Aaron Yap examines how cyber thriller Mr. Robot manages to balance captivating storytelling with authentic tech-geekery, and give us a new breed of shuffling television superhero.

Blackhat almost got it right. Released earlier this year, Michael Mann’s moody techno-thriller sought to provide as realistic a portrayal of cyber-terrorism and hacking as possible and proved to be accurate enough that Google’s Security Princess endorsed it.

So while it might not qualify to join the company of those goofy, derided relics of the genre – The Net, Hackers, Swordfish are but a few of Hollywood’s hacking movie embarrassments – the film nevertheless failed to meet the basic requirements of narrative engagement. At worse, it was dull and overly studied, emanating the unmistakable stink of an old man labouring to keep up with the times.

Achieving this balance of captivating storytelling and authentic tech-geekery is an on-going issue with screen hacking which Mr. Robot seems to have – to quote the show itself – successfully “de-bugged”. Developed by Sam Esmail from a script intended for a feature, Mr. Robot has the smarts to appeal beyond the limited spectacle of hacking, that is to say, the inherent visual flatness of the act: a character typing furiously on a computer, us watching on as a bunch of code appear on screen.

Mr Robot. avoids a gimmick that Blackhat is definitely guilty of: virtually transporting us into a computer’s hard-drive, and funneling our perspective through a neon-lit maze of wiring and circuitry, because apparently, this is what happens when hacking occurs. Can anyone relate to that? What this mostly reinforces is that for all the powerful tech savvy that hacking represents, its visual analogs have progressed little since the days of Tron and WarGames.

Mr. Robot realises the key isn’t so much visually representing hacking – that’s not to say the show isn’t visually arresting, it definitely is – but examining what exactly is ticking behind the tech. As a character says, “Our encryption is the real world”. Throughout this stunningly assured first season, the show constantly frames its jargon-heavy dialogue – maybe the most techno-babbly on TV since the underrated data-sifting spy drama Rubicon – against populist themes and an eerily current setting that references everything from Occupy Wall Street to the Ashley Madison hack.

It’s a story about our collective enslavement to social media and capitalist systems. It’s a story about challenging notions of normalcy. It’s a story about a son haunted by the death of his father. It’s a story about the underdog rising up to the untouchable one percenters. In effect, it’s the true 21st century superhero saga that we need more than anything from the Marvel stable.

Funnily enough, Mr. Robot’s primary superpower is extracted from the same age-old, very tech-free source that con artists have always exploited: ourselves. By cultivating an online persona where we willingly share personal data, we invariably place our lives in the crosshairs of someone like the show’s protagonist, New Yorker Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) –meek cybersecurity engineer by day, vigilante hacker by night – who’s able to scrutinise our behaviour in such minutiae that it could be processed into fodder for extortion.

Mr. Robot posits that hacking isn’t just how well you can write code, but also judge character. “I see the worst in people”, says Elliot, whose thorough combing of Facebook for character flaws, like his psychiatrist’s dating history or a dim-witted co-worker’s musical tastes, gives the show a psychological kick that thrills like the prep stages of any caper.