I realised in Swordfish that the 'hacking' bit (with the 3D shapes rather than anything real) isn't meant to be literally hacking, but instead emotive of it, for the 98.2% of the audience who doesn't know what actually goes on.

Hackers has a couple scenes like that, I don't have a problem with the device.

But in Swordfish it's completely ancillary to the movie that it's computer hacking that's going on. The goal is money, not any part of any "hacker ethos" or anything.

Just in that they all have unrealistic depictions of hacking.

It's definitely the worst of the three.

Yeah those three movies are not the same when it comes to the hacking.