WarGames is a 1983 drama-thriller film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film starred Matthew Broderick in his second major film role, and featured Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, and Barry Corbin.
The film follows David Lightman (Broderick), a young hacker who unwittingly hacks into 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 movie was a box office success, costing US$12 million but grossing over $74 million after five months in the United States. 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 secret simulation of a nuclear attack, one of two United States Air Force officers is unwilling to turn a required key to launch a missile strike. The officer's refusal to perform his duty convinces systems engineers at NORAD that command of missile silos must be maintained through automation, without human intervention. Control is given to a NORAD supercomputer, WOPR, which is programmed to predict possible outcomes of nuclear war.
David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) is a bright but unmotivated Seattle high school student and computer hacker. After receiving a failing grade in school, he uses his IMSAI microcomputer and modem to hack into the district's computer system using an unsecured password. He then changes his grade and does the same for his friend and classmate Jennifer Mack (Ally Sheedy).
After seeing an advertisement for a set of forthcoming computer games, Lightman has his computer dial every number in Sunnyvale, California, in an attempt to find its system. When later reviewing the results, he finds one of the systems does not identify itself, which he finds intriguing. After trying a few commands he succeeds in finding a list of games, starting with general strategy games like chess, checkers and poker, but then progressing to titles like Theaterwide Biotoxic and Chemical Warfare and Global Thermonuclear War. More intrigued than ever, Lightman continues to try to hack into the system without success.
Lightman enlists the aid of an older hacker, who explains the concept of a backdoor password and suggests tracking down the "Falken" referenced in Falken's Maze, the first game listed. Following this lead, Lightman discovers that Stephen Falken was an early artificial intelligence researcher, and from there tracks down every lead he can find on the man's life. He learns that Falken had a son, Joshua, and subsequently uses this name as a password to gain access to the unidentified system.
Response at NORAD to Soviet missile launches
Unknown to Lightman, the Sunnyvale phone number was cross-connected and is actually connecting him to WOPR in the Cheyenne Mountain military complex. WOPR was originally programmed, in part by Falken, to run simulations on various warfighting scenarios and attempt to find winning strategies. The list of "games" Lightman found were the various scenarios. Lightman glibly starts a game of Global Thermonuclear War, playing as the Soviet Union, selecting Las Vegas and his home town of Seattle as first-strike targets. WOPR starts running a simulation of a missile attack on the NORAD displays, leading the human military attendants to believe that actual Soviet nuclear missiles are inbound.
When they investigate, they determine that WOPR is running a simulation and defuse the situation. The phone line and backdoor password are removed to ensure the event does not reoccur. However, unknown to NORAD, WOPR continues to run the simulation in an attempt to trigger the scenario and win the game. WOPR continuously feeds false data such as Soviet bomber incursions and submarines deployments to the humans at NORAD, goading them into raising the DEFCON level and pushing them toward a retaliation that will start World War III. News of the events leaks out to television and Lightman learns the true nature of his actions when a news broadcast makes light of the situation later that day. He is soon tracked down and arrested by the FBI and taken to NORAD.
Upon seeing the alarms on their screens Lightman quickly concludes that WOPR is behind them. He tries to tell this to Dr. John McKittrick (Dabney Coleman), one of the WOPR programmers. McKittrick is unconvinced and when he leaves to discuss the issue, Lightman tries to stop the simulation from a terminal in his office. Upon being discovered, Lightman is taken away and locked up in the infirmary.
Lightman escapes confinement and is able to leave NORAD by blending in with a tourist group. With Jennifer's help, he makes his way to Oregon, where Falken (John Wood) has retired after the deaths of his wife and son and now lives under a new identity. Lightman and Jennifer find that Falken has become despondent and believes the world is inevitably on a path to nuclear holocaust. The teenagers convince Falken that he should return to NORAD to attempt to stop WOPR (which Lightman calls "Joshua").
Upon arrival, Falken is able to convince military officials to cancel the counterstrike. At this point WOPR starts an attempt to launch a counterstrike on its own, using a brute force attack to crack the launch code for the U.S. nuclear missiles. Without humans in the silos as a safeguard, WOPR could trigger a mass launch. Attempts to stop WOPR prove useless as all attempts to log in and order the countdown to cease result in the operators being locked out. Disaster is narrowly averted when Falken and Lightman successfully direct WOPR to play tic-tac-toe (which was hidden by Falken during programming and left off the list of games) against itself. This results in a long string of draws, forcing the computer to learn the concept of futility. WOPR cracks the missile code but before launching, it cycles through all the nuclear war scenarios it has devised, also finding they all result in stalemates ("WINNER: NONE") due to mutual assured destruction. WOPR observes that nuclear warfare is "a strange game. The only winning move is not to play". WOPR then casually offers to play "a nice game of chess," and relinquishes control of NORAD and the missiles.
Cast
Production
Development on WarGames began in 1979, when writers Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker developed an idea for a script called The Genius.[1] It was 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."[1] 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."[1] The concept of computers and hacking was not present in this early iteration.[1]
The Genius began its transformation into WarGames when Parkes and Lasker met Peter Schwartz from the Stanford Research Institute.[1] "There was a new subculture of extremely bright kids developing into what would become known as hackers," said Schwartz.[1] Schwartz made the connection between youth, computers, gaming, and the military.[1] Parkes and Lasker came up with several different military-themed plotlines prior to the final story.[1] One version of the script had an early version of WOPR. Named Uncle Ollie, or OLI (Omnipresent Laser Interceptor), it was a space-based defensive laser run by an intelligent program. The idea was discarded in preference of WOPR because it was too speculative.[1]
David Lightman was modeled on David Scott Lewis, a hacking enthusiast Parkes and Lasker met.[1][2] Falken was inspired by Steven Hawking with the appearance of John Lennon. Lennon was interested in the role.[1] General Beringer was based on James V. Hartinger, the then-commander-in-chief of NORAD who Parkes and Lasker met while visiting the base.[1]
Martin Brest was originally hired as director but was fired after 12 days of shooting because of an on-set tiff with the producers.[3][4] Brest was replaced with director John Badham. Several of the scenes shot by Brest remained 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."[5] 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 were going to get fired in their minds.[5] 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 coming last having to sing a song to the crew. Badham lost and sang "The Happy Wanderer", the silliest song he could think of.[5]
Reception
WarGames was nominated for three Academy Awards — Best Cinematography (William A. Fraker), Sound (Michael J. Kohut, Carlos de Larios, Aaron Rochin, Willie D. Burton) and Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (Lawrence Lasker, Walter F. Parkes). The film was screened out of competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.[6]
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."[7]
Video games
A video game named after the film was released for the ColecoVision in 1983. 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. A real-time strategy game that was very loosely related to the movie was released for the PlayStation and PC called WarGames: Defcon 1 in 1998. The movie also inspired the Introversion game DEFCON.[8]
Sequel and possible remake
In November 2006, pre-production began on a sequel, titled WarGames: The Dead Code.[9] It was directed by Stuart Gillard, and starred Matt Lanter as a hacker named Will Farmer facing off with a government supercomputer called R.I.P.L.E.Y.[10] 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 25th Anniversary event on July 24, 2008.[11]
It was reported in February 2009 that Leonardo DiCaprio is looking to produce a reboot of WarGames.[12]
See also
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Brown, Scott (2008-07-21). "WarGames: A Look Back at the Film That Turned Geeks and Phreaks Into Stars". Wired. http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/16-08/ff_wargames?currentPage=all. Retrieved 2009-05-01.
- ^ Takahashi, Dean (2008-08-12). "A Q&A that is 25 years late: David Scott Lewis, the mystery hacker who inspired the film "War Games"". VentureBeat. http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/12/a-qa-that-is-25-years-late-david-scott-lewis-the-inspiration-behind-the-film-war-games/. Retrieved 2009-05-01.
- ^ Tate, James M.. "Eddie Deezen Interview". Cult Film Freak. http://www.cultfilmfreak.com/eddiedeezen/. Retrieved 2009-03-15.
- ^ Erickson, Hal. "Martin Brest: Biography". Allmovie. http://www.allmovie.com/artist/martin-brest-82954/bio. Retrieved 2009-03-15.
- ^ a b c Simon, Alex (2008-08-02). "John Badham: The Hollywood Interview". The Hollywood Interview. http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2008/08/john-badham-hollywood-interview.html. Retrieved 2009-05-01.
- ^ "Festival de Cannes: WarGames". festival-cannes.com. http://www.festival-cannes.com/en/archives/ficheFilm/id/1374/year/1983.html. Retrieved 2009-06-22.
- ^ Patrick S. Ryan (Summer 2004). "War, Peace, or Stalemate: Wargames, Wardialing, Wardriving, and the Emerging Market for Hacker Ethics". Social Science Research Network. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=585867. Retrieved 2008-04-02.
- ^ Delay, Chris. "Detonating Introversion's Defcon". Game Developer Magazine. http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon/exposure/interview_gamedev_2.jpg. Retrieved 2009-06-02.
- ^ WarGames 2 at the Internet Movie Database
- ^ "WarGames 2 Casting". Stax. IGN. http://movies.ign.com/articles/744/744962p1.html. Retrieved 2006-11-09.
- ^ Fathom Events' WarGames event
- ^ Sciretta, Peter (2009-02-16). "Leonardo DiCaprio To Reboot WarGames?". /Film. http://www.slashfilm.com/2009/02/16/leonardo-dicaprio-to-reboot-wargames/. Retrieved 2009-05-01.
External links
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