I’ve always had a soft spot for Superman III (1983), the third film in the original franchise starring Christopher Reeve as Superman. While it’s generally regarded as being below the standard of the first two films, it has some great moments; for example, the scene where Evil Superman fights Clark Kent.
In Superman III, Richard Pryor plays Gus Gorman, a man with no known computing skills whatsoever, who — when his social security is stopped — turns to programming out of desperation.
After completing a programming course (presumably in BASIC or COBOL), Gus soon lands a job at Webscoe Industries, unaware that he’s working for Evil Robert Vaughn. He stays back after work one night, to hack into the work computers and award himself a few extra expenses. But what possible lines of programming genius will it require? What would you need to type in to override all the ruthless security of the Webscoe Payroll Division?
Err…it’s a good job he did that course.
After receiving a cheque for $85,789.90 and turning up to work in a new Ferrari, it all goes rather downhill: Evil Robert Vaughn coerces him into hacking the Vulcan weather satellite, as well as manipulating the global financial system, damaging the world’s oil supplies by moving every tanker into roughly the same place and replicating kryptonite by tracking down unknown elements in outer space. With the programming educational element of the film done by this point, Gus proposes building a “supercomputer”, eventually leading to the creation of a Robocop prototype.
Read the full Den of Geek analysis of Superman III‘s contribution to the teaching of programming; and remember: all of this computer mayhem came from a man who answered an advert on the back of a book of matches.
Digital, Data & Policy 
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