It has been suggested that WOPR be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since October 2012.

WarGames
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	John Badham
Produced by	Leonard Goldberg Rich Hashimoto Harold Schneider Bruce McNall
Written by	Lawrence Lasker Walter F. Parkes Walon Green
Starring	Matthew Broderick Dabney Coleman John Wood Ally Sheedy
Music by	Arthur B. Rubinstein
Cinematography	William A. Fraker
Studio	United Artists
Distributed by	MGM/UA Entertainment Co. Chapel Distribution United International Pictures
Release date(s)	May 7, 1983 (1983-05-07) 1983 Cannes Film Festival June 3, 1983 (1983-06-03) United States
Running time	114 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$12 million
Box office	$79,567,667

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, 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 [edit]

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 Dr. John McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) 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, WOPR (War Operation Plan Response), programmed to continuously run military simulations and learn over time.

David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) 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 (Ally Sheedy). 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 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 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 (John Wood) now lives under a new identity. 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. This results in a long string of draws, forcing the computer to learn the concept of futility. 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. The computer concludes that nuclear warfare is "a strange game"; having discovered the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction ("WINNER: NONE"), therefore "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 [edit]

• 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 (as Jesse Goins)
• James Ackerman as Joshua Falken

Production [edit]

Development [edit]

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.^[1]

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 (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 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.^[1]

Filming [edit]

Martin Brest was originally hired as director but was fired after 12 days of shooting because of an on-set argument with the producers,^[3] 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 were going to get fired in their minds. 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.^[4]

Release [edit]

WarGames did well at the North American box office, earning $79,567,667, the fifth-highest of 1983.^[1][5] The film was screened out of competition at the 1983 Cannes Film Festival.^[6] President Reagan, a family friend of Lasker, watched the film and discussed the plot with members of Congress.^[1]

Reception [edit]

Critical response [edit]

The film received universal acclaim. Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 97% of sampled critics gave the film positive reviews and that it got a rating average of 7.4 out of 10.^[7] Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars, calling it "an amazingly entertaining thriller"^[1] and "one of the best films so far this year", with a "wonderful" ending.^[8]

Accolades [edit]

WarGames was nominated for three Academy Awards — 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).^[1][9] 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.)^[1] No post-production work was needed. For this, the company was awarded a Technical Achievement Award by the Academy.

Influence [edit]

The movie was notable for coining the term firewall in reference to computer network security.^{[citation needed]} 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".^[10]

Video games [edit]

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. WarGames: Defcon 1, a real-time strategy game that was very loosely related to the film was released for the PlayStation and PC in 1998. A puzzle game, WarGames: WOPR, was released for iOS and Android devices in 2012. ^[11][12]

A game inspired by the film, called Computer War, in which the player must track and shoot down ICBMs as well as crack a computer code, was released for the TI-99/4A and Commodore VIC-20. The film also inspired the Introversion game DEFCON (2006).^[13]

Soundtrack [edit]

The film's music was composed and conducted by Arthur B. Rubinstein. A soundtrack album including songs (recorded for but not used in the film) and dialogue excerpts was released by Polydor.

Side 1

1. "WarGames" – 2:53
2. "Video Fever – The Beepers" – 2:49
3. "The Game Begins" – 5:46
4. "It Could Be War" – 1:59
5. "David's Concern" – 2:17
6. "NORAD" – 3:13

Side 2

1. "Edge of the World" (Yvonne Elliman) – 2:30
2. "Confidence Is High" – 4:43
3. "History Lesson – The Beepers" – 2:03
4. "Launch Detected" – 1:51
5. "Winner None" – 3:39
6. "Edge of the World (End Title)" – 3:27

Intrada Records issued an expanded release in 2008 with the complete score, without the dialogue.

1. "WarGames" – 3:38
2. "Video Fever – The Beepers" – 2:22
3. "Principal's Office" – 1:49
4. "A New Grade" – 2:07
5. "The Game Begins" – 2:44
6. "History Lesson – The Beepers" – 1:44
7. "Home Movie" – 1:26
8. "A Game of Chess?" – 3:03
9. "Nuclear Alert" – 2:58
10. "Walk Thru NORAD" – 2:15
11. "David Captured" – 3:53
12. "David Searches" – 1:33
13. "The Sneak" – 2:20
14. "NORAD" – 0:57
15. "It Could Be War" – 0:41
16. "Confidence Is High" – 1:08
17. "Off to See Faulken" – 1:07
18. "WOPR" – 2:13
19. "Maneuvers" – 1:36
20. "Faulken's House" – 1:54
21. "Time's Up" – 0:17
22. "'I Can't Swim'" – 1:29
23. "David's Concern" – 2:21
24. "Helicopter Pursuit & Launch Detected" – 2:46
25. "Closing the Mountain" – 1:51
26. "Who's First?" – 2:06
27. "Joshua!" – 2:37
28. "It Might Be Real" – 0:58
29. "Tic Tac Toe" – 1:32
30. "Winner None" – 1:45
31. "End Credits" – 3:21
32. "Edge of the World" (choral version) – 2:03
33. "Winner None" (original version) – 1:46
34. "Edge of the World" (Yvonne Elliman) – 1:51

Sequel and possible remake [edit]

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.^[14] 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.^[15]

There have been various rumours of reboots. It was reported in February 2009 that Leonardo DiCaprio was looking to produce one,^[16] 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.^[17]

Film portal

References [edit]

External links [edit]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: WarGames

• Official website
• WarGames at the Internet Movie Database
• WarGames at the TCM Movie Database
• WarGames at AllRovi
• WarGames at Box Office Mojo
• The IMSAI computer used in the film