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 (Broderick), a young hacker who unwittingly accesses WOPR (War Operation Plan Response), a United States military supercomputer originally 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 computer, now tied into the nuclear weapons control system and unable to tell the difference between simulation and reality, attempts to start World War III.
The film was a box office success, costing $12 million and grossing $79 million 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 in 2008.
Plot
During a surprise drill of a nuclear attack, many United States Air Force Strategic Missile Wing controllers prove unwilling to turn a required key 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, WOPR, programmed to continuously run war simulations and learn over time.
David Lightman, a bright, but unmotivated Seattle high school student and hacker, uses his computer to break into the school district's computer system and change his grades. He does the same for his friend and classmate Jennifer Mack. Later, while war dialing numbers in Sunnyvale, California to find a computer game company, he connects with a system that does not identify itself. Asking for games, he finds a list that starts with chess, checkers, backgammon, and poker, as well 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 first game listed. David discovers that Stephen Falken was an early artificial intelligence researcher, and guesses correctly that his dead son's name, Joshua, is the password.
David does not know that the Sunnyvale phone number connects to WOPR at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. 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, WOPR nonetheless continues the simulation to trigger the scenario and win the game, as it does not understand the difference between reality and simulation. It continuously feeds false data such as Soviet bomber incursions and submarine deployments to NORAD, pushing them into raising 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 FBI agents arrest him and take him to NORAD. He realizes that WOPR is behind the NORAD alerts, but because he fails to convince McKittrick, 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. David and Jennifer find that Falken has become despondent and believes that nuclear war is inevitable, that it is as futile as a game of tic-tac-toe between two experienced players. The teenagers convince Falken that he should return to NORAD to stop WOPR.
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 attack. WOPR tries to launch the missiles itself, however, using a brute-force attack to obtain the launch code. Without humans in the control centers 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.
Falken and David direct the computer to play tic-tac-toe against itself. This results in a long string of draws, forcing the computer to learn the concept of futility and no-win scenarios. WOPR 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 Mutual assured destruction ("WINNER: NONE"), the computer tells Falken that it has concluded that nuclear war is "a strange game" in which "the only winning move is not to play." WOPR relinquishes control of NORAD and the missiles and offers to play "a nice game of chess."
Cast
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 â€" 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 â€" 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 also met with computer-security expert Willis Ware of RAND Corporation, who assured them that even a secure military computer might have 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 prior to the final story. One version of the script had an early version of WOPR named "Uncle Ollie", or OLI (Omnipresent Laser Interceptor), 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 (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 in the film was a prop created in Culver City, California, by members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 44. It was designed by production designer (credited as visual consultant) 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 P. 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.
David Lightman was modeled on David Scott Lewis, a hacking enthusiast Parkes and Lasker met. Falken was inspired by and named after Stephen Hawking, with the appearance of John Lennon, who was interested in the role, but was murdered in New York while the script was in development. General Beringer was based on General James V. Hartinger (USAF) 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.
Filming
Martin Brest was originally hired as director but was fired after 12 days of shooting because of a disagreement 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 to 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 that 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.
Reception
Critical response
The film received critical acclaim. 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 (and do) 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 givenâ€"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". Leonard Maltin gave it a mixed review calling it "Fail Safe for the Pac-Man Generation" and "Entertaining to a point". He concluded, "Incidentally, it's easy to see why this was so popular with kids : most of the adults in the film are boobs." Currently, film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 93% of sampled critics give the film positive reviews and that it receives a rating average of 7.6 out of 10.
Accolades
WarGames was nominated for three Academy Awards â€" Best Cinematography (William A. Fraker), Sound (Michael J. Kohut, Carlos Delarios, Aaron Rochin, Willie D. Burton), and Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (Lawrence Lasker, Walter F. Parkes). 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. (The set was more visually impressive than the actual NORAD facilities at the time.) The animations seen on the NORAD displays, produced by Colin Cantwell, were created using Hewlett Packard HP 9845C computers driving monochrome HP 1345A vector displays, which were still-filmed through successive color-filters. Each frame took approximately one minute to produce, and 50,000 feet of negatives were produced over seven months. The animations were projected "live" onto the screens from behind using 16mm film, so they were visible to the actors and no post-production work was needed. For this, the company was awarded an Academy Scientific and Technical Award.
Influence
Bulletin board system (BBS) 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" (earlier known as "demon 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".
President Reagan, a family friend of Lasker, watched the film and discussed the plot with members of Congress, his advisers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Reagan's interest in the film is credited with leading to the enactment 18 months later of NSDD-145, the first Presidential Directive on computer security.
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, Texas Instruments TI-99/4A and Commodore VIC-20. The film also inspired the Introversion game DEFCON (2006).
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 Records. Intrada Records issued an expanded release in 2008 with the complete score, with expanded horn sections and without the film dialogue.
The folk rock supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash were tapped at one point to write a title song for the film, but at the last minute it was scrapped from the project. The band released the song anyway, with a video made of footage from the movie airing on MTV. It was available on their now out-of-print album Allies.
Sequel
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.
See also
- 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident
References
External links
- Official website
- WarGames at the American Film Institute Catalog
- WarGames on IMDb
- WarGames at the TCM Movie Database
- WarGames at AllMovie
- WarGames at Box Office Mojo
- The IMSAI computer used in the film