> Hollywood has decided that Nmap is the tool to show whenever hacking scenes

Because it was the tool for when you want anything to do with recon or scanning, especially back in the day, network aspect was a big part (no cloud no api etc) and not that complicated (no vpn no zero trust) so if you managed to scan the network you get a lot of goodies.

It’s better than how “hackers” usually portrayed, and ruining the word for generations.