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'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

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Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#81

Post by [deleted] »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #62
agentgt wrote: post #3

I'm going to play fan boy here. After almost finishing the second season I have to say Mr. Robot is the best TV show I think I have ever watched. Even better than Homeland. The funny thing is if it didn't even involve hacking I would still consider my favorite show. The psychodrama existentialism of the show is so good. The plot is so damn good. The acting is so damn good. Th music, the timing of title screen and the…

Its a decent and sometimes good show but certainly not one of the greats, and has more than a few major flaws. I'll try to minimize spoilers. 1. The plotline is pretty much Fight Club with computers and telegraphs this early on. This is clearly not on purpose as we see hints dropped all the time and the reveal is given with such a flourish. Lets stop defending Esmail here. The reveal is really hamfisted and the show…

[deleted]

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#82

Post by NetStrikeForce »

romanovcode wrote: post #17
agentgt wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is the twist I think it is that twist is purposely obvious (I hope your not thinking your smarter than the show because of that). I mean that twist happens fairly early. S02 has far more truly hidden twists. I mean even in Ex Machina I had some rough idea of what was going to happen in the end but that doesn't make it a bad movie.

Well, OK you've sold me. Gonna watch S02 and rethink my opinion about the show.

Do it. I was so disappointed at the end of S01 that I delayed starting S02... Which was a blessing, so I could binge watch the first 7 episodes :)

S02 has been so much better than S01.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#83

Post by jonknee »

Unklejoe wrote: post #80
jonknee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cliché about dysfunctional people in IT is too much for me. I'm a normal person and I don't have difficulties in dealing with other human beings. TV shows centered around normal people are really boring.

Except Seinfeld, of course.

If only my normal friends were comedians!

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#85

Post by Redoubts »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #37
agentgt wrote: post #3

I'm going to play fan boy here. After almost finishing the second season I have to say Mr. Robot is the best TV show I think I have ever watched. Even better than Homeland. The funny thing is if it didn't even involve hacking I would still consider my favorite show. The psychodrama existentialism of the show is so good. The plot is so damn good. The acting is so damn good. Th music, the timing of title screen and the…

I have a few problems with this show: - The actors are often out of character (or their development isn't clear) and mumble unintelligible sentences targeted at milennials with existential crisis (there are a few rants from the main character that would make 14-year-old-me cringe). - The plot reads a bit like Fight Club fan fiction with some American Psycho and geopolitics bits thrown in. - The pacing could be improv…

Have we even seen a copy of SICP on his desk?

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#87

Post by the_watcher »

Demoneeri wrote: post #44

I've watched S01 but I'm not sure I'll watch S02. The cliché about dysfunctional people in IT is too much for me. I'm a normal person and I don't have difficulties in dealing with other human beings. Also the part about vilifying companies and loving big government is not my cup of tea. At least in Person of Interest both were bad. Last part, vilifying money as a medium of exchange is just absurd. Are they expecting…

Elliott isn't good with people. The owner of the firm is. Like all professions, IT contains people who struggle socially and those who do not.

> Also the part about vilifying companies and loving big government is not my cup of tea.

Watch Season 2 before you make any judgments on who the bad guys actually are.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#88

Post by danso »

enraged_camel wrote: post #33
danso wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's a sideshow, the show even plays the same music as a homage. To me what makes it tolerable is that it accepts the twist as a matter of course and jumps right into other interesting plots, including whatever the fuck is going to happen tonight.

I understand it was a homage. It just didn't make sense to do it as the main twist. I mean, if you're making a movie about an island zoo of dinosaurs, it's OK to pay homage to Jurassic Park using dialogue or the composition of a specific scene. But if the main plot of your movie turns out to be about dinosaurs escaping their zoo... well, that becomes a bit too much, in my opinion.

We'll have to see after tonight's episode, in which the episode seems likely to break in such a way that makes the first season twist look weak in comparison. I'm eager to see how the writing goes, but I'm afraid I'm going to be disappointed as I was with how BSG went off the rails.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#89

Post by pabb »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #62
agentgt wrote: post #3

I'm going to play fan boy here. After almost finishing the second season I have to say Mr. Robot is the best TV show I think I have ever watched. Even better than Homeland. The funny thing is if it didn't even involve hacking I would still consider my favorite show. The psychodrama existentialism of the show is so good. The plot is so damn good. The acting is so damn good. Th music, the timing of title screen and the…

Its a decent and sometimes good show but certainly not one of the greats, and has more than a few major flaws. I'll try to minimize spoilers. 1. The plotline is pretty much Fight Club with computers and telegraphs this early on. This is clearly not on purpose as we see hints dropped all the time and the reveal is given with such a flourish. Lets stop defending Esmail here. The reveal is really hamfisted and the show…

I completely agree. I admit that I'm following season 2 because it's still an enjoyable show, but every single one of those points is valid. At times it feels like Esmail is insulting your intelligence or pandering to extreme cliches (points 8 and 9), all the while entirely ripping Fight Club off. And no, he didn't seek Fight Club for "inspiration". He utterly and completely replicated the plot, but executed it poorly. The laziness of his storytelling is clear when we can pretty much assume all of Elliot's confusion is the result of Mr. Robot intervening on his behalf. Except that mysterious intervention doesn't even appear to be attributable to a well-defined and somewhat believable circumstance (Norton's insomnia in Fight Club). Instead, Elliot has some odd lapse in memory, and what do you know, some unthinkable event has occurred.

It's an entertaining show, but only in the same sense as corny superhero movies. Esmail has been trying to wrangle a sensible plot with an interesting premise, but unfortunately he's not as skilled as his execution implies.

Re: 'Mr. Robot' may be fiction, but its hacking plots are all too real

#90

Post by the_watcher »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #37
agentgt wrote: post #3

I'm going to play fan boy here. After almost finishing the second season I have to say Mr. Robot is the best TV show I think I have ever watched. Even better than Homeland. The funny thing is if it didn't even involve hacking I would still consider my favorite show. The psychodrama existentialism of the show is so good. The plot is so damn good. The acting is so damn good. Th music, the timing of title screen and the…

I have a few problems with this show: - The actors are often out of character (or their development isn't clear) and mumble unintelligible sentences targeted at milennials with existential crisis (there are a few rants from the main character that would make 14-year-old-me cringe). - The plot reads a bit like Fight Club fan fiction with some American Psycho and geopolitics bits thrown in. - The pacing could be improv…

I'm not qualified enough to speak on this conclusively, but I believe the Ruby coding he did was using an actual social engineering tool. Also, he uses Kali Linux.
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