Bobby Dean as he tries to outrun the government who has surveillance all across the world watching him. It's a great Big Brother-style storyline that's anchored by Smith being a very likable character.
That said, it makes the mistake of having scenes that are wrong on many levels. One is their computers having the ability to look at a still image and rotate it to see the other side, something impossible in any century. You can't construct what isn't there.
3 Artificial Intelligence Can't Escape Through Computers Like in Virtuosity
Virtuosity is a film that didn't fully understand how computers and programs worked. Using virtual reality to help train police officers is something that could be a reality, but the way it's done in this movie is ridiculous. Sid 6.7 is a program created from the minds of numerous serial killers.
The implausibility only ramps up further once the program escapes cyberspace and comes into our reality. Needless to say, none of this is possible, and it makes for a silly movie that wastes the talents of two great actors.
2 Hackers Can't Take Over Satellites & Threaten The Entire World Like in Under Siege 2
Hacking is one thing that the '90s could never get right. They either glorified it, making it seem incredibly cool like in Hackers, or they went well beyond the realm of possibilities.
Under Siege 2 is an example of the latter, where a former hacker employed by the government takes control of a super satellite called Grazer One and essentially puts the entire world at risk from the safety of his keyboard. Hackers are capable of a great many things, but threatening the world with military weaponry isn't one of them.
1 There Aren't Top Secret Black Boxes That Allow People To Get Into Any System They Want
Mcguffins aren't a new thing, they've been part of movies in the decade before the '90s, and they haven't disappeared in the present day. At least the '90s had the excuse of thinking a little black box would exist in the future that would give control over everything. That's simply not the case.
There isn't some magical 'I win' button that countries are afraid will fall into the wrong hands, as was the case in the movie Sneakers and others like it.