WarGames (1983)

Fun movie.  I’ve always liked it.

Awesome film. For a kid growing up then it was fascinating. I was addicted to arcade and home video games back then (Atari of course) and it seemed like anything would or could be possible with computers back then. We had an Apple 2 but I never had a set up like David’s. The various scenarios that WOPR played out towards the end were amazing, my brother and I used to try to stop the tape so we could see what the names were. “Turkish Escalation” and “Iceland Maximum” among others.

WarGames (1983), directed by John Badham.

A high school hacker looking for unreleased computer games mistakenly finds a backdoor into North American missile defense. He starts a game of "Global Thermonuclear War" which becomes pretty tense pretty quickly. Realizing his mistake he tries to shut it down, but the computer takes its games seriously. Unstoppable countdown to WW3...

It's slickly written, moves along nicely and is still a lot of fun, if rather light. Given recent history, the notion that military computers can be hacked by kids is more believable now than it was at the time.

The Cold War still had years to run when this wry teen-romance entry in the gut-wrenching-threat-of-nuclear-war genre was made, which is pretty bold. I'm not sure they ever got credit for that. Adding a more adult, emotional dimension: the grief and cynicism of Dr Falken, with the war computer as a surrogate for his lost son.

The second climax in the war room when the computer plays hundreds of nuclear war simulations, looking for a solution, is really stunning. I always thought those big screens were done as post-production opticals, but no: each screen had a film projector behind it.

Second film for both Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. I always like seeing John Wood (Dr Falken) and Barry Corbin (General Beringer).

Misc notes:

• Apple and IBM had begun mass-market home PCs by the time this film was made, but the kid has older generation gear: that brief silver age when cheap computers were kit-based and you needed considerable skills to get them working.
• See his acoustic coupler? Nobody misses those. Likewise for the 8" floppies: their drives sounded like a piano rolling down the stairs.
• An office gag we used to do: point your finger and say, "Turn the key, sir! That's not the procedure! Turn the key, sir!"
• The kid gives the computer a voice, but we continue to hear it even when we are away from his gear. Maybe we are supposed to understand this is imaginary, not audible to the characters. The writers said "The audience won't care".
• The voice is an electric Dr Falken, a nice touch.
• Sparks flying out of stressed computers is a bit of 1960s dumbness.

Available on Blu-ray. A pleasant commentary track with the director and two writers gives production details and good insight into the overall design of the screenplay. Made in 1998 it is a bit of a time capsule itself: their comments on dated technology reference their own now-dated technology.

Great Film...



I was a young kid at the time...

It holds a special place in my heart for me... My Dad was in the Air Force at the time, and he had been a missile crew member in the 1970s. He did, or never had to do (Thankfully), what those guys were supposed to do at the beginning of the film... Since missile silo's were off-limits to civilians, It's neat to watch the film, and see what his job was.


With the exception of the depicted computer and communications tech, circa 1983... I think the film's messages still hold up today...

I just wish countries like North Korea, would realize that having Nuclear Weapons, isn't a desirable thing... Nuclear Holocaust = "Winner: None".


Also, I still believe in the idea of "Keeping The Men In The Loop"... The thought of an A.I., deciding my fate, scares me to death... We don't need "Terminators" deciding such things...

That fact that we seem to be getting closer to living a life like that every day, is something we should not let happen.

Any thriller is immediately turned into a comedy when Matthew Broderick is involved.

I loved it when it came out. It would probably seem very dated now. I should watch it again some time.

I am scratching my head about the release date. I had a friend around that time who was in the habit of telling tall tales. One of them was that he had gone on holidays with his family to California and that he had been spotted by a talent agent and signed up with a Hollywood studio to star in an upcoming big-budget sci-fi movie. Another one was that he had inadvertently hacked into the Pentagon and was now afraid that they would come after him – pretty much the plot of “War Games”. The naïve teenager that I was believed him! The thing is, we were only in the same class in 1981/82. I never saw him again after that. Later, whenever I remembered this story I always assumed that his “inspiration” was War Games, but if the movie only came out in 1983 that couldn’t have been the case (unless of course he got to read the script during his very brief Hollywood career).

Sadly, this lyrical version of the ending theme music wasn't included in the film.

No (though that's interesting too). 

I mean this:


Full link here:


www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24280831