There are superheroes, and then there are cyberheroes. With regard to members of the former category, you can take your pick. From Batman to the Hulk to Thor, the Marvel and DC universe – and therefore our universe – is filled with them. When it comes to the latter category, the list is a bit harder to generate. Possible qualifiers include Brian Krebs – a noted security expert responsible for the exposure of the Target hack – and, more controversially, people like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. However, never before have these two categories – the super and the cyber – intersected. That is, until now. And they couldn't have merged into a more beautiful visage.
That face belongs to the Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, a man whose lustrous locks, piercing blue eyes and flawlessly proportioned 6 foot 3 inch frame places him high in the running for handsomest man on the planet. But in Michael Mann's Blackhat – a tech thriller whose trailer hit the cybersphere this week – Hemsworth plays, of all things, a hacker. Wait a minute, wait a minute – this is the same guy who plays Thor, right? That hulking mass of otherwordly muscle and charm?
You're forgiven if the term "hacker" is more likely to have you thinking of pasty, skeletal basement-dwellers than a Greek statue like Hemsworth. But Blackhat is, after all, a movie, and movies must have their superheroes, and superheroes must look like Chris Hemsworth. And so now we have Hemsworth playing perhaps the first movie cyberhero in history.
So what exactly is going on in this movie?
OK, so now that we've established that "cyber" and "super" aren't mutually exclusive categories, let's break down the plot of this new movie. The trailer, which unfurls hypnotically in a profusion of computer-generated colors, reveals a world that is far too connected for its own good. In the time of global interconnectedness, the hacker is king, and there is nothing – literally nothing – he can't do. The trailer illustrates this idea by showing an explosion at what appears to be a nuclear power plant. The person who carried it out makes a taunting phone call in which he says, "This isn't about money. This isn't about politics. I can target anyone, anything, anywhere."
This movie is certainly tapping into the zeitgeist, and the most frightening thing about it is that it's not particularly far-fetched. In a world rife with cybercrime, we've become increasingly accustomed to virtual criminal attacks that are mounting in severity. Between the massive credit card hacks at places like Target and Home Depot, most Americans know what it's like to have their payment data compromised by a remote, unseen force who operates from the shadows. But at this juncture, cybercrime has not yet reached the level of certifiable terror depicted in the film. Is Blackhat to be taken as a sign of what's to come? Unfortunately, all signs point to yes.
"Much of America's most sensitive data is stored on computers," FBI director James B. Comey said in a statement before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in November 2013. "We are losing data, money and ideas through cyber intrusions. This threatens innovation and, as citizens, we are also increasingly vulnerable to losing our personal information. That is why we anticipate that in the future, resources devoted to cyber-based threats will equal or even eclipse the resources devoted to non-cyber based terrorist threats."
So there you have it, folks. The cybercriminal sphere is only going more powerful, brutal and ambitious in its incursions. Who knows what the future holds? Of course, if you don't want to think about the future, you can always look at Chris Hemsworth's cheekbones instead.
