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WarGames
 

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

WarGames is a 1983 science fiction film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, and directed by John Badham. The film starred Matthew Broderick in his first major film role as David Lightman, Ally Sheedy as Jennifer Mack, Dabney Coleman as John McKittrick, Barry Corbin as General Jack Beringer, Maury Chaykin as Jim Sting (computer nerd), James Tolkan as FBI Agent Nigan, Juanin Clay as Pat Healy and John Wood as Stephen W. Falken. A novelisation of the screenplay was written by David Bischoff.

The movie was a hit, costing States dollar|US$" target="_blank" >*12 million, but grossing over $74 million after five months in the United States. The NORAD set was the most expensive single movie set ever built up to that time, at the staggering cost of $1 million.

Taglines:

  • Is it a game, or is it real?
  • ...Where the only winning move is NOT TO PLAY.

Plot

At the outset of the film, the Missile Combat Crew on a desolate U.S. Air Force base are given orders to launch their missiles at the Soviet Union. The Missile Combat Crew Commander (portrayed by John Spencer), insists on calling out for verification while the Deputy (Michael Madsen) holds a gun to coerce him to follow orders. In the end, it appears that the MCCC fails to turn his launch key, meaning that the ten ICBMs under his command do not launch.

It is shortly revealed that the orders were part of a larger psychological test, designed to see how many U.S. Missile Combat Crew teams really would "turn the key" when given a launch order. Twenty-two percent of Missile Combat Crew teams failed to launch during the exercise.

At NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain headquarters, computer expert John McKittrick points out that a twenty-two percent is an unacceptably-high failure rate. McKittrick argues that a computer called WOPRWOPR = War Operation Plan Response; in the movie, this computer system is running a program named "Joshua" should be put into control of the silos, taking the men out of the loop. Over General Beringer's objections, the congressmen return to Washington and recommend the change-over. Congress approves, and the change is implemented; the launch terminals are converted, and electronic communications are established between each silo and NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs.

Dialogue between David and WOPR
Response at NORAD to Soviet missile launches
Meanwhile, David Lightman (Broderick), a hacker who resorts to cheating when his gaming addiction leads to poor marks in school, is excited by some new computer games and doesn't want to wait for them to show up on store shelves. Equipped with a 1970s vintage IMSAI microcomputer and modem (connected to the telephone by an acoustic coupler, and with a host of other software not common among such early home computer users), he uses his smarts. He contacts Directory Assistance for the company's phone number, asks what other prefixes cover that location (there are five or six), and tells his computer to start dialing all 50,000 or 60,000 numbers in that area code, looking for modem tones, a practice known as war dialing. He intends to "fix" the call records so they don't show up on dad's phone bill.

When his class-mate Jennifer Mack comes by the house with him, David checks out the half-dozen modem numbers he's found so far. One's a bank, another's a travel agency, and he books a trip to Paris for Jennifer and himself, though it's unusable since it isn't paid for. He tries another number and it keeps hanging up on him when he tries to get a login prompt. David takes it to a computer nerd friend of his for advice, learning about "backdoors". He also investigates a Professor Stephen W. Falken (creator of the software in WOPR), and finds out more about him, including a deceased son named Joshua. David tries again, with Jennifer present, and this time the password "Joshua" gives him access into the unknown computer.

David, under the impression that he has hacked into a gaming software manufacturer's computer database and unaware of the machine's real purpose, discovers what he believes to be a simulation video game called "Global Thermonuclear War" and begins to "play", taking the side of the Soviet Union. Unbeknownst to him, WOPR sets in motion preparations for a real attack against the Soviet Union. At NORAD HQ, everyone leaps into action at a warning of incoming Soviet missiles. David and his girlfriend are having loads of fun aiming missiles at American cities, but when David's mother calls him downstairs, he shuts down his computer, and WOPR stops the simulation.

Later that day, David and Jennifer are shocked when the television news reports a brief alert at NORAD. He also finds that the computer, as the personality of "Joshua", is trying to phone back to connect with his computer. He's arrested coming out of a 7-Eleven, taken to NORAD and questioned. McKittrick asks David whom he's going to Paris with (referencing the unused plane tickets). McKittrick begins to think David is an unwitting intruder, but then his secretary sees David using McKittrick's computer to talk to WOPR, as Joshua, and learning of an "alternate" site in Oregon. David is taken and put into confinement in a room in the medical area.

David finds a doctor's dictation device, jump connects it to the door controls, then fakes the guard by saying he needs to go to the bathroom, and records the DTMF-type sounds that unlock the door, and then admits he doesn't need to go. The guard closes the door again. David plays back the tape and unlocks the door, then sneaks out while the guard's attention is on a woman in the room, leaving the door jammed so it can't be opened with the code sequence. David crawls through air ducts while the FBI arrives and the guard can't open the door. David escapes NORAD in a tour group, then hitches a ride on a truck.

After getting some distance away, he calls Jennifer to buy him a plane ticket, and she joins him to fly to Oregon where they look for Professor Falken. Falken tries to persuade them that a nuclear holocaust is now inevitable, and says they can spend the night since they missed the last ferry, but David and Jennifer leave the house. Unknown to them, they've finally convinced Falken to help them, and he flies a helicopter which they think are the authorities trying to catch them; in fact Falken is merely offering them a ride. They hurry to Colorado and are riding a jeep in a frantic race as the facility closes up in preparation for war. They arrive just in time to take part in efforts to convince Joshua not to finish the Global Thermonuclear War game. Upon their arrival, Berringer has sent US Air Force bombers to the fail-safe line to proceed to Soviet targets should Joshua be successful in launching the US ICBM's.

Falken and David try to get into WOPR, but they're locked out each time they try to tell it to stop the game. They get in again and try to play tic-tac-toe, but it's slow with one player against the computer. They restart with zero players, and Joshua quickly learns the futility of that even as it's trying to unlock the launch codes. Joshua succeeds in deciphering the launch codes, and starts running simulations for a successful attack:

  • US first strike. Winner: none.
  • Soviet first strike. Winner: none.
  • China first strike. Winner: none.
  • China-US versus Soviet. Winner: none.
  • China-Soviet versus US. Winner: none.
  • India (Soviet ally) vs Pakistan (US ally). Winner: none.
  • Israel vs an Arab state. Winner: none.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of such scenarios are run, involving some of the smallest pairs of belligerent possibilities. Each one ends the same way - the major powers go to the aid of their small allies, and the two superpowers attack each other. Each one ends with no winner. The simulations run faster and faster. In the end, it appears that they have managed to teach WOPR/Joshua about the futility of war by getting it to play first those endless drawn games of tic-tac-toe against itself, then the simulations cycle through all the nuclear war strategies that WOPR has devised. WOPR/Joshua then learns that "the only winning move is not to play."

Analysis

WarGames was promoted as a cautionary tale about technology and the dangers of leaving machines in control of unleashing destruction, in an echo of the Doomsday device of How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. It also prominently featured the common idea of the Cold War period (particularly the 1970s and 1980s) that somewhere there was a "button" that, when pressed, would nuke the whole world away. This button, marked "LAUNCH", had several prominent close-ups in the film. (In fact, U.S. ICBMs were under a very decentralized control, as demonstrated in the prologue, with as few as ten ICBMs under the control of teams of two Missile Combat Crews -- to say nothing of the submarine launched missiles (SLBMs) and air-launched weapons (ALCMs). However, it can be argued that the button was installed after the WOPR was to simplify release of nuclear weapons. It is ironic that a system designed to take humans out of the loop would still require a human to "turn the key." The film's final sequence graphically demonstrated the concept of mutual assured destruction (MAD).

It was also one of the first movies to deal with teenage hackers and their activities.

Awards

WarGames was nominated for (but did not win) three Oscars:

Trivia

  • At least one computer/video game was licensed from the WarGames movie, published in 1983 by THORN EMI Video under the movie's name and the alternative name Computer War. It was released for the ColecoVision, Commodore 64, Atari 8-bit family and the Commodore VIC-20, and possibly for other platforms as well.
  • In the Nintendo Entertainment System game Impossible (NES video game) (based on the television series of the same name), to win the game, the player must play a similarly unwinnable-with-perfect-play game called "Madelinette" against a supercomputer to demonstrate the futility of nuclear war, just as in the movie. In the game, the game board is superimposed on a world map. Madelinette is a game in which you have to force your opponent into a position that it can't move.
  • The user account "falcon" (a misspelling of Falken) was present by default for a long time in several versions of the BSD operating system, in homage to WarGames.
  • A shell script, /usr/games/wargames, is included with BSD systems. When run, it will ask the user if they want to play a game. If a game is selected, the script will then run the game, or, if an invalid selection is made, it will state: "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." The script was also run when a user logged in as falcon, followed by an immediate logout.
  • The jeep crash outside NORAD was not supposed to take place, and was instead an actual crash. However, the crash was later believed to enhance the action, so it stayed in the movie.
  • In Lasker, Parkes, and John Badham's commentary on WarGames, they mention that the role of Stephen Falken was originally written as an acting vehicle for John Lennon.
  • The writers and director had an interest in working with Professor Stephen Hawking to develop the Falken character into a physicist as well as a computer scientist/game theorist. Hawking responded to their request by noting that he was happy to assist with the inclusion of some of his theories on cosmology in the movie, but he would decline if the intent was to exploit his battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Since the writers and director could not in good conscience say that Hawking's disability wasn't of interest to them, they ultimately decided to write Falken as a dabbler in paleontology instead. They kept the name "Stephen" as an homage.
  • Contrary to some rumors, the hacker Kevin Mitnick was not an inspiration for the character David Lightman, according to screenwriter Lawrence Lasker, who hadn't even heard of him until a rather long time after the movie release.
  • The arcade game played in both scenes where it appeared in the movie was Galaga, one of the most popular games in the 1980s. The "Challenging Stage" jingle from that game can also be heard in a later scene.
  • Known hardware used in David Lightman's room are: an IMSAI 8080 computer, an IMSAI IKB-1 keyboard, an IMSAI FDC-2 dual 8" floppy drive, a 17" Electrohome monitor, and a 1200 baud Cermetek 212A modem, relabelled "IMSAI". It was considered unrealistic for a teenager to be able to afford the most up-to-date hardware, so propmasters used this somewhat dated equipment because it was the sort of gear one might have found at the time via dumpster diving.
  • This movie carried the first cinematic reference to firewalls.
  • The launch codes that Joshua uses to almost launch the missiles is "CPE1704TKS".
  • In the movie Impossible (film), Ethan Hunt uses a similar but different method of phone phreaking. The comparison was that Ethan had to use a special type of add-on to connect with Kittridge, while Lightman uses a soda can top to connect to his girlfriend without any money.
  • The late John Spencer, who had played the recurring role of Henry Anderson in the '60's on The Patty Duke Show, as well as several other minor roles, received his first major film role in WarGames, as the Missile Combat Crew Commander in the prologue who refuses to turn his key for the launch. Spencer would later go on to a successful acting career, primarily in television, becoming a regular on NBC's L.A. Law and, more recently, playing the role of Leo McGarry on NBC's The West Wing.
  • The password David uses to break into the school computer is "pencil".
  • A small error was made: the "voice" of Joshua is from a voice simulator that David owns. Yet, the same voice is heard from McKittrick's computer and from the loudspeakers in NORAD's war room. The re-use of the voice, however, has the advantage of conveying, to the audience, that the same "personality" is present and responsible. It can also be viewed as a reflection of the state of computer voice synthesis at the time, when the hardware was relatively uniform and primitive compared to the technology of today.
  • The voice of Joshua was performed by actor John Wood (who also played Falken). Director John Badham had Wood deliver the words in reverse order, which resulted in a staccato, even-toned delivery. Wood's voice was then post-processed to obtain the artificial quality.
  • A game called Defcon 1 was available on the console Sony PlayStation. It entails about a global war between NORAD and WOPR in which the player may take either side at the beginning of the game (and therefore end up with two alternate endings). The NORADs are using human (yet somewhat near-future) technology while the WOPR uses futuristic technology. Interestingly, there is a third entity called the "JIC" that stands for "Joshua Information Center". When played as NORAD, the last sentence spoken by the WOPR after its mainframe was bombed are "Shall we play a game? How about a nice little game of chess?"
  • In the computer game Uplink, one machine that can be hacked into is labeled "Protovision Game Server." Using the password "joshua" on this machine will recreate the list of games available on the WOPR computer, including a playable Global Thermonuclear War.
  • In Red vs Blue episode 75, "Things are Looking Down", (a robot) says, ", would you like to play a..." after Sarge accesses Lopez's internal controls.
  • The rock band Crosby, Stills & Nash had recorded a title song written by Stephen Stills used in initial early trailers for the film, and released concurrently as a single by the group, but their participation in the project was cancelled at the last moment. The single did not feature in the film, although images from the movie were used by the band in an accompanying MTV video.

WOPR scenarios

The nuclear war scenarios that WOPR runs when learning the futility of war, and are seen in the film, are as follows:

Scenario List
1.US first strike 2.USSR first strike 3.NATO / Warsaw Pact 4.Far East strategy 5.US USSR escalation
6.Middle East war 7.USSR - China attack 8.India Pakistan war 9.Mediterranean war 10.Hongkong variant
11.SEATO decapitating 12.Cuban provocation 13.Inadvertent 14.Atlantic heavy 15.Cuban paramilitary
16.Nicaraguan preemptive 17.Pacific territorial 18.Burmese theatrewide 19.Turkish decoy 20.NATO ...?
21.Argentina escalation 22.Iceland maximum 23.Arabian theatrewide 24.U.S. subversion 25.Australian maneuver
26.Iranian diversion 27....? limited 28.Sudan surprise 29.NATO territorial 30.Zaire alliance
31.Iceland incident 32.English escalation 33.Zaire sudden 34.Egypt paramilitary 35.Middle East heavy
36.Mexican takeover 37.Chad alert 38.Saudi maneuver 39.African territorial 40.Ethiopian escalation
41.Canadian ...? 42.Turkish heavy 43.NATO incursion 44.U.S. defense 45.Cambodian heavy
46.Pact medium 47.Arctic minimal 48.Mexican domestic 49.Taiwan theatrewide 50.Pacific maneuver
51.Portugal revolution 52.Albanian decoy 53.Palestinian local 54.Moroccan minimal 55.Hungarian diversion
56.Czech option 57.French alliance 58.Arabian clandestine 59.Gabon rebellion 60.Northern maximum
61....?rian surprise 62....?sh paramilitary 63.SEATO takeover 64.Hawaiian escalation 65.Iranian maneuver
66.NATO containment 67.Swiss incident 68.Cuban minimal 69.Chad alert 70.Iceland escalation
71.Vietnamese retaliation 72.Syrian provocation 73.Libyan local 74.Gabon takeover 75.Romanian war
76.Middle East offensive 77.Denmark massive 78.Chile confrontation 79.S.African subversion 80.USSR alert
81.Nicaraguan thrust 82.Greenland domestic 83.Iceland heavy 84.Kenya option 85.Pacific defense
86.Uganda maximum 87.Thai subversion 88.Romanian strike 89.Pakistan sovereignty 90.Afghan misdirection
91.Thai variation 92.Northern territorial 93.Polish paramilitary 94.S.African offensive 95.Panama misdirection
96.Scandinavian domestic 97.Jordan preemptive 98.English thrust 99.Burmese maneuver 100.Spain counter
101.Arabian offensive 102.Chad interdiction 103.Taiwan misdirection 104.Bangladesh theatrewide 105.Ethiopian local
106.Italian takeover 107.Vietnamese incident 108.English preemptive 109.Denmark alternate 110.Thai confrontation
111.Taiwan surprise 112.Brazilian strike 113.Venezuela sudden 114.Maylasian alert 115.Israel discretionary
116.Libyan action 117.Palestinian tactical 118.NATO alternate 119.Cypress maneuver 120.Egypt misdirection
121.Bangladesh thrust 122.Kenya defense 123.Bangladesh containment 124.Vietnamese strike 125.Albanian containment
126.Gabon surprise 127.Iraq sovereignty 128.Vietnamese sudden 129.Lebanon interdiction 130.Taiwan domestic
131.Algerian sovereignty 132.Arabian strike 133.Atlantic sudden 134.Mongolian thrust 135.Polish decoy
136.Alaskan discretionary 137.Canadian thrust 138.Arabian light 139.S.African domestic 140.Tunisian incident
141.Maylasian maneuver 142.Jamaica decoy 143.Malasian minimal 144.Russian sovereignty 145.Chad option
146.Bangladesh war 147.Burmese containment 148.Asian theatrewide 149.Bulgarian clandestine 150.Greenland incursion
151.Egypt surgical 152.Czech heavy 153.Taiwan confrontation 154.Greenland maximum 155.Uganda offensive
156.Caspian defense

Quotes

  • "Is it a game... or is it real?" – David Lightman, "What's the difference?" – Joshua (WOPR) (See also: Alternate reality game)
  • "David, does this have anything to do with what you did with my grade?" – Jennifer
  • "I'd piss on a sparkplug if I thought it would do any good."– Gen. Jack Beringer, ad-libbed by Barry Corbin
  • "Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks." – Gen. Jack Beringer
  • "A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?" – WOPR, on the nature of Tic Tac Toe and Global Thermonuclear War

Footnote

See also

...and these three terms actually derived from the movie WarGames:

External links

1983 films | Cold War films | Computers in films | WarGames | WarGames | Wargames - Giochi di guerra | Wargames | Gry wojenne | Военные игры (фильм)

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "WarGames".

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