WarGames

This article is about the 1983 US movie. For other uses see War Games.

WarGames
WarGames theatrical poster, with "Is it a game, or is it real?" tagline.
Directed by	John Badham Martin Brest
Written by	Lawrence Lasker Walter F. Parkes
Produced by	Harold Schneider
Starring	Matthew Broderick Ally Sheedy John Wood
Cinematography	William A. Fraker
Edited by	Tom Rolf
Music by	Arthur B. Rubinstein
Distributed by	MGM/UA Entertainment Co.
Release date	June 3 1983 (USA)
Running time	114 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$12,000,000 (estimated)
Box office	$74,000,000 (estimated)

WarGames is a 1983 suspense 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 movie was a box office success, costing US$12 million but grossing over $74 million after five months in the United States. With a cost of $1 million, the NORAD set was the most expensive single movie set ever built up to that time.

Cast

• Matthew Broderick as David Lightman
• Dabney Coleman as Dr. John McKittrick
• John Wood as Professor Stephen Falken
• Ally Sheedy as Jennifer Katherine Mack
• Barry Corbin as General Jack Beringer

Plot

David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) is a bright but unmotivated high school student. He is also a computer hacker who uses his 1970s vintage IMSAI microcomputer and modem (connected to the telephone by an acoustic coupler) to perform automated searches for systems connected to the public phone system, which he then cracks. He uses this method to change his failing school grades, stored in the school's computer, as well as those of his friend Jennifer Mack (Ally Sheedy). After seeing an advertisement for a new game company in Creative Computing magazine, David has his computer dial every number in Sunnyvale, California, in an attempt to find their system. When later reviewing the results, he finds one of the systems has a very "basic" interface, which he finds intriguing. After trying a few commands he succeeds in finding a list of games, but instead of the expected results, the games have titles like "theatrewide biotoxic and chemical warfare" and "global thermonuclear war". Further attempts to gain access fail.

Enlisting the help of older hacker friends, he decides the only way in will be to find a backdoor password, and one of them suggests tracking down the Falken referenced in "Falken's Maze," the first game listed. Following this lead, Lightman discovers that Professor Falken was an early artificial intelligence researcher, and from there tracks down every lead he can on Falken's life.

Lightman soon finds that he can use the name of Falken's late son, Joshua, to gain access. He glibly starts a game of global thermonuclear war, selecting Las Vegas and his home town of Seattle as first-strike targets. Unknown to the teen, he has logged into a NORAD military artificial intelligence computer system called WOPR that was programmed in part by Falken. Originally intended to run wargame simulations, it was later given control of the United States' arsenal of ICBMs after testing showed that twenty-two percent of missile crews tested failed to launch their missiles when prompted to do so. The events precipitated by Lightman lead NORAD to believe that actual Russian nuclear missiles are inbound. They manage to figure out what happened, but do not realize that WOPR is continuing to play global thermonuclear war internally and will not cease until it has "won." WOPR continuously feeds false data (such as bomber incursions and submarines sailing from Russian bases) to the humans at NORAD, goading them into starting World War III.

The teenage Lightman is soon snared by the FBI and is taken to Cheyenne Mountain, from which he promptly escapes. He makes his way to Oregon, where Falken (John Wood) retired after the death of his young son. Lightman and Jennifer eventually convince Falken that nuclear annihilation would be a bad thing, and that he should return to NORAD HQ to somehow stop the march to war. Upon arrival, they are told that the system is using a brute force attack to crack the launch code for the US nuclear missiles. Since the humans will not do so, WOPR assumes command and control has been compromised and it will have to hit the Soviets first to "win."

Disaster is narrowly averted when Falken/Lightman manage to teach WOPR about the futility of war by getting it to play endless drawn games of tic-tac-toe against itself. The WOPR then cycles through all the nuclear war scenarios that it has devised, which all end with no winner. WOPR learns that "the only winning move is not to play" and simply ceases playing. In the end WOPR decides it would prefer "a nice game of chess."

Awards

WarGames was nominated for three Oscars:

• Cinematography: William A. Fraker
• Sound: Michael J. Kohut, Carlos de Larios, Aaron Rochin, Willie D. Burton
• Writing (Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen): Lawrence Lasker, Walter F. Parkes

Video gaming connections

File:Wargames View at NORAD.png

Response at NORAD to Soviet missile launches

A cartridge video game named after the film, sold for the 1980s ColecoVision platform, was distributed around the time of its release.

The popular 1980s video game, Galaga, is used in the movie several times. In fact, when the tour group is being shown around Crystal Palace and the lady is asked to push the "red" button by the tour leader, the sound bite that accompanies the "welcome" message displayed on the big screen is a sound bite from the arcade game Galaga. The movie also inspired the Introversion game "DEFCON: Everybody Dies".

In "No Fighting in the War Room", the next to last mission of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, there is a room that contains a supercomputer modeled after WOPR, bearing the initials BANP.

Notes

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." The actual NORAD facility at Cheyenne Mountain looks nothing like what is depicted in the film, being a rather more spartan facility burrowed deep within a mountain as protection against nuclear attack.

Sequel

In November 2006, pre-production began on a sequel, titled WarGames: The Dead Code. It is directed by Stuart Gillard, and stars Matt Lanter as a hacker named Will Farmer facing off with a government supercomputer called Ripley. MGM will be releasing the sequel directly to DVD on June 10, 2008.

See also

• WarGames, a real-time strategy game for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation, inspired by the film
• Stanislav Petrov, a Soviet officer who averted an actual nuclear incident in 1983, which turned to be a false alarm caused by a computer error.

External links

• MGM's official WarGames site
• WarGames at IMDb