This week I'm hacking through some more (mostly) useless trivia - this time about WarGames. My favorite nugget... I'll tell you how they recorded the computer voice for Joshua. So, shall we play a game?
I was the Location Manager on "WarGames" and you got a couple facts wrong as well as some omissions. The mouth of the tunnel and the jeep crash were filmed near a small town called Cement, in the Cascades north of Seattle. Yes, the tunnel interior is Griffith Park. The jeep crash was a real accident with the stunt doubles actually getting hurt, but not badly. The chainlink fence they tried to crash through caught under the wheels and flipped the jeep over. The fence should have been rigged by special effects and wasn't. Yes, they chose to keep it in. This was shot while Martin Brest was Director. As with many productions, there was often chaos and poor planning. John Wood was chosen well into pre-production in 1982 after considering many, many actors. The movie was brilliantly cast by Martin Brest, not John Badham. Martin Brest had several extravagant ideas he insisted upon... and there are a number of scenes and shots he made that are in the film...not just the ones you mentioned. Martin "demanded" the interior set of Norad be huge with different levels, catwalks offices, etcetera. The story I heard, was that when Martin and the writers toured Norad, they were going to the real Norad Command center until Martin said something about the storyline that prompted the Military to cancel the tour. Nevertheless, Martin wanted the huge set. Leonard Goldberg, the executive producer was increasingly fed up with demands by Martin and the money being spent on things like the Norad set. Though Martin Brest's filming was going well, I remember that he was falling behind....which is costly and unforgivable to many Producers. As you stated, after two weeks, he was fired and Badham was hired. In my opinion, Goldberg must have wanted to fire Brest earlier but it took some time to line up Badham, who was finishing "Blue Thunder". It is true that the original writers did profound research and came up with ingenious ideas...nevertheless, they were fired at one point and other writers were brought in to change aspects of the script. One of the writers brought in was Walon Green. Eventually, I believe the original writers were brought back. Though Badham's tenure as Director was smoother and he was liked by everyone...it was many of Brest's ideas and concepts that helped make the movie what it is. I do not believe the darker tone of Brest's concepts would have been detrimental to the final film...very hard to say. One of the more difficult choices Brest had to make, was whether the voice of the computer would be heard. Though computers may have had voices, they were not interactive, as I remember it. There was much consternation as to whether this would be believable..but it was decided to add it to the film. My memory is that it was not in the script and the computer's dialogue would have appeared on the computer screen. Obviously, this was a pivotal decision. Before Brest was fired, Goldberg brought in a known Production Manager, Harold Schneider, who had a reputation for firing people and drastic cost cutting. His term on the crew was unpleasant and was probably supposed to be. Goldberg did not have much confidence the film would be successful...mind you Broderick and Sheedy were essentially unknown. Both were very friendly and likable. One other note, there is a scene where Sheedy gives Broderick a ride on her scooter. The schedule had to be changed due to Sheedy crashing the moped....not seriously, but causing a delay in production. Also, originally, in the script, a private jet was to take Broderick and Sheedy to Falcon and was going to land on a two-lane road in the mountains but was cut. Martin Brest and Lisa Weinstein, found the script, originally called "The Genius" and developed it with the writers. They deserve some credit for what the final film is. My name is Robert Decker and I can be contacted through the Location Managers Guild International.
Thank you for the articulate, grammatically correct and properly spelled information. I also appreciate the way you explain certain aspects as to how you recall them at the time rather than presenting everything as binary. My perception, without ever meeting you in person, is you are a true professional and there is little doubt as to the validity of your comment..
@@toxlaximus3297 Yes, film projection. Back then, computers took a long time to render each frame of the display--it couldn't be done in real time. . So they rendered and transferred each frame to film, and rear-projected the film on the displays. Imagine the difficulty of synchronizing all that. And the spectacularly brilliant bursts of light they achieved at each simulated detonation.. So cool.
@@TheSighphiguy I wasn't speaking so much in terms of how it was received at release. I was speaking more in terms of the broader sense of film history. You're hard pressed to even see a mention of this film anywhere, let alone see it mentioned alongside other great movies of the past. It's practically been dumped down the memory hole at this point.
Fun fact: I wrote the actor Irving Metzman who plays Richter in the film to ask for his autograph in hopes of completing my Wargames collection and he mailed me his ID badge that he wore in the movie. As an IT guy I think of this as a sort of relic.
A few points I wanted to make: 1) Ally Sheedy was hella cute. I stayed for the end credits because I wanted to know her name. 2) The computer simulation that almost started WWIII referenced in the video took place in 1979. However, in 1983 -- the year of WarGames' release -- there were actually TWO incidents that brought us close to nuclear annihilation (talk about your China Syndrome/Three Mile Island coincidence!) If you have a few minutes, look up "Able Archer 83" and "1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm." 3) Ally Sheedy was hot. 4) I knew that Martin Brest was the original director, and I knew that a couple scenes he directed made it into the final movie; however, I never knew which scenes those were. Now I know. Thanks, Jeff! 5) I had a major crush on Ally Sheedy. 6) There actually was an original song that made it into the movie. It was called Video Fever, written by the film's composer, Arthur B. Rubinstein, and performed by The Beepers. It appears in the scene in the video arcade when we are introduced to David. But it didn't get much push. 7) Did I happen to mention Ally Sheedy?
@@Richard_Ashton After I posted this comment I actually went and saw the movie again on streaming video (it had been many years). Still great, and Ally was still darn cute... but now that I am old enough to be her father (as she was back then, of course) it was a little weird. This time the one I noticed was Juanin Clay, who played Dabney Coleman's assistant. Lovely! :-)
@@villageblunder4787 Yeah, that was kinda sexy. Though not as sexy as it would have been if she gave him the gum and he chewed it. Or, better still, if Ally gave her the gum. Or even better, if she gave Ally the gum. Or even better still, if they chewed it together... Man, I'm punchy. Time for bed.
That's a great one! I also like: "Remember you told me to tell you when you were acting rudely and insensitively? Remember that? You're doing it right now."
I was put into cadet training for the Soviet Army a year or so after this film was made. I spent three years off and on in Afghanistan up till the Soviet withdrawal. Then there were the hard years of the collapse of the USSR and my country restoring independence with the expulsion of the Soviet (now Russian) Army. In 1992 I and a few others drove a van to Berlin to find as much computer gear to take back. We explained Lithuania was trying to really get started seriously with computers. The local hacker types did everything legal and not legal to help us. They even called in help from a place in Scotland called the Barras. They got us everything from PCs to Amigas and every piece of software of any value. Other than to buy some new components and blank disks they took no money. On German man even found us a broken down Soviet truck that we repaired to bring more back. So hacker and computer nerds helped a poor country when it needed it most.
Hello Tamas, thanks for your reply. I imagine that nowadays you can obtain more modern computers easily. Back then I was blown away with this film It showed how easily David was able to hack into computer systems, almost with impunity. I didn't have a computer myself but I was intrigued by them. You may recall how close we came to a Nuclear war with a NATO exercise called Able Archer. Your country thought we were going to attack you, and we nearly came close to all-out war. That was my first computer The Amiga. Check out an old game called Def Con, it has an eerie soundtrack.
War games, cbs' whiz kids, and sneakers had a huge influence. I was a hacker for years, still am, as a result. Drove my interest, CS as a major, and future career. Fun times!
I was a high school senior 1983-1984. This film sent me into computer science, but I switched to engineering. I've watched it only a couple times since. Still love it.
The opening scene where the launch controllers fail to follow the launch order during the unscheduled drill is pretty key to the plot, since it gave them a reason to take the men out of the loop, so to speak.
As a child seeimg that, it was actually kinda scary to me. When they next show the bunker scene with the taking out the chairs, I thought the one guy had actually shot the other. The movie actually never says one way or the other, but in the novelization he doesn't die.
That scene depicted what actually did happen in the missile silos. A junior officer in a silo was authorized to kill his superior in that situation. But as you see later in the movie, the Jr officer didn't shoot his commander.
@@nimblehealer199 Yeah, I know. That's what I mean. If they hadn't had that scene in the movie, then later when Joshua was trying to find the launch codes, all the well actually people would have been all like, "well actually, the missile won't launch unless two launch controllers rotate their keys in unison blah blah blah."
DataProducts had a manufacturing place where I grew up. They would test their shipping/packaging by boxing up printers and throwing them off the roof (only one or two stories). Their reasoning was that if the product survived that fall, it should survive shipping and keep costly returns down. It worked, but surprisingly they still had some that did not survive, lol.
Matthew Brodericks father died before filming had ended. Despite being a young man in his first major movie it shows how professional he was to still finish off his scenes despite the obvious sadness and loss he'd just endured.
A movie with 'heart'. It made the imagination soar. No super heroes.. no weirdos in capes trying to save the planet. Just a simple little story of human interaction. Broaddrick and Sheedy knocked this one out of the park.
Great video. Great film. This film helped influence me in 1985 to change professions into IT. A few years ago I retired as Senior IT Programme Manager in a major UK company after a fascinating career! Thanks, Wargames !
Dont worry, there was plenty of "mistakes" or bloopers in the movie. Most are plainly obvious, but some require a bit more scrutiny to pick up on them. One of the more obvious is when WOPR is scanning for the launch codes it says " JPE1704TKS ' while all the big screen monitors all say " CPE1704TKS ". Also, when David is typing numbers in his auto dialer, he never types in the 555 prefix for Protovision that he previously called information to get in the first place. Theres way too many more to list.
@@GRIMRPR6942 My compliment was regarding the fact that he wasn't looking for flaws. Instead, he pointed out a lot of cool things that made it more realistic. That's what I like. The "flaw" videos are a dime a dozen on here. Rare to find someone that makes videos that actually make the movie better and more realistic. Don't worry though, I didn't read the flaw you pointed out. I didn't click on "read more" so it didn't show me the rest of your text. lol
@@sweetlildevil7597 if you're interested in something similar, videos that analyze movies for the good things, this time on the cinematic prospective, i suggest CinemaWins
Note: In _War Games_ Mathew Broderick’s character hacks into his School’s computers to manipulate his record. In _Ferris Bueller’s Day Off_ he does the same thing.
@@Rowgue51 Pish posh... a hacker is generally defined as someone who uses bugs or exploits to break into computer systems. Knowing where to look for a password is an analog method of exploiting a weakness in a system.
My favorite scene/line of the whole movie is when they realize WOPR is still trying to launch and when asked what General Berringer is going to say to the president he says “I’m going to tell him we might have to go thru with this thing after all” with a defeated expression
I think the single plot hole that really stands out is Joshua being just able to guess the launch codes at random, one character at a time. If the system simply had the elementary security of cutting the connection after three incorrect entries for the full code, Joshua would never have got it. However, given this lack of security, Joshua would have been in in a fraction of a second.
I remember seeing this movie at the local theater in Porvoo/Finland back in late 1983 when I was 15. It had such an impact on me that I nagged for mom and dad to buy me a computer constantly during the next three weeks. They finally gave in and bought me a Commodore 64. This in turn lead to a lifelong hobby with computers, and since 1992 a full time career in IT in which I still am, at the tender age of 51. There aren't many movies that I can say defined my future, but this one most certainly did.
The scene with the hackers where the dweeby guy grabs the paper away from his co-worker pretty much defines the idea of nerd -- this movie, corny as it was, was way ahead of its time.
@@AMillionMovies He was great in Polar Express, and although I first saw him in War Games, I later saw him as Wesley in an earlier film, Midnight Madness. You could do a whole 15 things on that movie alone!
The co-worker was played by Maury Chaykin, who was also Major Major Fambrough in "Dances with Wolves." As the NY Times noted " the Army officer who, as he is becoming unhinged, interviews Mr. Costner's character for an assignment and sends him off to the far reaches of the frontier; then he shoots himself."
@@AMillionMovies it's funny you mentioned 'Captain Crunch'; the novelization of the film actually hints (if not outright says) that Maury Chakin's character *was* Captain Crunch. In the movie, Lightman even calls him 'John'. So....could be! :)
for you non Brits - 'Are you sitting comfortably ? then I'll begin .." is a bit of a British staple which is why actor John Wood probably said it. There was a radio program in the 50s called Listen with Mother, where children's stores were read - preceded with this line. It still pops up here and there, usually sarcastically.
Moody Blues, "On the Threshold of a Dream". "Take another sip my love and see what you will see/A fleet of golden galleons, on a crystal sea/Are you sitting comfortably?/Let Merlin cast his spell."
When I first met my life partner in 1983, he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army and at that time his job was running the real life equivalent of the WOPR computer. Yes there really was one, just not by that name, however it was never connected to anything except a printer. Each run added some variable to the fictional battle and produced several hundred printed pages of possible outcomes. That's all Tom would ever tell me about it. After being together for almost 35 years, I lost Tom in January of 2018. I miss him so much.
@@dwc1964 I do, but you misconstrue star gazer's intent. he doesn't find Ally attractive, ergo I disagree with him, and hope he IS the only nerd who thinks that way.
I ran a war dialer in the late 80s that was written in BASIC. I found a few computers, but never got past the login screen. I also found a BBS (bulletin board system)that I didn't know existed. For those of you who don't know what a BBS is, it was our way of connecting to others before the internet. Our computer modem would dial another running BBS software. We would post messages and download/upload games and pictures. One picture took longer to download than a 2gb movie does now. In many cases, the picture would load line by line at a rate of 1 line every 2-3 seconds. Some of the bigger BBSs had country-wide message boards. Their servers would dial each other up at night to send and receive new messages. You would wait a couple of days in most cases for responses to your questions.
In the early 1980s, you could actually send an email from a BBS to a computer on the Internet. The BBS FIDONET that you allude to above had a gateway to the Internet. I actually tried it by sending the email from my local BBS to my CompuServe account which had an address on the Internet. That was in 1984 or 1985.
@@IUSSHistory It sure was pricey, cost about $12 an hour during "Prime Time" and about $6 per hour in the evenings after 10pm, not to mention additional fees if you dialed in via local connection service, like TYMENET, if I got that right. Otherwise, it was long distance charges to the nearest CompuServe dial-up number.
I had an old push button phone that I found and went to my 7 year old (very smart) grandson and asked him what he thought it was. He had no idea. At first, he didn't believe it was a real phone at one time, since had gotten play phones that just made noises when you pushed the buttons. I also found my old Nokia 2160i. He knew what that was and couldn't understand why anyone would carry around such a heavy phone. Then I tried to explain fax machines to him. Lol. He said something like "You're old Papa"
This movie shaped me. I grew up in the 80's with a vic-20, TRS 80, coco2 and more. I had 300 baud modems with acoustic couplers. I was phreaking and bbs'ing from years 8 to 15. Amazing time. When you could open a computer and understand how it worked. When you didn't need a phd to read a data sheet. When you could memorize all the instructions of a processor. Before software and games became expendable. Miss those days.
The 'big screens' in the war room were created using a HP9845 (one of the first hughely expensive CAD computers, with a light pen and...two TAPE DRIVES!) - it had a specific vector font, which is visible in the names displayed on maps. But there was not enough computing power to do these simulations in real time, nor there were any screens as big as ones shown in the movie. Instead, they filmed the HP9845 graphics frame by frame, then mounted a film, which was projected onto white screens from several projectors - so when David says in amazement "this is some set up!" to McKittrick, what we really see behind him is...a multiplex cinema of a sort ;-)
This is one of the best vids about the "side info" on a movie I've ever seen. Really cool. This was one of my favorite movies back in the day. Must have seen it a hundred times
It was one of, if not the first, picture where a 24 FPS film camera photographed a live monitor screen. We had to alter the computer output to 24 FPS, then build a sync (phase really) box to bring the beginning of a computer monitor frame to the same time as the beginning of the film frame to remove the horizontal black bar that would otherwise appear throughout screen capture. No one had done it before. MGM didn't know what union ran the cable under the stage from the computer to the monitors. We had 14 images across 98 screens in the crystal palace. We used two Godbout s-100 computers running CPM. They were the standard at the time. The video boards were solid state music. All companies used have since gone out of business.
@@williamfoy599 I actually did see Swordfish once when it came out. I didnt really know what to think of it at the time, as far as whether I liked it or not lol. Maybe I should watch it again and see what I think now. That was a long frikkin time ago lol
This was on tv recently and brought back so many memories. Ally Sheedy was so cute. I had a huge crush on her. This and 'The Last Starfighter' were faves.
Oh my gosh. My family went out to Blockbuster or some local movie rental place every other week or so to pick out a movie and I _always_ selected The Last Starfighter. Every. Single. Time. My parents made no secret about their frustration that I wouldn’t branch out. They hated watching that over and over with me. 😂😂😂
In the summer of 1981, I spent a day on set of "War Games" as an extra. A couple scenes were filmed at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle. But in one, the moped Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy were on tipped over and the two were taken away by ambulance as a precaution. They ultimately cancelled shooting for the day and all of us extras were sent home and the scenes were later reshot by a different director.
Happens I just re-watched this film about two or three months ago after at least a decade, and all I can say is that it stands up spectacularly after 35 years. Nice video. You managed to come up with some stuff I didn't know. :-)
I thought the premise was pretty silly and plot was unrealistic but the move was still very entertaining. The more realistic and scarier movie that was made 20 years earlier is "Fail Safe".
@@JohnRohoboth You kind of have to expect that in this movie. The movie came out during the Reagan administration and at the height of the Cold War. The anti-Nuke crowd was out in force wringing their hands, convinced that he would get us in a war with the USSR. Carl Sagan and Ralph Nader were on Night-line every other day clamoring over dis-armament while we were building a bunch of new weapon systems and flexing our muscles in Western Europe and the Middle East. It would not have been complete without an anti-nuke message. I thought it fit well in this movie and much better than the ham handed messages you see in movies today.
Great video. I always liked the fact that the writers didn't know which way the DEF-CON numbering system worked. Was DEF-CON 5 worse than 1, or vice versa? It was apparently a state secret at the time, so they had to guess. In the DVD commentary they STILL didn't know for sure, but had been told they'd gotten it backwards. Now we now the truth: They guessed correctly!
TRIVIA: this was one of the first movies to ever shoot video display consoles with film. If you look at the Crystal Palace set, you will see loads of monochrome video displays at most of the console stations on the stage. Since cathode ray tube (CRT) displays refresh at a frame rate that is different from a film camera, they had to hack the dot clock on all the displays to electronically change their refresh rate from NTSC 29.96 frames per second, down to cinema's 24 frames per second, so that it would look proper on film. They also had to have built a special master timing circuit that controlled all of the displays on the floor so that they could advance or retard their timing depending on when they needed the completely-drawn displays to be up, so the camera could capture it at full exposure, as well as sync their hardware with a Panavision camera. It really was an incredible feat, A very clever bit of real life hacking within the context of a movie about hacking. Absolutely brilliant. Listen to the First Assistant Director for WarGames recounting his team's amazing feat here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sTVC8GmjpnE.html
Thank you. I was the First Assistant Director. Not the 2nd Unit Director. Different job. And computers were not part of that remit. I offered to help. We got a panavision body, an oscillioscope and and figured out what pin on the camera issued a signal for start of frame. We tied that to a gen lock through a phase shifting circuit we built. The phase shift took the signal from the process projector (hall effect sensor on the main shaft issuing a pulse every new frame) and matched the genlock signal and the camera new frame signal. The proper, phase adjusted genlock signal sent to the video boards produced a new frame at the correct time, so the process screens, always in sync with the camera, were now in sync with the 98 images on the screens. We had no patent. We just did it. Panavision did it soon after and rented their boxes out to the business. We did not participate in that profit stream. I am the voice on the video you mention. You're the first person I've seen not part of our team who understood on sight what we'd done. Thank you.
@@davidsosna3370 Thank ME!? Thank YOU, man!!! WarGames was released as I was entering middle school, and already by then I'd earned a well-deserved "David Lightman" reputation. My friends and I made phone phreaking boxes back in the day and in our group, we had all the major early '80s computer manufacturers represented: we had a Commodore guy, a Tandy guy, an Apple guy, an Atari guy, and I was the IBM PC guy. I wrote simple games, for fun--including a WarGames-themed one--for the PC and the TRS-80 series before it. This thread is going to all those guys... I still talk to them today, 40 years on. Trust me... they will ALL know upon sight what you did, and why, and will love to hear you recount the "how." WarGames is very close to the top of a very short list of inspirations that have inspired me, motivated me, and helped me forge a 30 years-long IT career that I love, and of which I am fantastically proud. I assure you, sir: the thanks are all mine. You made my year, pal. Thank you. Thank you for your amazing innovation on one of my favorite movies of all time, and for helping inspire me to be successful in a career I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. You're a bloody legend, man.
piusg Very kind. A legend. I’m a retired First AD who writes. I’m teaching myself current digital electronics with Arduino. Fun. Easy. Also opens tech to all, including bad guys. Crowds will soon be a new threat vector. What’s your primary IT focus? Servers? Personnel? Client assistance? Or all of above++? I play with cryptography and python. Fun is where you find it. Thank you and yours for the laudatory comments. Please know I wasn’t alone. A friend did a lot of the coding. I was on the movie. The PC maps were created by altering the data in the font prom. (Built into hardware back then.) ‘A’ was replaced with a map edge segment. Then ‘B’ ...
piusg (Continuing. Hit send in error.) The process plates, on the big screens on the wall, were generated on an HP ??? It did color basic!! The guy who built the spaceship model that opened the first Star Wars, programmed the war scenarios with it. He/we invented global thermonuclear conflict scenarios to fill the screens. We had no domain experience. But we invented Chad being attacked by Lybia, larger parties responding and the end. That then actually happened. (Not the end.) I’m going long because you and your pals are interested in the ‘secret’ facts. (The stuff no one cares about - like the Hall Effect magnet shaft encoder. ) Enjoy and be well and thanks for letting me know you enjoyed the tech behind the screen. In 40 years, you are the very first who’s even written about it. And you nailed it. I’m impressed. I have a data security question if you’re interested: sensitive document encryption before dB storage. Does anyone do that? Keep separate keys on another server known only to IT? With Vernam, it should be rock solid. Love to hear your thoughts. Be well.
@@davidsosna3370 Hmmm... I must admit that I thought about this quite a lot before answering. We on the IT management side have a number of options at our disposal for secure, encrypted document storage, but almost none that are centrally managed. What I use every day is called BitLocker, a Microsoft product that encrypts the entirety of a storage volume rather than individual files. We can deploy and manage BitLocker centrally, as well as recover keys when users forget passwords. I used the following article recently to give one of my stakeholders some idea of what we do in MicrosoftLand when we want to encrypt a dataset, in response to her inquiry as to what strategies our shop was employing to reduce the impact of a severe data breach: www.infosecurity-magazine.com/opinions/management-bitlocker-enterprise/ Now that being said, the article mentions specifically that when you start introducing "heterogeneous elements" into your data-protection strategy--e.g. Apples, iOS, Android, and so forth--that's where the cracks appear, increasing the enterprise's overall "attack surface area." There are also separate management suites to accommodate these non-Microsoft devices, but the strategy there often merely relies on sending a "kill" signal to a device to remotely wipe it when physical control of it is lost. If the device never checks in again--say, because the bad guys have taken it apart and removed the DASD for analysis--well, tough sh*t. Kinda like that bit in "Blue Thunder" when Frank Murphy takes the tape out of the case so the bad guys can't erase it. In that case, our shop taught workshops on how to use 7-Zip, and how to pack, encrypt, and password-protect filesets for disbursement over insecure meduim--e.g. FTP or email. But it's clunky, and relies on the user to police themselves, and if you're a user, and if you just don't get it, you ain't never gonna. So the short answer to your question is that there are a variety of tools out there that apply data encryption to individual files, but none that I know of that are centrally manageable by an IT department. A Microsoft-centric IT department (like mine) will just lock down the whole workstation volume with BitLocker, because, when the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
When I tell people one of the first computers I ever built was an IMSAI 8080 and they look at me funny I say; "you know, Matthew Broderick's computer in War Games with the blue and red paddle switches.." (at 2:30) FYI those switches, 16 for addressing, 8 for data, plus misc control, were for reading and writing data into the system in binary. If your entire system crashed you could manually load, one byte at a time, a boot loader into RAM that would read an OS off a cassette tape machine provided of course you could correctly set all the switches correctly for hundreds of bytes without making a single mistake. I would of killed for one of those Shugart 8" floppy drives they show in the movie.
I taught middle school Tech ed for 9 years. 8th grade we learned Excel, took apart and put together a PC, Watched Triumph of the Nerds (PBS Doc about PC/Mac invention) and WATCHED THIS MOVIE. They weren't super excited when we started it, but when the bell rang 1/2 way through they BEGGED to stay and watch the end. I watched the movie, made a note of all the swear words, and then made a VHS Tape of the movie and muted the DVD audio at each swear (Cant be too careful in today's world of teaching). The kids LOVED it and I NEVER got tired of watching it or watching them understand it. Then we had a class period of discussion about it and hacking, updating to today's IP addresses, VPNs, and just don't do it. AWESOME MOVIE!
""All right, Lightman, maybe you can tell us who first suggested the idea of reproduction without sex?" "um......your wife?" Somehow, I still laugh out loud every time I see the scene. I should say, part of the reason it works so well is the guy does a great job setting up the punch line.
A teacher's desk should contain custard pies. To be thrown at makers of such socially-harmful personal insults _in public._ Crass and moronic. That's what I thought at the time, and it's my thought now. Ugh.
@@tonyduncan9852 Have you seen the entire scene? Because they bend over backwards to make the teacher look like an unbelievable jagoff so that you really enjoy his well deserved comeuppance.... Also, an interesting aside, the laugh you hear is not just the actors, it's the actual CREW, that's how funny the line is to almost everyone else in the world. Still, if you don't like the line, you don't like the line, I just think it's interesting you empathize with the teacher who is openly (publicly) cruel to his students in the scene.
@@stoytrivia1126 No context serves as a justification, and yes, I remember seeing this film, and enjoyed everything else. I have personally been both the abuser and the abused. The _science_ and the socio-political context of this film was very original in its time. Cheers.
In 1983, I was in the USAF, assigned to the 23 Air Defense Squadron, NORAD. While the displays in the film are not really like what we had (too much color display for that time), we did in fact think and behave this way about security, nuclear secrets, and ICBM and Long Range Bomber countermeasures. After the Air Force, I went on to my preferred career, computer programming, which of course, I began by hacking dumb terminals in NORAD's "Battle Staff" room to fool a Captain into thinking he had just initiated a data download that was beyond his security clearance level. That "hack" was little more (in fact nothing more) than programming some "macro key" recordings and playing them back in sequence. But it worked. "Warning, Captain nnnn n. nnnnnn. Download of data, classified , in 30 seconds...... 30...29...28..." To which I remember him in a panic saying "I gotta get my gd damn name off this thing..." Classic.
The company i worked for back in 1991 finally got a computer network, so we could sorta be on the same page. One manager's office didn't have a terminal and he was upset. So the idiot cut the line in the ceiling, went to Radio Shack, and tied it in himself. Of course the whole thing crashed and we had no idea for 2 days why nothing was working. He was told this ISN'T cable TV.
Remember the meme with the guy disarming a bomb in the field, and the other guy, identified as a "sonofabitch," sneaking up behind him with an inflated paper bag? YOU, sir, are the "sonofabitch" in this story! How'd the Captain take it when you told him the truth? _[Cut to the Captain, 36 years later, gaunt as Gollum, sitting in a corner quivering and drooling, his eyes darting frantically back and forth]_ What do you *mean,* you "didn't have the heart to tell him???"
@@WakenerOne Heh. Captain was then a good friend, and still is today. And he took a risk befriending me, as I was an enlisted airman, and the military frowns on officers "fraternising" with enlisted men. A few years ago, I went back to Panama City to his retirement ceremony. He retired a colonel, and is on my FB friend list to this day.
@@robertzeurunkl8401 - I almost sunk a good friend. Security person from NORAD came to be my company's head of security. While I was discussing a rash of break-ins, this friend sent me a phishing email as a joke, I didn't recognize it as him so I pointed it out the security head who took it quite seriously. Later while we were walking down the hallway we passed the guilty party, I took one look at him and realized it was him, asked him if he sent it. By that time he knew who I was with and definitely did not want to answer that question. The NORAD security person was really good when good security people were in short supply.
I loved this movie ♡ Even as a 20-something when I saw it for the first time, I thought John Wood as Professor Falken was a great actor and an attractive man. Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy were terrific as the main characters.
One thing I caught in the background after watching the movie for about the 50th time, was when David came home from school and overheard about his computer hack on the TV. As the camera focuses on him realizing what happened, a news story airs about a fire in a prophylactic (condoms) recycling center. Imagine having a job there.
Back in the '70s and early 80s when everyone still used bell system landlines. Myself & a few buddies were phone hackers. Yes, it was possible to get a dial tone on a payphone using bottle caps to ground. Using the Captin Crunch whistle with the right tones could get a long-distance dial tone from ATT, MCI, and Worldcom. Auto dialers were used to find back door computer systems like War Games. Today bell landlines are rarely used? Firewalls & antivirus have improved. But the old days sure were fun. Like being able to fly anywhere without ever paying a cent in real money.
I remember as a kid I did a bit of war dialing local numbers from my C64 around this time, but never was able to get past a login screen on the few computers I found. Also: “Mr. Potato Head, Mr. Potato Head, backdoors are NOT secrets.” “Yeah but you’re giving away all our best tricks!”
not really as we didn't have google, we only had BBS's for mass sharing of information til QuantumLink(late 1985). if you couldn't figure out stuff for yourself you simply did without--we are certainly sharper than many of todays youth due to this.
@@nicktucker3437 I wish I would've been computer geek in late 70's... wouldve had DOS nailed....then from there grew with technology ...been able to enter thru any back doors that have ever came up...so to speak... many people have gone down that road....I know a few of them ..Lucky for us their not evil....at least not the ones I'm aware of. 😕😞😔
Yep. I was born in 1971. It was a great time to be alive. Dungeons and Dragons in its heyday, video arcades, home computers like the Commodore 64 and Atari 800, great music, girls with hot 80's hair and styles, VCRs and video rental stores.... When I die and go to Heaven, I imagine it's designed in a 1984 theme.
The hacking stuff in this movie was pretty realistic... I was about Lightman's age at the time and I was into that scene. I did wardialing, phreaking, and tried my hand at hacking in to some systems (unsuccessfully; I wasn't very good). His life was basically my life except that he was good at it. Of course most of us weren't using IMSAI computers at the time, but that's a liberty I can excuse since that computer just looks so good in the movie. And it's got that heavy "computery" look that they probably wanted for a mass audience.
Me too, I used to do some nifty BASIC graphics programming on my commodore 64, and I tried to make graphic games emulating the continents on the screen like they did. Miss those days.
I worked on the picture and helped with some of the compsci. I always thought that was my IMSAI. I gave it to my partner to use in the film. Later, years later, I got a screaming email from a guy who insisted it was his computer and I was a fraud, stolen valor geek. He later apologized after some salty exchanges. I was younger then. Whatever, the IMSAI was a beast. Had to be programmed, like the Altair, with front panel switches. IMSAI's were cooler. 16 bits of address, then poke in a value for that address, increment, repeat until insane. Ah, the old days! They looked great but required a KSR 33 teletype to produce input!
Early computer technology: 1. *8-in floppy discs & drives* 2:29 2. *"Analog" [head/hand-set] telephone rest/connection to the first modems.* 2:35 _Oh, the memories!_
I saw Wargames with my grandfather when it was released. It had a profound impact on me, and to this day I will watch it everytime it comes on. I love Ready Player One and that is one part of the book I just loved! Great video
This movie was the first time I heard the expression "back door" to refer to a way to hack a program. I became a programmer in the 80's and always put a back door in any program I thought I needed to get into to fix a bug quickly.
When David gets reservations to Paris, the screen shows that the flight would be leaving from Chicago instead of Seattle. (I guess they knew he was going to be there a couple of years later.) You can see a member of the crew's back crouching behind the WOPR when they first show a spinning shot of it.
Scene where Matthew Broderick comes home and the news playing a story (in the background) about something happening at the "prophylactic recycling center"!
It's interesting to see the connection between Wargames and Sneakers. Both are movies I talk about as being "more realistic" towards cyber security to my students.
Fun fact -- and somewhat unrelated to the movie -- but in the 1980s, all school-kids in many districts around the Seattle area were required to take (and pass) a mandatory, 9-week-long swimming class in certain Jr. High and High School grades. But we simply overlooked that incongruity in the movie because we really enjoyed it.
The annoying skinny hacker and the fat hacker with the beard are based on Leonard DiCicco and Kevin Mitnick. Both ended serving prison sentences years after this film for computer hacking. The later movie Sneakers has even more thinly veiled versions of real life hackers. Though not the German hacker Pengo, Hans Heinrich Hübnerr.
You mentioned that United Artist was the only studio interested in the movie, but didn’t give the reason why. It was because at that time Alexander Haig,, a former 4 star Army General who had been Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Europe and served two years as Secretary of State under President Reagan, was on the UA board of directors at the time. He, like the Reagan Administration officials you referenced, believed the film was plausible and convinced the rest of the board to green light the film for that reason.
Another reason was that the picture started at Universal. They put us in turnaround, to UA, shot at MGM, when the submitted schedule was 25% longer than what Universal wanted. I turned the board in on a morning. We were told to clean out our desks that afternoon. UA picked us up a few days later.
Nope, Haig never worked for UA and I'm pretty sure he was still Secretary of State when this movie "green lit". The whole story about President Reagan and his administration being convinced it was plausible, blah, blah. Is BS.. I don't know who started it but it has been out there for years and have heard many versions of it. The whole notion is pretty ridiculous. It was a popular movie at the time. So the ONLY reason I can see for someone in the Reagan administration floating the idea to a public that was ignorant enough to believe any of this was plausible would of been to convince them that the administrations huge budget for military build up and new weapon systems was necessary. During this era, we got the Minute Man Mobile Launch system, the B-1B Stealth Bomber, the F-117 Night Hawk, smaller compact MIRVs, the B57 tactical nuclear weapons, the Patriot ABM System, improved KH optical reconnaissance satellites:, an updated submarine fleet and a global positioning system. Not to mention R&D money for SDI.
My home WiFi is named WOPR and my office WiFi is named Joshua. My first suggestion when troubleshooting electronics with friends and family is "just unplug the goddamn thing." ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Jk4T-SxTkWA.html They usually don't get it. :(
I was a young Air Force officer when this movie was made working inside Cheyenne Mountain. We were instructed to NOT answer any questions or comment on the movie. Of course the door and tunnel didn't resemble the real thing perfectly but they were close enough. Given that some cars were allowed in meant that walking the tunnel meant inhaling a lot of car exhaust which probably wasn't healthy. The inside didn't resemble the movie at all really. And most of all, the tech was wildly optimistic -- at that time, NORAD used pretty basic tube terminals due to the tempest requirements which limited radiation from them and distance from the telephones, etc. The idea of all those high tech pieces of equipment was laughable, especially the artificially intelligent computer. But I thought the movie was fun and entertaining. The mountain was a neat place. I don't think NORAD is there anymore, but I think the mountain still has tenants. Just the altitude (over 7000 feet, about 1000ft from the 6000ft plus of Colorado Springs) was different. Just try doing your fitness test at 7000 feet, and cars had much less power too.
David Griffin I moved to Colorado Springs as a kid in the late ‘50s just as NORAD was starting operations under Cheyenne Mtn. Their IBM computers had a few bugs that needed sorting out. Neat place to be when Castro was doing his missile thing with JFK. Some of my friends parents had bomb shelters built in the back yards; bet some are still there, around the Wasson High school area. Never felt the effects of the altitude but friends from the east sure did, occasionally fainting for a day or two.
@@TokyoXtreme And if the balloon truly went up, all they would have to do to pass the time down below... Well you know if you've seen 'Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb'
In 1982 I worked for HP in Southern California as a new Sales Rep. One day I was contacted by HP Corporate and told to deliver a demo HP 9845C desktop computer to a guy in Simi Valley (about a half-hour north of LA). The 9845C was an ungainly-looking thing. It looked like a double-sized AppleII with an EXTREMELY-heavy 14" color CRT mounted on top on two short pedestals. About $20K in 1982 dollars--very expensive. I delivered it to a house in suburbia. The guy who answered the door was dressed in a one-piece orange jumpsuit made of ripstop nylon. His name was Colin Cantwell, and his job was to create all the graphics for all the Norad screens using the 9845C. I presume he would do a sequence, then have it scanned to film, to be projected from behind for each screen during a take. A few months later, just before I left HP for a job at Apple Computer, Colin invited me to the set. They were about halfway through the build, and it was in a large sound stage with lots of carpenters hammering and sawing 2x4's and plywood. The large screens were not yet in place but the elevated glass command center in the back of the room was completed. Colin is still alive. He was a modelmaker and was involved in the original StarWars (Episode IV). He was thinking about what a Death Star should look like, and glued two styrofoam hemispheres together. The glue reacted with the foam and forced the hemispheres apart, creating an "equator" canyon. They worked the story into the idea that Luke would fly into that canyon in order to shoot his weapon into the ports, blowing up the whole megillah.
a personal funny addition, I watched this in a Dollar Theater, and someone sitting behind me, sees the "LOGON:" prompt come up on the screen, and says "Logan? Who the hell is Logan???"
There are funny parts in the movie for example if you listen closely to the TV in the background when he comes home with his grades you will hear something of an explosion at a prophylactic factory. May favorite part of the movie was when he escaped the locked room by recording the tones with a cut up headphone wire and played it back to unlock the door. It was very plausible method if door lock keypads used the DTMF tones.
John Badham grew up in Birmingham Alabama...and was the son of Army General. There's a nod to this with the tour group scene and General that welcomes the visitors from Birmingham.
This was greatly researched and presented...but - how about "The one thing we didn't need to "see" in Wargames" : when Dabney Coleman gives his assistant, Juanin Clay, his chewing gum to throw out, and she just nonchalantly tosses it into her mouth. It was kind of a gross "why the heck did she just do that?" moment that's difficult to forget.
As a young computer programmer of Basic and Assembly on hobby/home computers of the time, this film changed people's, especially parents', views of our hobby and efforts.
In a comedic note, at the end of the news broadcast where they realize there game had been real, the news broadcaster finishes up with"in other news, a fire at a prophylactic recycling factory" Great movie!!!
The term "war dialer" actually comes from the movie. The programs were called war games auto dialers. Not sure what they were called before that, or if they were even in regular use. I didn't start using them until about 86 or 87.
That last statement about DefCon was misleading. When I enlisted in the USAF in 1975, I was taught the five Defense Conditions and their code names including: DEFCON 1 - COCKED PISTOL - Maximum readiness. Immediate response. (Nuclear war is about to occur or has already begun.) That was not made up for this movie. It was a military reality that was first revealed to the public in WarGames. As a side note: I also learned in 1975 that the code name for a nuclear weapons accident was "Broken Arrow" which was revealed to the public in, and became the title of a movie in 1996.
@@ryanmccauslin7578 Believe it or not NORAD released photos on their web server about 5 or 6 years ago of what the real war room looked like back then along with what it looks like now. However the photos are no longer on their web server anymore. They are archived on various websites. Just google around for them. While the war room in the movie was far fancier than what the actual war room looked like, they did get some of the details right. There were also some other interesting photos of the Cheyenne Mountain Facility including the real blast door in the tunnel. There are actually two blast doors. One in the tunnel and another a short distance inside from the the one in the tunnel. They are a bit smaller than what is shown in the movie and are painted white.
It wasn't until the late 90s when I got onto the internet and found out that three of my favourite films: wargames, sneakers and project x (1987) were all produced by the same guys. Respect.
Two facts that I've always found interesting and charming in that movie is that Professor Falken's dinosaur clip includes scenes from “The Land That Time forgot” - a movie I really like - made with gomotion puppets by Roger Dickens (from "Alien"). Also the professor has a RC model of a flying reptile. A similar project was already available in the American Modeller magazine in 1951.
NoName, le’sigh. A Whopper is a type of meat sandwich most commonly referred to as a Hamburger though very rarely is ham an ingredient. The primary ingredient of any hamburger is beef. So the line about “beefing up security around the WOPR” is a subtle play on words and the subtlety is what makes it awesome.
Such a classic movie that made an indelible impact on me when I saw it at a young age. I have it on bluray now and it definitely holds up with a good dose of nostalgia to boot.
This movie reminds me of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. The WOPR computer is like Skynet, and both movies have a young guy and girl trying to access secret military facility in order to stop a nuclear war.
The first I ever hear of back doors was in this movie, but not the last. My brother told me about a back door for Galahad, which can allow the game to last much longer. The game is seen in the movie. This was all in the 80s when there were not many computer owners, and hackers had a lot of undetected fun. My brother was in high school when he taught himself how to repair arcade games. Techs were scarce, and hard to get to small towns in rural areas. My brother did repairs at the local arcade in return for unlimited free play.
Great Video! Even though I knew a lot of this, I was still pleased! The bit about John Lennon was news, THAT would have been something to see! As a computer "nerd" AND raging Beatles/John Lennon fan, THAT would have been...to go all '80s TOTALLY AWESOME!
Owners of the WarGames DVD will already know this, but... Matthew Broderick was not only playing Galaga 4 real in that movie scene, it turns out he was genuinely good @ it as well.
One of my favorite parts of Gen. Barenger is when he realizes that WOPR was going to launch the ICBMs and he could not stop it. "I'm going to tell him that I am ordering our bombers back to failsafe, we might have to go threw with this after all." He knew that if we struck first we were going to have to go all the way, he never flinched from the decision that was going to end the world. And then at the end where it is all over and WOPR and Falken are going to play some chess, he sits down and almost cries he is so relieved that he was not going to be responsible for the likely extinction of the human species.
I worked at NORAD in the 80s, the access badge reader system Matthew Broderick’s character tampers with was installed at NORAD years after the movie was made.
I remember as a kid trying the phone trick from the movie after I watched it. Problem was, after the movie came out the phone company sealed the headsets on all phone booths making the trick impossible to try, if it even worked in the first place.
On the DVD commentary track they mention they guessed at the ordering of the DEFCON signs. But they guessed wrong - they had 5 at the top, but in fact, the actual scale has 1 to 5 going down.
The video game scene, which was not shown here, was filmed at 20,000 Grand Palace. It was named such for its address of 20,000 Ventura Blvd in Woodland Hills. My high school was one block away and a friends father owned the place.
