Borst

Both these movies are two of my favorites. True with Hackers you have to suspend reality but it's a very fun movie with a good cast. Track Down is (very) loosely based on the true story of Kevin Mitnick so I enjoy it and it has a pretty good cast also. But both these dvds are bare bones and I'd love to see a Special Edition of either of these but I'm sure only the first would even have a chance.

Has there even been any rumor about a Hackers SE ?

Mike Adams

I think "Trackdown" had a decent amount of bonus features, but "Hackers" could certainly use an SE. The fact that Angelina has become such a media darling might be very good or very bad for the chances of any revisitation of "Hackers".

Maybe I say that because I prefer "Hackers" over "Trackdown", which is actually out of character for me. I thought I would HATE "Hackers" because of the bad taste left in my mouth by "The Lawnmower Man", and especially "Lawnmower Man 2". Turns out it was easy to ignore the gross exaggerations and creative liberties taken by the filmmakers -- so much so that "Trackdown" seemed kind of boring by comparison. Already saw Donal Logue as the mathematician in Sneakers (based on the guy in Trackdown, by the way), and Skeet Ulrich was okay but I kept seeing him as the hustler kid in "As Good As It Gets". Like I said, I normally eat up reality-based films, but this one I could take or leave. Give me "Hackers" any day. The characters of Dade, Kate, Cereal, Nikon, Joey and Phreak were just so much more fun to watch than Kevin Mitnick and his buddy. Just my opinion of course.

Sean O'Hara

The main problem with Hackers is it was set at the time the movie was made. If they'd set it in some nebulous near-future and removed all references to characters downloading massive files over 28.8k modems, it would've been a perfectly acceptable Sci Fi flick. I mean, the 3d hacking environment is straight out of Neuromancer to begin with.

And I do give the writers some credit -- the hacking may've been pure BS, but the details of the phone phreaking were pretty well done.

Borst

The only bonus features on Track Down is an 8 minute behind the scenes feature. It would be awesome to get a Mitnick commentary but that'll probably never happen because the movie is based on the book Takedown by Tsutomu Shimomura that Mitnick says is no where near close to what happened during his chase and capture (maybe they can make a new better movie based on Mitnicks autobiography that he can start writing in Jan 2007) But I also only have the region 1 dvd that's called Trackdown, I know there is a region 2 (or other regions?) thats called Takedown and is a slightly different cut and maybe that has more bonus features.

Mike Adams

I was actually just posting from memory, and given that I wasn't all that into the movie the 8-minute documentary seemed like a big deal. More than you get on a lot of DVDs these days, especially titles that are out of the mainstream.

I think it's very rare to have the subject of a biopic do a commentary, and didn't the film already have a commentary from the director??? I think we're getting a little spoiled by these 4-disc SEs of one film and 14-disc boxed sets. Unless a DVD was released pre-2000 and/or is a completely barebones disc, I don't think we should expect an SE just for the sake of it.

DVD fans are funny... they complain about double-dipping but at the same time keep crying out for new SEs of existing titles. How 'bout we get some of that VHS-only stuff on DVD instead, huh?

Mike Adams

I disagree. It was pretty plain to me that all the 3D graphics were just there to keep casual viewers interested, and to differentiate the "holy crap" stuff from the usual hacking. The 3D stuff was representative of some massive supercomputer anyway, so they had to do something to show that they hadn't just hacked into the local bank or something. Might have been successfully done differently, but I had no problem with it, even though I fully expected to.

The biggest difference to me, like I said, was the characters. You watch a film with all these "out there" kind of personalities and when it's just some scruffy dude running from the cops it doesn't have the same kind of impact. It wasn't a bad film at all, just that I didn't find it as entertaining. It's like the film "Titanic" vs. a documentary on the Titanic. I'd have probably enjoyed a documentary on Mitnick much more than this biopic. If it was indeed over-dramatized or just highly inaccurate, a spot-on accurate potrayal would have been like watching paint dry.

Sorry if I'm going too far into film critique here and straying from the DVD issue, but discussion often works that way.

By the way... if you want to see a really BAD cyber-movie, try "The Net 2.0". Unbefrickin'lievably BAD!!! Watching it while listening to the commentary is even WORSE, because they actually thought they were making a quality film! Just my opinion, though.

Match

I would like to see a Hackers SE with DTS. Uncut and extended edition if possible.

I wished they added more trailers on the dvd. There's 13 of them.
Hackers Trailers