The Wayback Machine: Sandra Bullock’s The Net Still Holds Up

Philip BumpOct 12th, 2009, 5:18 pm

In the first scene, an Undersecretary of Defense walks out of the Supreme Court building (?) and makes a call on his rather large flip phone. (+1) His driver then drives him to a park near the Potomac (and the since-relocated sculpture The Awakening), where he kills himself. There’s no real point to this scene, except that The Net has weird AIDS-related subplots, this being one of them. See, this guy is a homophobe, and the evil hackers changed his medical records so he thinks he has AIDS. Which, in 1995 apparently, means you’re gay. (-3)

Cut to Sandra Bullock at her home in California. We meet her as she is playing a “very dynamic” video game that is “as bloody as it gets.” The kids, her colleague on the speakerphone notes, will “eat it up.” They’re referring to this game:

For those unaware, that’s Wolfenstein 3D, a game that was popular several years prior to this movie. I remember sitting in the theater (yes, I saw The Net in the theater) next to my date (I give myself -40 for that) and thinking how dated the game was, even when the movie was released. (-5)

Bullock’s character finds a virus in the game by hitting the escape key. She warns her colleague that if he hits the escape key, he could wipe out his whole system. (-2) Just so you’re not surprised, that’s how she defeats the evil hackers in the end.

It is worth noting at this point that, as was the case in most movies in the 1990s, all of the computers are Macs. While I’m a Mac guy, I’m also sensible enough to know that professional hackers weren’t working on Mac OS 7 in 1995. (-2) On the plus side, though, the OS is re-created faithfully, even if its capabilities are a bit exaggerated. (+1) And the movie does refrain from projecting-monitor-images-on-the-actor’s-face syndrome. (+1)

Watch Sandra Bullock’s debugging in action.

You’ll notice that there was another segment in that clip – one of Bullock ordering a pizza online. Let me start by saying: (-2). In 1995, all but a lucky few were on dial-up, meaning that the rich graphics and animation of that pizza site were non-existent. Compare, for example, Bullock’s pizza website (Pizza.net) with the Dominos site, two years later. How, exactly, did a mom-and-pop operation manage to nail online ordering so quickly? But more importantly, how is pizza ordering eight years ahead of reality, while gaming is three years behind? (-4)

We next see an extended segment in which Bullock uses a remote to switch a monitor displaying a fishtank to it displaying a fireplace (-2) and has an online chat (+1) in which user comments are read out by the system. (-1) We also learn that Angela’s screen name is Angel. Remember this! The screen goes to screensaver (Fractals! (+2))

NEXT: What’s in that mysterious FedEx package?