Regarding kung fu movies, Super Eyepatch Wolf said that martial arts are "A way not for the strong to get stronger, but for the weak to rise up." The idea of gaining personal strength is one of the core appeals of kung fu movies.
Wikipedia says one definition of "kung fu" is "any study, learning, or practice that requires patience, energy, and time to complete". In "Everything, everywhere, all at once", a kung fu teacher says that even baking cookies can be kung fu.
Therefore, Hackers is a kung fu movie where the kung fu is hacking. Let's compare using a table:
Kung fu movies | Hackers |
---|---|
Martial arts are a way for disenfranchised people to fight an unjust system. | Hacking is a way for a group of teenagers to fight a villain who has unleashed a broken criminal justice system on them. |
Martial arts are a skill achieved by practice over time, using one's own mind and body. | Hacking is a skill achieved by practice over time, using one's own mind and a computer. |
Martial arts are a tacit knowledge that cannot be taken away from any practitioner, and cannot simply be handed to evildoers like guns or money or political power can. | Hacking is a tacit knowledge that cannot be taken away from any practitioner, and cannot simply be handed to evildoers like guns or money or political power can. |
A skilled martial artist has spiritual or borderline supernatural abilities and can seem to defy gravity | A skilled hacker can perceive and understand things that are invisible to the untrained eye, and can exert strength across the entire world by reaching through computer networks. |
Let me be clear. Hackers is not a realistic depiction of hacking or programming at all. But its enduring appeal is obvious: It depicts the feeling of exercising a well-trained skill, exactly the same as a kung fu movie.