WarGames | Canadian First Time Watching | Movie Reaction | Movie Review | Movie Commentary 

If you *really* want to be scared, this same thing happened _multiple times_ in real life. In 1979, computer screens at NORAD started showing a massive Soviet nuclear attack on the West, which led to several minutes of intense actions (and panic) before separate, early warning radars confirmed that there had been no launch; it was eventually determined that a system test had inadvertently been displayed on the live screens, nearly causing World War 3. Then in 1983 (a little less than 4 months after WarGames was released and about 3 weeks after the Soviet shootdown of a Korean Airlines 747), a system error in a Soviet nuclear bunker started showing a US launch of 5 ICBMs toward the Soviet Union. In that instance, full scale nuclear war was possibly averted when the duty officer in charge, a Lieutenant Colonel named Stanislav Petrov, independently decided that it was a false alarm and declined to notify his superiors of the "attack". Petrov based his decision on the belief that if the United States were going to launch a first strike, it would not be limited to only 5 missiles. What's truly terrifying is that those two instances weren't even the closest we ever came to full scale nuclear warfare during the Cold War.

As a bunch of others have said, this movie is actually frighteningly realistic for its time. You had a question about recording tones and opening the door, and yes, that would have been a thing. I actually had a cool little address/phone book device when I was younger that you could put up against a phone mouthpiece, and would play the tones to dial for you, preventing you from misdialing a number you weren't super familiar with, but had saved.

That "WHUMP" sound effect for the missile hits is fantastic, they wanted you to physically feel it in the theater.

I feel that everyone who grew up in the 80s knows what DEFCON means thanks to this film.

His home computer setup is technically 'hyper-real'. The program he was using in the film to dial every number in a given prefix checking for other computers became known as a 'war dialer' after this film came out! As others have mentioned, the thing he put the headset in was an acoustic coupler - mic/speaker pair opposite the handset that is connected to a dial-up modem (before you eventually just plugged the phone cable in directly). We used to dial up other people's computers and share files on 'Bulletin Board Systems' (BBS) prior to Internet proliferation. There is an excellent series created by Jason Scott called the BBS Documentary that will blow most young minds today!

This movie freaked out Ronald Regan when he saw it. He asked his chairman of the Joint Chiefs “could this really happen?” The general returned a week later, replying “Mr.President, the problem is much worse than you think.” Reagan's interest in the film is credited with leading to the enactment 18 months later of NSDD-145, the first Presidential directive on computer security.

My favorite thing about this movie is that there's no "bad guy". Even the military people are trying to save lives.

I love this movie's ending, with the computer realizing that war is a zero-sum game. A war thriller aimed at teens that's secretly and anti-war film where not a single person dies. A rare thing cinematically.

“The only winning move is not to play” still quoted all the time

I wish they never stopped making movies like this. Simple premise. No hamfisted romance, realistic setting and details... The tech is dated but the movie STILL HOLDS UP. It's timeless.

Wow. The two of you nailed the premise before it even started. Well done. I was around 8 when this movie came out and I grew up watching it often. My appreciation for it has only grown over the years. There are no shootouts. No car chases. No explosions. All of the action (aside from an accidental car crash through the fence that they left in the movie) is on computer screens. And they writers actually thought out reasonable obstacles for the teams to overcome. "Can't we pull the power?" Well... "The silos would consider that to be the destruction of Norad and follow through with their last received commands." That's great writing. I wish that more movies would think through problems like that.

My dad was a Missile Commander during the cold war. When his rotation came up for silo duty, we would go to the base armory to check out a sidearm. When we watched this movie when it came out originally, he said that aspect of it was relatively accurate. If a partner refuses to turn their key, the gun comes out.

One of the cool things in this movie is that, normally in movies with the military, it's the military commanders that want to start a war. In this one, the General is the voice of reason, willing to listen.

The finale sequence with WOPR is still one of the best moments in film. "The only winning move is not to play." Still one of the best quotes in film. A strong lesson in the futility of nuclear war.

When he asks the computer is it a game or is it real and it answers what's the difference . Always puts a chill down my spine.

Fun fact: at the time this movie was made, NORAD looked _nothing_ like that. (It probably still doesn't.) Their equivalent of that big flashy multi-level command center was a room with a whole lot of telephones in it. In fact, a representative of NORAD said they were all jealous of that set, and wished the government would shell out to get _them_ a cool screen-covered cavern with dramatic lighting.

The writers of Wargames went on to write Sneakers (1992) which is similarly hackery-computery. I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention Hackers (1995) which is about as far away from realistic as you could ever imagine but well, it has its charms.

The brilliance of 80’s movies is a movie like this was essentially made for kids. But they weren’t dumbed down as they had a good story and message too. I watched this a zillion times on cable in the 80’s. The irony is we lived in fear everyday of nuclear war even though the point of the movie is nobody wins. They just don’t make movies like this anymore.

30:57 It's likely that you just didn't recognize the references to this movie throughout pop culture. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Natasha says the line "Shall we play a game?" and Steve mentions that he has seen the film.

My favorite little bits of business in the film: The dad buttering his corn, McKittrick's assistant popping his gum into her mouth (not in the script), the news report of the prophylactic recycling center fire, Ally Sheedy playfully trapping Matthew Broderick between her legs in his bedroom (also unscripted), General Beringer's use of chewing tobacco and his "piss on a spark plug" line (again, improvised), and Dr. Falken's condescending first line upon seeing McKittrick: "Hello, John. I see your wife still picks out your ties." Brilliant.

Other than the intelligent machine part, everything else is very realistic. Also, this movie, for its time, had a booming low-end sound effect for the virtual missile strikes. In the theater, it was something.

When that lady said, "He's got the code, he's gonna launch." Gets me still to this day. You gotta realize that for us folks who lived thru this era, this was a very poinient movie for its time. Cold War drama was always scary shit.

This is one of my all time favorites. I've always felt that Ally Sheedy's Jennifer is one of the best, true to life teenagers I've seen on screen, both in character and performance. The scene where she convinces Falken to help, not with a big dramatic speech, but simply by saying "I'm only seventeen years old. I'm not ready to die yet." I also just recently learned that the part of Stephen Falken (a not so subtle take off on Stephen Hawking) was originally offered to John Lennon. He was interested but tragedy kept it from happening.

George and Simone- I’m 57 and can vouch for this being relatively realistic in terms of the tech- that’s what screens looked like, what dialup sounded like, what interfaces looked like before windows - I am not a hacker but learned Fortran etc at age 11 in 1977 and was programming simple games on my Atari 800 home PC in 1983 and loading games from a cassette tape drive etc would be very slow so it would take forever for a home computer to dial all those numbers and his parents would have gotten a phone bill with 1000s of calls each month and caught him

Finding a grey hair on my balls, or meeting a high school classmates 15 year old kid used to make me feel old. Watching reactors struggle with 80s tech can now be added to that list...thanks a lot youngsters.

This is one of the most realistic computer movies ever made. The tone capture thing was from 1970's era touch tone phones which used a scheme called DTMF or "Dual Tone Multi-Frequency." Basically when you pressed a key, two of eight possible tones were played. The device receiving this signal decoded it and decided what to do; usually call a phone number but sometimes other things. It was very common in the early 1980's. If you have a modern era landline phone it's very likely that a touch tone phone from 1977 will still work with it. Also, I highly recommend Brainstorm, probably the most accurate portrayal of how scientists work that has ever been made.

On Matthew Broderick's character using a tape recorder to hack the door, that's actually how keypads usually worked back then, same as the phones of the day. The system didn't read the number you entered, but the sound you got when hitting the keys. That's why every key you hit had a different tone. If you think about it, having the keys each sound different would otherwise be a stupid security issue. Anyone listening who knows the tones could tell what code you entered. They only had those different tones because it was actually the tones that drove the system.

Part of the reason why this movie is so beloved by computer geeks is that with some caveats, it was VERY realistic for the time. The exploits David used were widely known in the phreaking community.

"I'd piss on a sparkplug if I thought it'd help!" Hilarious line.

It’s called a dial up modem and yes, that’s how it used to work. I would say the most unbelievable part of the movie is how fast his computer runs. Nothing runs fast through a dial up connection.

My daughter has been sitting in a MinuteMan III silo for the past 3 years after graduating from the Air Force Academy. She loved it but got promoted and is going to Pituffik Space Base (formerly Thule AFB) in Greenland to watch weather radar. She said the alerts were tedious, but drills were terrifying. Funnily enough, I was stationed at Thule AFB to watch ICBM radar as punishment in the late 70's after duking it out with a 2 Lt in a softball game. Fun times!

LOVE this movie! My brother was WAY into computers, but unlike David's character was an overachiever and went to Williams as a math and computer science major at age 16. He was able to make free long distance calls via his computer as well and almost got my mom in trouble because she worked for the government. When this movie was on TV he used a tape recorder to record the audio and listened to it all the time. When I was 9 and we got a VCR we rented it and I actually got to put faces with the audio. Top ten movie for me! He passed away due to schizophrenia when he was 21 but this movie always makes me think of him. 😊 That was a REALLY old fashioned modem his phone handset was sitting on. My brother used a modem that was like a video game cartridge that plugged into his Commodore 64!

The two officers in the opening scene (in the missle silo) were a very young Michael Madsen (who you may recognize from his role as Mr Blonde in "Reservoir Dogs" ) and John Spence (who was in "The Rock" and played Leo in the acclaimed series, "The West Wing") The tech and hacks that were used in this film were VERY real and accurate at the time (although how a high school kid managed to acquire so much gear in his bedroom is a bit of a stretch) ... however, most of those life-hack "cheats" (playing the tones to hack an electronic lock... hot-wiring a pay phone... etc) have since been removed from society I would also like to jump on the bandwagon & recommend watching "Sneakers"

trivia: they created the computer voice by recording the actor who plays Dr Falken speak the lines in reverse order. So "Shall we play a game?" was recorded as "Game? a play we shall" and then putting the words back into the correct order so the lines would have unnatural intonation.

This movie REALLY appealed to me when it came out. I was a young computer nerd to be with a VIC-20, later to be replaced by a C64, and this film was SO cool (even though the grown up me can’t understand why I felt it was cool as opposed to being scary)

When this movie was made, David's computer setup was top of the line. It probably cost several thousand dollars at the time.

I saw this in the theater when it first came out and I can tell you, this was the height of technology at the time, and the thing you set the phone on is a modem. This movie blew me away as a youngster and I cannot tell you how amazing and exciting the ending part was in a packed theater with the giant screen.

Growing up, I think the brilliance of this movie was that it made it digestible for my young mind, through Matthew Brodrick's character, to understand that the world could just end and that we were not in control of things. It also helped me understand what a precarious situation a nuclear standoff was. Obviously there were more mature movies on this topic but I think was really well done for what it is. I love this picture.

“Sneakers” was the next movie by this writing team, different director though. Not as well remembered as War Games, but also one of my favorite light techno-thrillers. Amazing cast as well.

This is how you write a high-stakes movie. You guys called most of the major plot points well in advance, but the stakes are so high and the small beats so perfectly placed and built that the tension by the end is nail-biting even though you’re 95% sure of what’s going to happen. I was a kid in the 80s, and the end of this movie still gives me chills. We came so close.

Using tape recorders to capture and replay signals is/was a thing. In fact Clifford Stoll used tape recorders to capture modem traffic when tracking down a spy. I strongly recommend his book The Cuckoo's Egg.

I saw this twice in theaters and countless times on vhs growing up. It still holds up today as a brilliant story.

Great job guys. My dad wo4ked for NCR from 1964 till 2010. He taught me a lot about computers and I got my first home computer in 1981. All the tech in this is correct, I asked my dad if this could have happened, he said yes.

The technological accuracy on display in this movie holds up incredibly well 40 years later.

Sign the petition to bring back the Simone "Woo"

The scene at the end when Joshua is running through the war simulations at high speed with all the flashing etc. was really cool to see in theaters. Also, after seeing the corn buttering strategy in this film my whole family tried it out the next time we had corn lol

I absolutely loved this movie as a kid. I’m impressed at how many lines you predicted before they happened. Yes, in the ‘80s, this is how we computer geeks communicated. That wasn’t quite the sound that the computer modem made, though. And the “acoustic coupler” (putting the handset in a speaker/mic device) was becoming outdated in 1984 - I used “direct connect” modem where the phone line plugged right into the modem. (And speeds were not nearly as fast as they would need to be for the graphics in this movie!).

10:37 The weird guy in the glasses was played by Eddie Deezen, who also played in GREASE. He basically plays this part in every movie.

As a child during the 70's and 80's, I can confirm the fear of a first strike was really sold the both side's people.

The amount George and Simone liked this movie makes me like them even more.

Love this movie, thanks for a great reaction. This was Matthew Broderick's second movie. The same year this came out, 1983, he won his first Tony Award. He was 20.

If you loved this movie and want something similar from the same writing team, Sneakers is an amazing look at hacking with social engineering at the forefront.

80s movies often had a way of couching very serious moral and existential dilemmas within these charming story lines. This is a prime example. Nerdy high school kid wants to play a game and ends up almost causing WWIII If you want another great tech-nerdy 80s film watch Real Genius. It’s more of a comedy but like War Games it has real stakes.

- The two missile techs in the silo are John Spencer (who refused to turn the key), and Michael Madsen (who pulled the gun). Spencer is best known for his Emmy-winning role as White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry on 'The West Wing', and he passed away in real life during the show's final season as his character was running for Vice President. Madsen was Mr. Blonde in 'Reservoir Dogs' and Budd in 'Kill Bill'. - The voice of Joshua/WOPR was actor John Wood, who played Dr. Stephen Falken. Basically, all they did was record him saying the lines in many different ways...then piece together the lines word by word from various takes, then run it through a vocoder. Broderick and Wood would appear in another film during the 1980s, the medieval romance adventure 'Ladyhawke' with Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Leo McKern, directed by Richard Donner. It is a wonderful film that no reactors have touched yet! - General Beringer played by Barry Corbin ad-libbed a lot of his lines. - President Ronald Reagan loved the film, but it scared him. It also scared other politicians in Washington, creating a lot of legislation and starting investigations into real gaps in security concerning the military and computers. At the time the film was made, hacking was not illegal. It didn't become illegal until 1990. In fact, Broderick's character was based on a real hacker. - The film was written by Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker. Together, they also wrote 'Sneakers' with Robert Redford and Sidney Poitier. Parkes became a major producer, with credits like the Men In Black franchise, Sweeney Todd, The Mask of Zorro, The Legend of Zorro, The Terminal, Catch Me If You Can, The Road To Perdition, Gladiator, Deep Impact, Amistad, Twister, and Awakenings. His wife, Laurie McDonald, also has many of the same credits as a producer with him. In fact, they are still production executives at DreamWorks, and have worked extensively with Steven Spielberg. Lasker wrote Awakenings with Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro, and Project X with Matthew Broderick.

My family was stationed at Loring AFB when this movie came out. Awesome experience. This movie shaped my childhood. It's what got me into computers.

Another good 80s film by the director John Badham is Blue Thunder. It looks at first glance of the cover to be a dumb 80s action film but is actually a pretty grounded thriller with really good characters and a has a similar vibe the this movie.

A movie that not a lot of folks have seen, but is actually extremely good, featuring a very smart kid and the dangers of messing with things you don't fully understand is the 1986 film "The Manhattan Project."

Yes, as others have said, the computer technology shown here is largely spot on for the time. I used an acoustic modem (that device into which the phone headset was plugged in) when using a "portable" terminal to our campus mainframe when I was a graduate student in 1981. Most people in the computer lab used teletype machines to communicate with the mainframe but there were a few CRT monitor display systems available like the one David used in the movie.

That dialing in computing was real. Before the internet as we know it we used to have these things called BBS's they looked like what he gets into. You would dial up a BBS and play some games on it for a limited series of turns for the day, then disconnect so others could call in and play their turns. That was the gaming part of it anyway. Dialing into work like he did the school was legitimate back then and even today it's still seen as kind of a secure way to remotely administer something.

Only starting the watch so likely will add more as you question more, but as a computer kid of the 80s whi also loves this movie I should be able to provide info. 1. The thing the phone went on is an acoustic couple, essentially a 300 bps modem and the first way home users could connect to the "internet" which was pretty much just knowing the phone number of a BBS and using a coupler to connect to one. 2. The recording the beeps thing worked on payphones back in the day (called phreaking) since the sound of coins entering gave different tones but it wouldn't have worked on the door keypad since it's just not tone-based 3. There is a 100% win-rate tactic for tic-tac-toe....at least until your opponent learns the one move to block it

Yes, the computer tech is accurate for the time period. If you enjoyed this movie and want something where it WASN'T a simulation, you should add "By dawn's early light" to your list. Amazingly tense suspence movie.

I love this movie as it brings back such fond memories! I was a kid and went to high school in the 80s, and I had started learning computers around the age of 11 or 12 (what fun programming in BASIC and Assembly on TRS-80s, Vic 20s, and C64s!) my first modem I got was 300 baud, and I was blown away that through a phone you could connect to other computers. Most people didn’t know the first thing about computers so you had to find your small community of computer nerds to belong with. The first software I bought came in a plastic baggy with a xeroxed manual and used a dataset (a cassette tape), and most software I had was hand typed by me copying printouts of source code in the few computer magazines there were. Later when BBS came along it was so cool! It felt like a VERY early internet in a way, only there were very few people, but you could chat on some with others logged in, swap files with each other, and play primitive door games. For the most part, Wargames does capture the feel of computing in those days, and there was something special about it because so few people did it. The slowly character at a time print out on the screen that is still even mimicked in some films today, came from the modems being so slow you could litterally see letter after letter displayed. The other part of the movie that captures things so well, is the threat of nuclear war; the cold war was our version of climate change and was scary as hell. In 1983 the TV movie “The Day After” came out, and I think it is still the world’s most viewed TV movie. I remember us talking in classes at school about it. In 1984 “Threads” a similar movie came out. I had nightmares for real about nuclear war, and it always seemed it could come at any time.

I love John Badham's direction. He directed a lot of TV series in the 70s and graduated to movies in the 80s Short Circuit and Bird on a Wire were also big hits.

@8:38 It's a acoustic coupler for the modem (MOdulator/DEModulaor ). It was against AT&T's policy at the time to hook up third party/non-authorized equipment to the lines. Sitting the handset in a cradle was a work-around. Eventually you could just plug the modem directly to the phone line, but that was later.

My late brother was a Missile Launch Command Officer, one of those guys underground and with a hand on the key... it's pretty spot on, including the side arms they both carry to use on the other if needed. Also, the basic "computer almost starts a war" plot is real. Early on they ran tests, basically on a system that wasn't isolated, and a programming error almost caused a war during a test. Yes, they developed redundant systems that were off line, for testing/development.

Something I noticed about that first scene -- Michael Madsen's character is holding the gun and there's a click. I think he DID pull the trigger and they'd unloaded the gun due to there being a full-mission-profile drill on. Also, honestly? I think that since it's an audio lock it's entirely possible that David's trick with the door would work. WIL WHEATON built a device from a hacker's magazine to make free public phone calls using stuff at Radio Shack and claimed about 7 years ago that he used it from "1989, to just before whenever the statute of limitations would expire by now".

Loved your reaction! :) The contraption that David puts the phone on is an 'acoustic coupler modem', which was kinda out of the date by the time the movie came out, but the production team thought people would be more familiar with it. It was essentially just an older style of modem that connects directly to the phone via the receiver's speaker and microphone instead of being a self-contained unit. :)

So hyped to watch this. Take away the obvious fiction, this movie captures my younger years so well: Phone number range scans, dot matrix printouts of "need to investigate further", figured out how to manipulate grades in my school's computerized system, parents being completely clueless of my hobby, phreaking, BBS cultures, .. Such good times! I legitimately get nostalgic watching WarGames.

One of the writers of WarGames also wrote Project X (1987), another great Matthew Broderick movie. I think Simone would love that one, it has some military similarities and it makes me a bit tearful when I watch it.

So happy you all watched this. You're probably getting a lot of answers in the comments, but there is a full-length "making of" documentary on RU-vid that gives extensive background into the film, and the history surrounding it.

The phone hack is real. It's called a ground-loop start. Phone's signaled information to the Central Office (CO) using both tones and intermediate connections of the 2 wires connecting them. The whole discipline of hacking the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) became known as 'phone phreaking' or just freaking. There was even a periodical publication dedicated to it that is still around today known as 2600 Magazine (2600 Hz is a fundamental frequency in the phone DTMF tones you commonly hear - like the door security tones in the film).

The thing MB put the phone on was the modem. In the early 80s, whoever few people that had computers online would connect it through their phone lines. Fiber optics were a thing of the future back then. As far as I know, this movie is scarily realistic on describing hacking techniques of the times. Also, it warmed my heart to recognize the guy who didn't turn the key - the great, late, John Spencer, best known for his role as Leo McGarry. I miss him.

With the Cold War and the threat of nuclear war looming over us, to me, this was a very real movie. And while fun, it was very nerve-wracking watching it for the first time (I was like 13 or so when I saw it for the first time). The Day After came a few years later, but was a TV movie about nuclear war that has haunted my nightmares for decades. Definitely worth a watch.

This movie literally changed my life back in 1983, I was 15 at the time. I saw WarGames 3 times in one week at the local theater here in southern Finland, and nagged mom and dad to buy me a computer. A month later they gave in and bought me a Commodore 64, on which I learned to code (BASIC and assembler), played games and whatnot. This became my main hobby for years (before computers it was mostly mopeds and such). I studied computer sciences in school, and eventually started working in IT nine years later in 1992. I am still doing that. Not sure if I made the right choice, but here we are.

the "thing he puts the phone on" is an acoustic coupler - and yes that's how we used to dial into stuff :)

This was one of my favs. Came out when I was 14. We were all convinced this is what was going to happen. Sadly now we’re headed back down the same road.

This film is a really underrated classic. People always focus on the computer technology being 'dated' without realizing how timeless are the themes and everything else.

Shout out to Barry Corbin here; such an underrated actor.

After this movie came out, the phrase "Shall we play a game?" was said by people all the time. It went viral before "going viral" was a thing.

😆😂🤣Love how you guys summed it up before it even started. This was very realistic for the times. It not only showcases *hacking* but also *phreaking* (basically telecommunication hacking).

George the problem with being beholden to your conscience in that situation is that if there was an attack - there was no time for the people in the silos to get more information in that scenario. As they mentioned in the next scene, a sub launched missile could take out Washington in less than 10 minutes. What helps the people in the silos is that the missiles have what are called PALs (Permissive Action Link) so that even if they do "accidentally" launch a missile - it will either splash down in the ocean, or the warhead won't detonate, or both - unless the missile was launched with a valid code from the President of the United States. It helps take the burden off the men and women on the front line because it eliminates the risk of error and it isn't their decision that causes the weapon to detonate. That being said - I get it. I'm not sure I could turn that key in that scenario either. The people that do have psychological evaluations prior to being put in the silos to see if they are mentally capable of doing it. And the door thing might have worked depending on the system. If it worked based on touch tones, it would have.

This movie had a huge role in the book for Ready Player One. The main character had to play as the role as Matthew Broderick in VR to get to the first key.

This is one of the best movies that both captures the reality of living with stress and fear during the Cold War, and probably actually had an influence on Nuclear arms treaties during the Reagan era, and possibly even some little influence on the fall of the Soviet Union, although Perestroika and The Chernobyl coverup then whistleblowing and the cost of cleaning up Chernobyl bankrupting the USSR had the major influences there. Hollywood films were a black market phenomena in the USSR and the line “The only winning move is not to play” resonated with everyone who saw this. Everyone informed about what nuclear weapons did, and how many both sides had, was aware of the Mutually Assured Destruction reality of nuclear war. This movie just really crystallised the message. It put the West and the Soviet Block front and centre clearly on the same side: No Using Nukes.

Missile bunker command protocols back then were clear regarding refusal to turn the key at the appointed time. The launch officers were armed for a reason. If it came down to it and you refused to turn the key, the other launch officer was authorized to use deadly force to either convince you or make you pay the ultimate price for dereliction of duty in a time of war. To this day, officers and NCOs at just about every level are authorized to shoot and kill troops who disobey orders during war. It doesn't happen because of the professionalism of those serving in our military, but it CAN happen, and they know it. The "contraption" he set the phone on was a very, very early modem. Instead of just attaching the phone line, it required the actual receiver to be attached to transfer the audible handshake protocol.

I also have to recommend Sneakers. One of my all-time favorite movies with an all-star cast: Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix, etc. Another great film starring Dabney Coleman is "Cloak and Dagger". It's of the same timeframe as War Games and similar in tone. An excellent spy thriller.

Great film, that sadly never loses its relevance.

My mom bought 2 VCRs and a bunch of blank tapes so that when we rented a movie from Blockbuster Video & it was a film that we liked & wanted to watch again, she's tape the movie with one VCR while the other one played the movie. Depending on the movie length and the tape speed, she was able to get 2 or 3 movies on a blank tape. We had a closet full of cassette tapes - probably close to 300 cassette tapes, so around 600 to 900 movies on tape by the mid-90s. WarGames was the very first movie she put to tape. I was quite obsessed with this movie growing up as a kid of the 80s. WarGames, D.A.R.Y.L., Amazing Grace and Chuck, Project X, The Manhattan Project, and Explorers were my jam. If you haven't already seen any of those, I highly recommend them.

Absolutely real and accurate. Grew up during this time and pretty much used all of that equipment. Dial up modem, 5.25 inch floppy disks and drives etc.

Another movie written by Lawrence Lasker is “Sneakers,” which is another very good techno-thriller with a goddamn amazing cast.

"The Net" (1995) with Sandra Bullock is also a good film to watch as is "Chain Reaction" (1996) with Keanu Reeves, Morgan Freeman and Rachel Weisz.

Mexican guy here. This movie totally reflects the paranoia of The Cold War. I was a kid then and I remember the newspapers were full of stories of espionage and Nuclear War scares. The reservations for the trip to Paris looks super bad since France was a hub or meeting point for many spies from both sides (There is a movie called "Ronin" that deals with that). BTW... the soldier with the revolver at the begining of the film was played by Michael Madsen, Mr. Blonde from "Reservoir Dogs".

Another good film that's about WW3 and human error is "Fail safe". Filmed and released almost the same year as "Dr Strangelove", its plot also is about nuclear war being initated accidentally. But, whereas "Dr Strangelove" is laced with comedy, "Fail Safe" is strictly no laughs.

In the opening scene, it was a simulation launch. The missile commanders were not told that it was a simulation, to see if they could actually be trusted to carry out the duties for which they've been trained and assigned (expensively). Being an unannounced simulation, 22% did not turn their keys ..... However, the other 78% DID turn their keys, yet no launches actually occurred. The cradle thingy that he sets the phone receiver into is a modem. It allows the computer to hear the dial tones/pulses coming from the external computer it is logged into.

I'm pretty sure that Ally Sheedy ended up in The Breakfast Club because Matthew forged her grades. This was the start of extended universes in film.

Y’all haven’t heard of War Games, simply because you’re young. When this movie came out, it was number one at the box office for weeks on end and the United States was hooked. People loved this movie. It’s been saved at in the United States archives as being culturally relevant to the United States as a whole & is protected. Lastly, the message wasn’t about War, it was Nuclear War. In the age of Nuclear Weapons, there are no winners. So don’t play. It was this thought process that brought about the MAD theory. Mutually Assured Destruction.

Fun fact I only learned a couple of years ago. It was revealed some time back the the computers that launched the missiles were designed to be programmed with new codes (obviously) but the generals in charge wanted the launches to be done as fast as possible, so they left the computers with default codes of all 0s.

In the military, or at least the Army when I was in, you absolutely had the right/duty to question or disobey an unlawful order. "Just following orders" is not an acceptable excuse with a court martial/military tribunal. 8:41 "I need to know what that contraption is he sets the phone on." ITS A MODEM! Damn, I'm old. The ending calls to mind: "War. War never changes."

The scariest part of this film is that it was inspired by an actual event. In the early 80's a computer technician at NORAD fed a simulation into the operation system and basically the same thing happened in real life as what went down in the film. Minus the flimsy "AI" part.

What's terrifying is that most of the computer systems in the missile silos were made in the 70s or 80s and have not been updated since. The voice of WOPR was provided by John Wood, who played Falken. The director gave him the lines with the words reversed, which Wood read. The audio was then edited to move the vocals around before being fed through a simple FX machine to make it sound "electronic". The result have WOPR a very unique sound.

Strange Game, the only winning move is not to play. Best line in movie history and you can't convince me otherwise. Also amazing to see you guys predicting correctly so much.