The Eleventh Annual Mutant Awards: 2008

Michael Bolton from Office Space

Movies and computers are naturally incompatible. Movies are at their best when there are deep, revealing layers for us to explore or bright, flashy whizbangs to for us to gawk at. Computers, in contrast, are generally dull as dishwater—lots of math, code that is all but indecipherable to most of us, and spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets. So what's a film industry to do when such a boring piece of technology becomes an integral part of everyday life? Why, turn it into a god-in-the-box, of course!

Computers in the movies can do literally anything. Turn a Barbie doll in a real woman? No problem! Uplink to hostile alien forces and deliver a computer virus via Windows 95? You got it. Summoning soul-sucking, electric current-riding ghosts because you hack too much? Um, sure. As a result, any time a computer shows up in a movie, it is immediately subject to scrutiny and ridicule by the ever-important 'people who write stuff on the internet' demographic. In short, movie computers have lost all credibility.

People who use movie computers, however, can be pretty frickin cool. Why? Because they can do things like control space lasers and jumpstart the center of the earth! All that absurd stuff that movie computers can do? These are the guys (and gals) that make them do it, and, for most of us, that's enough to earn our respect. Or envy. Whatever.

In the end, however, the recipient for Best Computer Geek didn't require any fancy hacking or digital terrorism. He didn't have to help get the Earth's core spinning again, like Rat (3/1% of the vote) or help control a population of genetically-altered dinosaurs like Dennis Nedry (6.1%). He didn't have to uncover a plot to control the aforementioned space laser like Lazlo Hollyfield (6.6%), or rouse an army of hackers like Kate Libby (8.8%).

He didn't have to avert World War III with tic-tac-toe (David Lightman, 8.8%) or get himself declared The World's Greatest Detective (Batman, 10.1%). There was no matching wits with James Bond (Boris Grishenko, 11%) or fighting against machines who have enslaved the human race (Neo, 11%). He didn't even guide a spaceship in for a crash landing on the stage of a Galaxy Quest convention (Brandon Wheeger, 12.3%)!

To win 22.4% of the vote and take home the coveted Mutie Award for Best Computer Geek, all Michael Bolton had to do was steal some money and beat up a printer. Damn, it feels good to be a gangster.

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