WarGames (1983)

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Cast:

Matthew Broderick .... David Lightman
Dabney Coleman .... Dr. John McKittrick
John Wood .... Dr. Stephen Falken
Ally Sheedy .... Jennifer Katherine Mack
Barry Corbin .... Gen. Jack Beringer
Juanin Clay .... Pat Healy, McKittrick's assistant
Kent Williams .... Arthur Cabot
Dennis Lipscomb .... Lyle Watson
Joe Dorsey .... Col. Joe Conley
Irving Metzman .... Paul Richter, WOPR technician

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Summary:

A fun (and now charmingly retro-ish) thriller about a teen hacker (Broderick) who, trying to impress a pretty girl (Sheedy), unwittingly taps into the main simulation computer at NORAD while looking for newly developed computer games. He gleefully plays the 'game', Global Thermonuclear War, while in America's nuclear missile command center, the controlling computer views it as perfectly real. Well-acted and photographed, the film tries hard to be a cautionary tale but has a good ol' Happy Ending after all. I recommend it.

Since I found a nit in WarGames, which is 20 years old, so I doubt it'll have a board (if I missed it, please tell me where it is):

Actually, I think I've known this nit since I first saw the movie.
The ending is based on the fact that tic-tac-toe is unwinnable. In fact, it isn't, but the way to win it is counter-intuitive. Joshua plays the way most people play, by starting in the middle. However, by not starting in the middle, this game can be won. (Granted, it takes a lot of luck, and you can only do it once against someone, but still...)
X starts by claiming a corner. O claims the middle. X then claims the opposite corner from where they started. This is where the luck comes in: O claims another corner. X then claims the last corner. X now has two ways to win, down two sides of the board.
As I said, it's not easy and it takes a lot of luck - but this game can be won! Guess we're glad Joshua didn't figure it out, huh?

Quite possibly Joshua/W.O.P.R. did find this one solution, it could have passed by in the flurry of repeated games he displayed. The problem is, as you say, it only works once. Out of hundreds or thousands or millions of possible games, Joshua would only beat himself once. Seems like he would discard this one solution as inconsequential in the face of repeated failure.

OR:

Joshua does come across the one solution at the very end of his tic-tac-toe games. He then switches to running Global Thermonuclear War simulations, to see if the solution can be repeated. Obviously, Global Thermonuclear War has no solution for victory, so this is when he finally learned when to give up.

Or since WOPR is so smart it can calculate all possible outcomes of any game from the first move it sees that one comming every time it plays itself and blocks that from the start.

But if Joshua's so smart he can see all possible outcomes, what reason is there to play the game in the first place?

perhaps not all possible outcomes of something like nuclear war (with a million+ possible variations) so he couldn't grasp the concept of a no win game (after all he was taught games like chess which is winnable under most circumstances) but tic tac toe taught him the basic concept of futility.

As for the nits:

WOPR's breaking of the launch code. If you enter the wrong code it should simply send back a failure messege, not tell you which digit you got right so you can guess better next time. Also even if it did do that with 26 letters in the alphabet and 10 numeric characters it should have tried all of them much faster tan the 5 or 10 minutes it took

The ending is based on the fact that tic-tac-toe is unwinnable. In fact, it isn't, but the way to win it is counter-intuitive....(Granted, it takes a lot of luck, and you can only do it once against someone, but still...) mei

The proposition is that there is no winning strategy provided both sides always play the best move available, and the proposition has been well proven. The fact that your "strategy" requires luck and cannot be repeated against the same opponent shows that it is not a "winning" strategy in this sense.

WOPR's breaking of the launch code. If you enter the wrong code it should simply send back a failure messege, not tell you which digit you got right so you can guess better next time. Brian

Of course you are right, but it looks better dramatically to show that WOPR is getting closer, and the idea itself derives from listenig for the tumblers to "click" when cracking a safe with a combination lock.

TomM, I'm not sure I agree with your assesment of the 'best move available'. Obviously, when O makes the second move, they think it's a good move. After all, isn't tic-tac-toe usually played by kids? Let me tell you, my niece has no real concept of strategy, she just plays (computer games, in her case, but the idea is the same).
The point is, it can be won. And, with nuclear war, it only takes one win to be the winner.
Personally, I think the creators either didn't know or didn't remember that tic-tac-toe can be won. Because, after a while, it's always a draw, and that's boring.

The point is, it can be won. And, with nuclear war, it only takes one win to be the winner.

But Joshua's takeover of NORAD ends with his repeated failure upon failure to seize a victory in Global Thermonuclear War. This is undoubtedly what forces him to realize that there is a time to give up. Tic-Tac-Toe just led him to that line of reasoning.

Just saw the film and noticed what could be a nit.

Joshua plays countless simulations of GTW at the very end. Every simulation ends with almost the entire land-surface of the world blanked out with nuclear impact silhouettes. Why the entire world? In a true nuclear war, what real reason would there be to launch against South America, or Africa, or Australia? I can understand that some of Joshua's simulations, from the names, undoubtedly include scenarios in which these nations would be attacked by the US or USSR, but every single simulation (that we see) ends the same way, with every nation attacked.

No it cannot. If both sides play perfectly, it will always end in a draw. A game is "winnable" if at least one side can win, even if both sides use perfect strategy.

In math and games theory (which is what Joshua was using), that is the definition of "winnable" and "unwinnable".

Seems to me, from a review of the movie, David Lightman really isn't a grade-A, expert hacker. Even considering the state of computer technology in 1983, he seems much like a beginner, utilizing already-created programs to search for Protovision, and simply doing research on Stephen Falken to discover his 'backdoor' password. I realize the film would have been much duller had he used nitty-gritty techniques and engaged in involved cracking of systems, but the kid seems just like a video game wiz who covets new games just a little too much. :-)

TomM, I'm not sure I agree with your assesment of the 'best move available'. Obviously, when O makes the second move, they think it's a good move. After all, isn't tic-tac-toe usually played by kids? Let me tell you, my niece has no real concept of strategy, she just plays (computer games, in her case, but the idea is the same).

Exactly, the game is usually played by kids, where that one trick move will work. WOPR is not a kid; it is an advanced computer, programed to deal with infinite variables in a simulation. The trick that would work on your neice (or on me if I wasn't paying attention) will not work on a computer.

Snick - you're right about David not being that advanced in computer science, but more of a bright kid with some neat toys who gets in over his head; which is probably what they had in mind. The director mentions that they game him older equipment (even for 1983) because it would be more belivable that he could have purchaced it second hand from professionals like Jim and Malven (the computer geeks) rather than make him a 17 year old with the latest in computer equipment. Probably the same in giving him simple computer things to do and not turning him into a kid who should be at MIT already.

How do you know he didn't create that program to search for Protovision? As I reall on the DVD commentary the director says that it was just a creation of the screenwriter, but after the movie came out several programers/hackers created programs that did exactly that and called them "Wargames dialers"

Possibly he did write the dialer program, I'll have to recheck the film to see.

Anyway, at the end of my last viewing, I envisioned a goofy epilogue scene, set a few months after the end.

NORAD is making do with men in the siloes again, and Joshua is safely humming away in the basement of David's parents' house, where he can play Global Thermonuclear War all he wants without harming a thing. :-)

IIRC, there was a video game in the late '90's, also called WarGames, that was apparently a sequel to the movie. In the game, however, Joshua went insane and somehow seized control of most of the world's military! Seemed pretty farfetched, but I've always wondered how much of the original story or characters they kept.

Anyone remember the series Whiz Kids? It was pretty obviously an attempt to cash in on War Games, with its computer genius teen and his super capable home brewed computer.

I remember that show!...Primarily because it was a starring vehicle for Matthew Laborteaux, one of the kids from [i]Little House on the Prairie[/i] (don't laugh, it was a family show, I was twelve).

Besides the casting what I remember most is that the 'super-capable' computer could do basically the same things as a laptop with a fast modem, but this being the early eighties the wires, terminals etc took up most of the kid's room.

I was playing about with a carved wooden Naughts & Crosses game & was surprised how often I got the 'no lose' triangle, rather than every game being a draw. I wonder if the WOPR worked how to do this.

Possible remake in the works.

My reaction?

NO REMAKE!

Australia would certainly have been hit in a 1980s Warsaw Pact-NATO nuclear war. Sydney and Melbourne, for a start.

Oh, for cryin' out loud - why must every film have a remake? It was good the first time - it doesn't need a bloody remake!

Money, Callie. Money and the knowledge that new generations of audiences want to see films that are both newly-produced and in a theater.

Luigi, how will they adapt the very early eighties Cold War nuclear fears to today's modern audience?

I agree with Callie. A remake here is not necessary.

For one thing, they remakes usually •••• big time. Look at the 2005 remake of The Fog (which I made a thread about in the Thriller/Horror area that no one bothered to reply to, sadly a common occurrence at this dying site). It was vastly inferior to the 1980 original in every way and has been all but forgotten less than a decade later.

Also, at the time Wargames came out (1983), PC's were just starting to come into common usage. In those days, most didn't have a PC, let alone understand how they worked. Today, that is no longer the case. Today it's people without PC's that are in the minority.

This movie may not have had horse and buggies, but it was essentially a period piece. The world has moved on since 1983. A remake of this film is neither desired nor required.

Hear hear! This is one film that does not - repeat DOES NOT - need to be remade!