WarGames Movie 1983 Review

This article is about the 1983 film. For the 2002 British animated short film, see simulation (film). For the 1966 BBC television film which also relates to the subject of nuclear war, see The simulation . For other uses, see simulation (disambiguation).

     WarGames may be a 1983 American conflict fantasy techno-thriller film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film stars Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, and Ally Sheedy. The film follows David Lightman (Broderick), a young hacker who unwittingly accesses a us military supercomputer programmed to predict and execute nuclear war against the Soviet Union.

    WarGames was a critical and box-office success, costing $12 million and grossing $79 million, after five months, within the us and Canada. The influential film was nominated for 3 Academy Awards. A sequel, WarGames: The Dead Code, was released direct-to-video in 2008.

    During a surprise drill of a nuclear attack, many us Air Force Strategic Missile Wing controllers prove unwilling to show the key required to launch a missile strike. Such refusals convince John McKittrick and other systems engineers at NORAD that missile launch control centers must be automated, without human intervention. Control is given to a NORAD supercomputer referred to as WOPR (War Operation Plan Response, pronounced "whopper"), programmed to continuously run war simulations and learn over time.

    David Lightman, a bright but unmotivated Seattle highschool student and hacker, uses his IMSAI 8080 computer to access the varsity district's computing system and alter his grades. He does an equivalent for his friend and classmate Jennifer Mack. Later, while war dialing numbers in Sunnyvale, California, to seek out a video game company, he connects with a system that doesn't identify itself. posing for games, he finds an inventory that starts with chess, checkers, backgammon, and poker, also as titles like "Theaterwide Biotoxic and Chemical Warfare" and "Global Thermonuclear War", but cannot proceed further. Two hacker friends explain the concept of a backdoor password and suggest tracking down the Falken referenced in "Falken's Maze", the primary game listed. David discovers that Stephen Falken was an early artificial-intelligence researcher, and David guesses correctly that Falken's dead son's name (Joshua) is that the password.

    Not knowing that the Sunnyvale telephone number connects to WOPR at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, David starts a game of worldwide Thermonuclear War, playing because the Soviet Union and starts targeting American cities. the pc starts a simulation that briefly convinces the military personnel at NORAD that actual Soviet nuclear missiles are inbound. While they defuse things , WOPR nonetheless continues the simulation to trigger the scenario and win the sport , because it doesn't understand the difference between reality and simulation. It continuously feeds false data like Soviet bomber incursions and submarine deployments to NORAD, pushing them into increasing the DEFCON level and toward a retaliation which will start war III.

    David learns truth nature of his actions from a information , and FBI special agents arrest him and take him to NORAD. He realizes that WOPR is behind the NORAD alerts, but because he fails to convince McKittrick, who suspects David is functioning for the Soviets, he faces espionage charges. David escapes NORAD by joining a tourist group and, with Jennifer's help, travels to the Oregon island where Falken lives under the alias "Robert Hume". David and Jennifer find that Falken has become despondent and believes that nuclear war is inevitable, which it's as futile as a game of tic-tac-toe between two experienced players. The teenagers convince Falken that he should return to NORAD to prevent WOPR.

    WOPR stages a huge Soviet strike with many missiles, submarines, and bombers. Believing the attack to be genuine, NORAD prepares to retaliate. Falken, David, and Jennifer convince military officials to cancel the second strike and last out the attack. When the attacked bases report back that they're unharmed and everything's fine, NORAD prepares to cancel the retaliatory second strike. WOPR tries to launch the missiles itself employing a brute-force attack to get the launch codes. Without humans within the control centers as a safeguard using the two-man key rule, the pc will trigger a mass launch. All attempts to log in and order WOPR to cancel the countdown fail. Disconnecting the pc is discussed and dismissed, as a failsafe will launch all weapons if the pc is disabled, acting sort of a fail-deadly ignition to WWIII.

    Falken and David direct the pc to play tic-tac-toe against itself. This leads to an extended string of draws, forcing the pc to find out the concept of futility and no-win scenarios. WOPR obtains the launch codes, but before launching, it cycles through all the nuclear war scenarios it's devised, finding that all of them end in draws also . Having discovered the concept of mutual assured destruction ("WINNER: NONE"), the pc tells Falken that it's concluded that nuclear war is "a strange game" during which "the only winning move isn't to play." WOPR relinquishes control of NORAD and therefore the missiles and offers to play "a nice game of chess".

    Development on WarGames began in 1979, when writers Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker developed a thought for a script called The Genius, about "a dying scientist and therefore the only person within the world who understands him—a rebellious kid who's too smart for his own good". Lasker was inspired by a television special presented by Peter Ustinov on several geniuses including Hawking . Lasker said, "I found the predicament Hawking was in fascinating—that he might at some point find out the unified theory and not be ready to tell anyone, due to his progressive ALS. So there was this concept that he'd need a successor. And who would that be? Maybe this kid, a delinquent whose problem was that no-one realized he was too smart for his environment." The concept of computers and hacking as a part of the film wasn't yet present.

    The Genius began its transformation into WarGames when Parkes and Lasker met Peter Schwartz from the Stanford Research Institute. "There was a replacement subculture of extremely bright kids developing into what would become referred to as hackers," said Schwartz. Schwartz made the connection between youth, computers, gaming, and therefore the military. Parkes and Lasker also met with computer-security expert Willis Ware of RAND Corporation, who assured them that even a secure military computer may need remote access so users could work from home on weekends, encouraging the screenwriters to continue with the project.

    Parkes and Lasker came up with several different military-themed plotlines before the ultimate story. One version of the script had an early version of WOPR named "Uncle Ollie", or Omnipresent Laser Interceptor (OLI), a space-based defensive laser travel by an intelligent program, but this concept was discarded because it had been too speculative. Director John Badham coined the name "WOPR", feeling that the name of NORAD's Single Integrated Operational Plan was "boring, and told you nothing". The name "WOPR" played off the Whopper hamburger, and a general sense of something going "whop".

    The WOPR computer as seen within the film was a prop created in Culver City, California, by members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 44. it had been designed by production designer (credited as visual consultant) Geoffrey Kirkland supported some pictures he had of early tabulating machines, and metal furniture, consoles, and cabinets used particularly within the U.S. military within the 1940s and '50s. They were adapted in drawings and ideas by stage director Angelo P. Graham. WOPR was operated by a crewmember sitting inside the pc , entering commands into an Apple II at the director's instruction. The prop was choppy for scrap after production was completed. a reproduction was built for a 2006 AT&T commercial.

CAST

Matthew Broderick as David Lightman

Dabney Coleman as Dr. John McKittrick

John Wood as Dr. Stephen Falken a.k.a. 

Robert Hume and the voice of Joshua/WOPR

Ally Sheedy as Jennifer Mack

Barry Corbin as General Jack Beringer

Juanin Clay as Patricia Healy

Dennis Lipscomb as Watson

Joe Dorsey as Col. Joe Conley

Michael Ensign as Beringer's assistant

William Bogert as Mr. Lightman

Susan Davis as Mrs. Lightman

Irving Metzman as Richter

John Spencer as Capt. Jerry Lawson

Michael Madsen as Lt. Steve Phelps

Alan Blumenfeld as Mr. Liggett

Maury Chaykin as Jim Sting

Eddie Deezen as Malvin

Art LaFleur as Guard (Sgt. Ginzberg)

Stack Pierce as Airman

Stephen Lee as Sgt. Schneider

Jesse Goins as Sergeant

James Ackerman as Joshua Falken

James Tolkan as FBI Agent George Wigan