Throughout the last few decades of cinema, data centers have mostly appeared as “server rooms,” or occasionally “server farms” when that room was exceptionally big. For the bulk of their early film appearances, these rows of server racks functioned more or less as plot device/set piece hybrids wherein the protagonists could hack, steal, bypass, or reroute some technobabble MacGuffin while surrounded by rows of blinking boxes. These onscreen centers of yesteryear offered (now quaintly) “futuristic” heist moments, like in Mission: Impossible or Entrapment . These locations were opportunities for product placement, like in Iron Man 2 , which gave the Oracle logo (and Larry Ellison) ample screen time and positive PR as friends of Tony Stark. More often, they were sinister extensions of the antagonist’s master plan, like in Hackers or Skyfall . A quarter of the way through the 21st century, the cinematic data center itself finally became a villain in 2025’s Eddington .…