greyman24

YAY! Can't believe we finally get this movie! Okay. This film, for many years, was the quintessential bad movie for me. Just hearing it referenced in my presence caused me anger. Cross-posted this one on the "Highlander II: The Quickening" thread, more than 2 years ago: One other note that I didn't mention. The tow truck pulling my car out of the snow wound up cracking my windshield.

Came on to say something very similar to martian_bob. What it seems to me (and what Blake Harris seems to have confirmed) is that the scriptwriter (Rafael Moreu) and "hacking consultants" clearly had strong input into the character "types" that were prevalent in hacking culture from the mid-80's to the early 90's, as well as culture and language, but then the set design, costumers and others came in and made it clearly insane. At the time this movie came out, I was shocked at how accurate the personalities and language were to all of the profoundly techie folks I knew and read about via sources like Steven Levy's "Hackers", or Julian Dibbell's "My Tiny Life". Of course, none of them looked like Johnny Lee Miller or Angelina Jolie, and none of them wore thousand-dollar outfits comprised solely of leather. Plus, there were the tiny little touches, like the "Da Vinci" virus instead of "Michelangelo", and the "Gibson" computers. Words and concepts like these were just not seen in mainstream films. And The Net was just silly from this perspective. I knew no one who ordered pizzas online, but I knew several that had tried their hand at phreaking pay phones. Having said that, the mannerisms of Johnny Lee Miller--that jerky way he moved his head that didn't seem quite right, and the somewhat uncomfortable way he couldn't seem to meet peoples' eyes--seemed to fit my experience, as did the silly attempts of Fisher Stevens to seem much more imposing than he was. I loved the film for these things, and the completely unfounded jubilence it exuded. I just tried to ignore all the set design, costuming and flying algorithms.

Yeah. That's why I was surprised that this has never been done. The fact that I can't hear Paul, June and Jason dissect this is a hole in my soul.

It was my freshman year of college and I was broke, but I had several rare blessings. One was a VCR with a couple of tapes--including Highlander. We watched it endlessly. Another was a car. I was one of two people in our group that had one, and it had a full tank of gas. When we heard a sequel to Highlander was coming out, we were all excited, but none of us had any money. 70 miles away in my home town, I worked at a movie theater over vacations and breaks and could get an employee pass for myself and two others, so we decided to do the smart thing--drive the 90 minutes from my college home to see the movie for free. Then we could crash at my mother's place. So we head there. Through a blizzard. Halfway there, my car died. We walked a mile through the snow to the nearest rest stop, and discovered the Thruway Authority turns off the heat in rest stops after a certain time to discourage people sleeping there. We could have gotten something to eat, but everything was closed. Also, we had no money. Many hours later, we got home. We went to see the movie. And you can guess how that went. The whole trip was a complete failure, and wound up costing a ridiculous amount of money. For many years, I refused to acknowledge any Highlander property because of the scars that shitty movie left on me. But at least we got to see People Under the Stairs. That was pretty good.