A "reclusive systems analyst" accidentally stumbles on a secret program and gets tangled in a murder plot. A "group of young computer buffs" gets framed for a crime and sets out to prove its innocence. A serial killer stalks his victims online.
Look out: the Net movies are coming. These are the high-concept plot lines for three movie projects now underway: Columbia's The Net, MGM/UA's Hackers, and Disney's f2f. And, of course, everyone has a favourite cast in mind for The Kevin Mitnick Story.
But if past experience is any indication, the Net you see on the big screen will only dimly resemble the one Netheads know and love, live and breathe.
The film industry usually operates on an 18 to 24-month lag behind the rest of the media, so the Internet frenzy that began last year won't surface in the movies until later this autumn. And like virtual reality before it, the Internet will suffer a sea change along the way from real life to celluloid. If you're unhappy about the mainstream media's obsession with cyberporn, credit card theft and interactive marketing, wait till you get a load of the Net according to Hollywood.
A moviemaker typically sees a computer and thinks "plot device." Tiny, powerful and arcane to the average moviegoer, the microchip is the ultimate MacGuffin, the nickname Alfred Hitchcock gave to the object (it hardly mattered what it was) that everyone in a movie was chasing.
This little slip on the keyboard could start a nuclear war (Wargames). This little circuit board could crack any computer security system in the world (Sneakers). This little VR device can turn an idiot into a megalomaniac (Lawnmower Man).
In other words, despite the Internet's trendiness, digital technology - and the informational power it represents in the world - hasn't been explored in movies at all. From hacker adventures like Wargames and Sneakers, to thrillers like Clear and Present Danger and Disclosure, to horror stinkers like Lawnmower Man and Brainscan, Hollywood has presented computers and networks as arenas for the usual kinds of psychokiller plots and paranoid fantasies of gadgetry run amok that we've been seeing for the last 70 years.
The old Frankenstein's monster and sorcerer's apprentice paradigms keep getting recycled. Meanwhile, the world moves on. If the past quarter century has demonstrated anything, it's that the dangers and opportunities inherent in computer technology don't have much to do with the sort of out-of-control, artificially intelligent robots that Hollywood shows seizing power from frail, flesh-and-blood human beings. Instead, both danger and possibility lie in the ability of massively net worked systems to hook together weak, breathing human beings everywhere, transforming society in radically new ways that both thrill and scare us - it's a scenario that might make for some visionary movies, as well.
The era of mainframe computing found its ultimate cinematic expression in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, with HAL 9000, the brainy supercomputer in charge of a spaceship en route to Jupiter. Keeping tabs on his human companions through Cyclopean, red machine-eyes and speaking in unctuously serene tones, HAL embodied the techno fears of the '50s and '60s: infallible computers were going to get bigger and smarter and would develop devious humanoid personalities. Then they'd stop being infallible and turn on us.
HAL was a perfect image of terror when computing meant room-sized IBM irons tended by blue-suited priests. Hal was perhaps most terrifying to audiences because he seemed to have near-human emotions himself and revealed a sort of psychotic despair that somehow we could relate to. Even now, it's eerily touching to hear this computer pleading, serenely but desperately, not to be shut down: "Just what do you think you're doing, Dave? I know everything hasn't been quite right with me. I feel much better now, I really do. Look, Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over." (The trouble was with the crew member's wetware - at least that's the way HAL saw it.)
No movie computer since has matched the resonant originality of HAL. Probably because writers and directors haven't tapped the kind of eerie humanity HAL seemed to have. There have been only forgettably cheesy clones, like the big brain in Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) and versions of PCs that always look a little off, as if an art director decided that an electronic device millions of people use every day needs to be prettier and dumbed-down to be comprehensible. HAL is now more than 25-years-old - in microprocessorland, that's several geological epochs - and Hollywood still hasn't found a credible replacement.
The new Net films aren't likely to change that. A killer using an online account and a password doesn't tell us anything new or interesting; it's just the same old Dial M for Murder formula that's been played out in dozens of movies over the last few decades. Only now it's being played out on AOL.
The important issues raised by globally networked computing - information overload, decentralisation, supermobile marketplaces and the destabilisation of governments - haven't registered on Hollywood's radar. Though a superficial awareness of cyberspace and its implications has begun to penetrate the deepest recesses of movieland decision making, the studios remain surprisingly timid about making films that reflect it in any authentic way.
Maybe it's just that no Hollywood insider has been inspired enough to figure out how to incorporate a digital-age perspective into a movie plot. Or maybe the studios are less eager to make movies open to the full complexities of a technological revolution that's transforming their own backyard along with everyone else's. Considering how broadly the new communications landscape is beginning to reshape the movie business, it's remarkable how little these changes have been reflected in what we see on screen. It's as if the studios hope that, if they just pretend that nothing terribly important is going on, they won't have to adjust the end-product or evolve their art.
In the next couple of years, we can expect no end of stock movie plots ported into cyberspace: we'll get our fill of romantic triangles and monster capers and slasher stories and teen comedies. Hollywood isn't going to rewrite its whole playbook just because a new medium has emerged. The few writers and directors who do take risks, and dare to explore new ways of reflecting the digital revolution, will probably realise great profits and popular acclaim, because their work will resonate with the truth of a changing age.
The outlook isn't totally glum. Stanley Kubrick is working on a movie called AI for release sometime next holiday season, and his track record is awfully good. And Johnny Mnemonic could turn into a big hit.
Mostly, though, we're still waiting for the artists who can capture the experience of networked communications, who can paint Net life in memorable images the way 2001 distilled the early space age or Citizen Kane caught the soul of a newspaper baron. Somehow, the digital era must evolve from a Hollywood backdrop into a creative theme. Screen computers must progress from MacGuffin-hood to metaphor. The world is changing - and the movies risk irrelevance unless they capture what those changes mean.
The first film to do so is probably out there already, in the head or on the hard drive of some ambitious writer-director without a credit to his or her name. Is there a young studio exec with the vision to give such a project the green light?
San Francisco Examiner movie critic Scott Rosenberg (scottros@well.sf.ca.us) writes frequently on digital culture.