WarGames is a 1983 American Cold War science-fiction 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, a young hacker who unwittingly accesses WOPR, a United States
military supercomputer programmed to predict possible outcomes of nuclear war.
Lightman gets WOPR to run a nuclear war simulation, originally believing it to be a computer game.
The simulation causes a national nuclear missile scare and nearly starts World War III.
The film was a box office success, costing US$12 million, and grossing $79,567,667 after
five months in the United States and Canada.
The film was nominated for three Academy Awards.
A sequel, WarGames: The Dead Code, was released direct to DVD on July 29, 2008.
Plot During a surprise drill of a nuclear attack,
many United States Air Force Strategic Missile Wing missileers prove unwilling to turn a
required key to launch a missile strike.
Such refusals convince John McKittrick and other systems engineers at NORAD that command
of missile silos must be maintained through automation, without human intervention.
Control is given to a NORAD supercomputer named WOPR, programmed to continuously run
military simulations and learn over time.
David Lightman is a bright but unmotivated Seattle high school student and hacker.
After receiving a failing grade in school, he uses his IMSAI 8080 microcomputer to hack
into the district's computer system.
He then changes his grade and does the same for his friend and classmate Jennifer Mack.
Later, while dialing every number in Sunnyvale, California to find a set of forthcoming computer
games, a computer that does not identify itself intrigues David.
On the computer he finds a list of games, starting with general strategy games like
chess, checkers, backgammon, and poker and then progressing to titles like "Theaterwide
Biotoxic and Chemical Warfare" and "Global Thermonuclear War", but cannot proceed further.
Two of his hacker friends explain the concept of a backdoor password and suggest tracking
down the Falken referenced in "Falken's Maze", the first game listed.
David discovers that Stephen Falken is an early artificial intelligence researcher,
and guesses correctly that his dead son's name "Joshua" is the backdoor password.
David does not know that the Sunnyvale phone number connects to WOPR, or "Joshua", at Cheyenne
Mountain.
He starts a game of Global Thermonuclear War, playing as the Soviet Union.
The computer starts a simulation that briefly convinces the military personnel at NORAD
that actual Soviet nuclear missiles are inbound.
While they defuse the situation, Joshua nonetheless continues the simulation to trigger the scenario
and win the game.
It continuously feeds false data such as Soviet bomber incursions and submarine deployments
to the humans at NORAD, pushing them into lowering the DEFCON level and toward a retaliation
that will start World War III.
David learns the true nature of his actions from a news broadcast, and the FBI arrests
him and takes him to NORAD.
He realizes that Joshua is behind the NORAD alerts but fails to convince McKittrick and
faces imprisonment.
David escapes NORAD by joining a tourist group and, with Jennifer's help, travels to the
Oregon island where the widowed Falken now lives.
David and Jennifer find that Falken has become despondent and believes that nuclear war is
inevitable.
The teenagers convince Falken that he should return to NORAD to stop Joshua.
The computer stages a massive Soviet first strike with hundreds of 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
ride out the non-existent attack.
Joshua tries to launch the missiles itself, however, using a brute force attack to obtain
the launch code.
Without humans in the silos as a safeguard, the computer will trigger a mass launch.
All attempts to log in and order Joshua to cancel the countdown fail, and all weapons
will launch if the computer is disabled.
Instead, Falken and David direct the computer to play tic-tac-toe against itself.
When both players play flawlessly, tic-tac-toe games always end in a draw.
This results in a long string of ties, forcing the computer to learn the concept of an unwinnable
game.
Joshua obtains the missile code but before launching, it cycles through all the nuclear
war scenarios it has devised, finding they too all result in stalemates.
Having discovered the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, the computer concludes
that nuclear warfare is "a strange game" in which "the only winning move is not to play."
Joshua then offers to play "a nice game of chess", and relinquishes control of NORAD
and the missiles.
Cast Matthew Broderick as David Lightman
Dabney Coleman as Dr. John McKittrick John Wood as Dr. Stephen Falken and the voice
of Joshua/WOPR Ally Sheedy as Jennifer Mack
Barry Corbin as General Jack Beringer Juanin Clay as Pat Healy
Dennis Lipscomb as Watson Joe Dorsey as Colonel Joe Conley
Michael Ensign as Beringer's Assistant John Spencer as Capt.
Jerry Lawson Michael Madsen as 1st Lt. Steve Phelps
Alan Blumenfeld as Mr. Liggett Maury Chaykin as Jim Sting
Eddie Deezen as Malvin Art LaFleur as Guard Gainsburg
Stack Pierce as Airman Stephen Lee as Sgt.
Schneider Jesse D. Goins as Sergeant
James Ackerman as Joshua Falken Production
Development Development on WarGames began in 1979, when
writers Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker developed an idea for a script called The
Genius, about "a dying scientist and the only person in 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 Stephen Hawking.
Lasker said "I found the predicament Hawking was in fascinating – that he might one day
figure out the unified field theory and not be able to tell anyone, because of his progressive
ALS.
So there was this idea that he'd need a successor.
And who would that be?
Maybe this kid, a juvenile delinquent whose problem was that nobody realized he was too
smart for his environment."
The concept of computers and hacking as part of the film was not yet present.
The Genius began its transformation into WarGames when Parkes and Lasker met Peter Schwartz
from the Stanford Research Institute.
"There was a new subculture of extremely bright kids developing into what would become known
as hackers," said Schwartz.
Schwartz made the connection between youth, computers, gaming, and the military.
Parkes and Lasker came up with several different military-themed plotlines prior to the final
story.
One version of the script had an early version of WOPR named "Uncle Ollie", or OLI, a space-based
defensive laser run by an intelligent program, but this idea was discarded because it was
too speculative.
Director John Badham coined the name "WOPR", feeling that the name of NORAD's SIOP was
"boring, and told you nothing".
The name "WOPR" played off of the Whopper hamburger, and a general sense of something
going "whop".
David Lightman was modeled on David Scott Lewis, a hacking enthusiast Parkes and Lasker
met.
Falken was inspired by Stephen Hawking with the appearance of John Lennon, who was interested
in the role.
General Beringer was based on James V. Hartinger, the then-commander-in-chief of NORAD who Parkes
and Lasker met while visiting the base, and who, like Beringer, favored keeping humans
in the decision loop.
The WOPR computer as seen in the film was a prop created in Culver City, California,
by members of the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees Local 44.
It was designed by production designer Geoffrey Kirkland based on some pictures he had of
early tabulating machines, and metal furniture, consoles, and cabinets used particularly in
the U.S. military in the 1940s and 50s.
They were adapted in drawings and concepts by art director Angelo Graham.
WOPR was operated by a crewmember sitting inside the computer, entering commands into
an Apple II at the director's instruction.
The prop was broken up for scrap after production was completed.
A replica was built for a 2006 AT&T commercial.
Filming Martin Brest was originally hired as director
but was fired after 12 days of shooting because of an on-set argument with the producers,
and replaced with John Badham.
Several of the scenes shot by Brest remain in the final film.
Badham said that "[Brest had] taken a somewhat dark approach to the story and the way it
was shot.
It was like [Broderick and Sheedy] were doing some Nazi undercover thing.
So it was my job to make it seem like they were having fun, and that it was exciting."
According to Badham, Broderick and Sheedy were "stiff as boards" when they came onto
the sound stage, having both Brest's dark vision and the idea that they would soon be
fired.
Badham did 12–14 takes of the first shot to loosen the actors up.
At one point, Badham decided to have a race with the two actors around the sound stage
with the one who came last having to sing a song to the crew.
Badham lost and sang "The Happy Wanderer", the silliest song he could think of.
Tom Mankiewicz says he wrote some additional scenes during shooting which were used.
Release WarGames did well at the North American box
office, earning $79,567,667, the fifth-highest of 1983.
The film was screened out of competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.
President Reagan, a family friend of Lasker, watched the film and discussed the plot with
members of Congress.
Reception Critical response
The film received universal acclaim.
Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 92% of sampled critics gave the film
positive reviews and that it got a rating average of 7.5 out of 10.
Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, calling it "an amazingly
entertaining thriller" and "one of the best films so far this year", with a "wonderful"
ending.
Softline praised the film as being "completely original"; unlike other computer-related films
like Tron that "could exist in substantially the same form with some other plot", WarGames
"could not exist if the microcomputer did not exist ... It takes the micro and telecommunications
as a given—part of the middle-class American landscape".
The magazine praised the film as "Very funny, excruciatingly suspenseful, and endlessly
inventive, this movie is right on the mark; authentic even when highly improbable".
Computer Gaming World stated that "Wargames is plausible enough to intrigue and terrifying
enough to excite ... [it] makes one think, as well as feel, all the way", raised several
moral questions about technology and society, and recommended the film to "Computer hobbyists
of all kinds".
Accolades WarGames was nominated for three Academy Awards
— Best Cinematography, Sound, and Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.
The company that provided the large screens used to display the tactical situations seen
in the NORAD set employed a new design that was super-bright enabling the displays to
be filmed live.
No post-production work was needed.
For this, the company was awarded an Academy Scientific and Technical Award.
Influence Bulletin Board System operators reported an
unusual rise in activity in 1984, which at least one sysop attributed to WarGames introducing
viewers to modems.
The scenes showing Lightman's computer dialing every number in Sunnyvale led to the term
"war dialing", a technique of using a modem to scan a list of telephone numbers to search
for unknown computers, and indirectly to the newer term "wardriving".
Video games A video game, WarGames was released for the
ColecoVision in 1983 and ported to the Atari 8-bit family and Commodore 64 in 1984.
It played similarly to the NORAD side of the "Global Thermonuclear War" game, where the
United States had to be defended from a Soviet strike by placing bases and weapons at strategic
points.
WarGames: Defcon 1, a real-time strategy game that was only loosely related to the film
was released for the PlayStation and PC in 1998.
A tile-matching video game, WarGames: WOPR, was released for iOS and Android devices in
2012.
A game inspired by the film, called Computer War from Thorn EMI, in which the player must
track and shoot down ICBMs as well as crack a computer code, was released for the Atari
8-bit family, TI-99/4A and Commodore VIC-20.
The film also inspired the Introversion game DEFCON.
Soundtrack The film's music was composed and conducted
by Arthur B. Rubinstein.
A soundtrack album including songs and dialogue excerpts was released by Polydor.
Intrada Records issued an expanded release in 2008 with the complete score, without the
dialogue.
Sequel and possible remake In November 2006, pre-production began on
a sequel, titled WarGames: The Dead Code.
It was directed by Stuart Gillard, and starred Matt Lanter as a hacker named Will Farmer
facing off with a government supercomputer called RIPLEY.
MGM released the sequel directly to DVD on July 29, 2008 along with the 25th Anniversary
Edition DVD of WarGames.
To promote the sequel, the film returned to selected theaters as a one-night-only twenty-fifth
anniversary event on July 24, 2008.
There have been various rumours of reboots.
It was reported in February 2009 that Leonardo DiCaprio was looking to produce one, then
in 2011 MGM Studios were said to be planning a reboot with Seth Gordon signed on to direct
although no writers or cast were yet on board.
See also
HP 9845C - computer used to generate the war room graphics
Real Soviet nuclear false alarm incident References
External links Official website
WarGames at the Internet Movie Database WarGames at the TCM Movie Database
WarGames at AllMovie WarGames at Box Office Mojo
The IMSAI computer used in the film