@@awkwardashleigh time you need to watch the cartoon Scooby-Doo if you don't know what the name Daphne is and hopefully someone in your patreon votes any of the Scooby-Doo movies you just made my brain explode with that fun fact about yourself
That autodialling machine that Mathew Broderick uses is now called a Wargames dialler or Wardialler. This movie actually inspired Ronald Reagan to examine the US's cybersecurity, asking if it was as bad as the movie depicted. His aides replied that it was, in fact, far worse.
I hope I'm remembering this correctly... apparently many decades later when they published what the secret passcode was that the president would use to arm the nuclear missiles... it was just all zero's :/
Well, I suspect it would have been Bush Sr. that commissioned that study, given the fact that he was the one more-or-less in charge while Reagan was President in name. The fact that he was former CIA head and would know exactly how bad the potential threat could be was probably no coincidence either.
Read Cliff Stoll’s book The Cuckoo’s Egg to see how weak US military and intelligence cybersecurity was in the 1980s. I think there was a PBS docudrama adaptation of the book you can see on YT.
@@joehoy9242 yeah this movie came out in 83….. but nice try …. If Reagan was as fragile as you want to pretend after only two years in office…. no way would he have mopped the floor with Mondale in 84
No 911 you dialed 0, Long distant calls, collect calls, directory assistance, person to person. Phone bools only covered your area. You paid extra for an unlisted number. Area codes actually meant something. Hundreds of thousands of people were employed as telephone operators, telephone linemen etc.
@@carlanderson7618 When I used the phonebooks in the 80s, it was for local calls. I never mentioned using them for long distance calling so what are you talking about. Phonebooks had local business and residential numbers and that's what they were used for.
Seriously, are these kids for real? One time as a kid I found an 8-track player with some tapes. I didn't act like it was a relic from before the industrial revolution.
Ashleigh, as a HUGE Kubrick fan myself, when you quoted “You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!” I snorted my Coke Zero out of my nose with laughter! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻😂👍🏻
I rather enjoyed the fact that she was armed with _multiple_ movie refs, from Dr. Strangelove to 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was refreshing and great to hear.
There was a car crash near the end when the jeep was racing into the facility and it rams a fence. At the end when the WOPR is running the game trying to win and just before it gives up, it sparks a bit and the power goes out with some smoke in the air, so it's action packed.
Ashleigh, you cracked me up. “You mean you could talk to an operator and she could connect you to anyone?” Yes ASHLEIGH, that’s what operators did back in the day…lol
I'd say there are probably still some "help lines" that offer those kinds of services. Top Gear showed a car (they loved it) that cost $300K ... and has a built-in phone, which connects you to an operator.
"They had a whole ass phone book in a payphone?" Yes! I'm out and about I don't have a phone number for every situation. Half the time pages were missing.
As an elder Gen-X computer programmer, this film was actually fairly realistic in regards to tech( outside the AI) And we were exponentially more at risk for a nuclear war with Russia than we are now.
That last assumption is simply wrong ... from my european perspective, because *"a kid that has been bullied for decades [Russia] will EVENTUALLY START PUNCHING / USING REAL VIOLENCE".* If you need facts about "the West being bullies (and breaking treaties/promises)": - USA, GB, F and Germany PROMISED "NATO will not expand eastward" in return for russian troop withdrawal from East Germany and reunification - look up "James Blunt prevents WWIII" ... an episode from the Kosovo conflict/war, which clearly shows the mindset of US generals - USA and Russia signed a treaty "guaranteeing independence of Ukraine", BUT ... what is "sending $5bn (or more, during Obama) to a country run by corrupt oligarchs" other than POLITICAL BRIBES to END "independence" of Ukraine? Here is the real reason why "NATO" (the USA) wants Ukraine (because the West has no economic ties to that country): answer the following question: *_What does (did in 2014) Ukraine have in common with Syria ... and why did they get destabilised around the same time (2012-14)?_* Answer: a russian NAVAL BASE The Cold War was OVER in 1989, Russia was essentially BROKE ... but the USA/NATO kept fighting, because otherwise CIA and NATO would have lost funding! We are less likely to get ACCIDENTAL WWIII ... but that doesnt really matter if there are people pushing for it in their stupidity / arrogance.
The closest we ever came was in the mid 1990s due to a scientific rocket launched from Norway and the incompetent Russian command structure not passing along the memo about the planned launch. It was the only time the keys had actually been turned in a real alert and the Russian president only had to push the last button with litterally 10 minutes to decide if it was a real threat.
1983 was one hell of a year. Soviets shoots down a passenger jet. Petrov's nuclear early warning system lights up. And Able Archer that scared the sh*t out of the Soviets... yeah '83 was one hell of a year.
The important part was that they were partly made out of thin carboard. So they were really floppy. My dad once told me his boss ruined some expensive new software, because he "opened the envelope".
Also, if you're ever in the mood for another 80's Broderick film, you might check out the nearly-forgotten gem that is 1987's "Project X". Bring tissues. 🍿
I _love_ the climax where the WOPR is running its wargame simulations and the entire hall is being lit up by the flashes of the simulated explosions. It's so epic!
I was a bit underwhelmed by the supposed "climax" and payoff up to that point, so it was very satisfying to see it escalate to something truly awe-inspiring. I thought for a moment this movie was going to leave me disappointed, but it's worth it just for that ending.
The line, "You can't run in here. Somebody might get hurt," is a callback to the line in Dr. Strangelove, "You can't fight here. This is the War Room."
@@awkwardashleigh 9 to 5 boss and you did not spot that strait away , Dolly Parton , Lily Tomlin and Dabney Coleman (the bossman in 9 to 5) do reunite in the Beverly Hillbillies movie in 1993 , by working in same movie ... its OK movie . Floppy disk formats are 8" , 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" . In 1983 , 5 1/4" floppy could hold only 320KB data , those computers were running some 64000 or 68000 processors , number is from how many transistors those had , operating at 7-21 Mhz ... yeah your modern smartphone has one to two billion transistors. 64000 and 68000 processors are still in use , you may have microwave oven with one of those or thermostat on a heater . US has sold old nuke missile silos to doomsday preppers , all those Pentagon deemed to be too expensive to upgrade and upkeep US active missile silos are in Montana , North Dakota, Colorado and Wyoming. (F.E.Warren Air Force Base is in both states) In Idaho you can go and visit US nuke powered airplane engine , they made it an tourist attraction , idea of a airplane you would not need to refuel , of course it was failure , that why after test lights the real plane was buried under massive concrete dome , it's just too radioactive .
I was fairly young when we saw this in the theater... my dad made the same quippy reference as Ashleigh, at I think, the exact same moment (which, when I followed with a blank stare from me, which prompted him to say, "I've got to show you that one" ... just had to pause and comment: thank you for a side trip down another memory lane side road, in what is shaping up to be another great, FIRST TIME WATCHING :)
@@awkwardashleigh Watch 2 minute warning from 1976 staring Charles Heston, it's about a police detective who must stop a sniper from going on a mass shooting rampage at a football game with his hunting rifle.
@@johnsalazar245 oh, shit! I remember watching that with the family when it aired on network television (probably 1978-ish). I just had a huge nostalgia flashback🤣
The program David was using on his computer is a War Dialer (designed to call numbers and determine if a computer picks up or not). The floppy disks were that big, thats why they were called floppy disks. They came in 8 inch, and 5 and 1/2 inches at that time. The cradle David was placing his landline phone handset into was an early modem (Modulator/DeModulator) and is what was used to translate digital signals to analog to transmit them over the phone to another modem that would demodulate the analog signal to digital on its end. This is how you connected to other computers at the time. And his IMSAI setup was state of the art at the time, he had to build it from a kit, because they only came in parts and by parts, I mean, he had to solder the thing together :)
The acoustic coupler used in the movie was already obsolete in the 1980's. it was limited to 300 baud. Modems of that era already using an RJ-11 jack to connect. The IMSAI 8080 was made between 1975 and 1978, so it was several years old by 1982. The IMSAI was a clone of the Altair 8080, which was sold exclusively as a kit.
@@timmooney7528 Technology moved so fast back then. If you were a kid in the 80s/90s with your own computer it was usually an obsolete one, since the good ones were several thousand dollars (and would become obsolete yet again in just a few years). Kids today will be like "It's still like that! My 5 year old machine won't even run my best games in 60FPS anymore!". And I have to be like "Dude, imagine having a computer that doesn't have USB drives or WiFi while all the newer computers do because your rig is 5 years old and USB drives and WiFi haven't even been invented yet..."
Great memories, one of the first movies I remember as a kid. To my father, all this was science fiction, computers as well. It's a fad, it'll pass. I had to join a damn high school computer club to gain access to a nice piece of kit. Technology changes from time to time, I remember when 10 MB HDDs came out, I wet myself with excitement. The computer teacher, was shocked, why the hell would anyone want that much storage. I guess he was related to a guy named gates :P
In the early 80s, I lived with my mother in law, who was a computer programmer. She had a dedicated room upstairs with three computers in it. It had a screen door on it to keep her two cats out, because back then, dust and cat hair could wreak havoc on those early computers. This was a time when the only people who had computers in their homes were those who worked in the business. Different times!
I was surprised she didn't recognize dabney Coleman either from 9 to 5. The guy in charge of the computer was the boss in the movie 9 to 5. Love your reactions girl! Keep it up!
@@JPSE57 Was gonna say, WarGames is brilliant, but my favorite is still Cloak and Dagger. When I was growing up I used to watch it with my father every time it was on TV. Such fond memories. Also, Flight of the Navigator - which now that I'm older and understand the plot that movie kind of freaks me out. As a kid I just liked the ship.
I spent 4 years as one of the guys underground controlling the missiles. That stuff is OLD. For a while we were still using the 5.25” floppy disks to load settings. That whole scene was a decent representation of what we did. Great reaction as always!
Someone just commented the other day that the missile silos were still using that retro technology and the prohibitive cost to upgrade to current tech.
And of course, that was entirely the point...make launching a nuclear war a no-win scenario so no one would attempt to start one. It worked, though it was no less scary for it. I'm frankly more worried about it now, when it could come from rogue actors instead of a government.
Sneakers (1992) is a companion piece to War Games, written by the same duo - Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes. It’s absolutely worth watching! Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strarthairn, River Phoenix, Mary McDonnell & Ben Kingsley. What a cast!
Good job Ashleigh. In the 80s, teen hackers were a real thing. What would become the internet was out of it's infancy, but hadn't quite reached it's teenage years. A small number of people had home computers. It was all on dial up. And some of the kids that had them explored obsessively. Many of them got hired by governments when they got a little older, and became the hackers we know today. Others were hired by governments to combat hacking Other questions you had giant floppy disks, yes you could call phone booths. Yes, telephone books were a real thing. The girl was in Breakfast Club. She was the dandruff artist you loved so much. Very cute girl named Ally Sheedy. She was also in Short Circuit, Bad Boys, and a very 80s Brat Pack movie, St. Elmo's Fire.
This is one of the quintessential 80s movies, without question. One of the greatest things about movies is that they’re essentially a time capsule of the period in which they were made and released. This film is a gold mine of a time capsule of the early 1980s.
Encapsulated the life of an 80s teenager too. I like how it shows also how David didn't have interest in regular school but how different he was with computer interests & wanted to study Falken and computers etc. Probably lot's like him in the early 80s...
I was a teenager when this came out and I saw it in the theaters. It freaked us all out! We all had grown up with this threat. This movie kind of made it a little more real for us.
You know, I'm 51 years old, I was a draftsman and CAD instructor. I'm still giving classes on autocad and many of the students are so young... it's so funny when I explain them some feats on autocad that come from the early 80s, you should see their faces when I tell you there were computers without even a mouse 😂 Everything was DOS and command lines. It's incredible how time is flying! Hugs girl!
i'm old enough to remember how to use cp/m 2.2 and before that, we saved and loaded our programs using audio cassette tapes on a standard cassette recorder. it was a major jump going from a 300 baud acoustic modem to a 2400 baud hayes smartmodem.
I was in the last class at my college that received any instruction on an actual drafting table. I saw them move the tables out and bring in a bunch of computers. I cursed bitterly at autocad until I got used to it. Then I realized it was WAY better.
I talked my company into buying Autocad back in the 80's. After using it for a while and the drawings got complex things got slow. So I asked by boss if I could buy a math composer chip to speed things up. He asked why. So I said watch this. I started a regen on a large drawing, got up, went to the lunch room, got some snacks out of the vending machine, came back, ate a bag of chips and drank a soda and then the regen finished. I looked at my boss and he looked at me...........The purchase was approved. Today the same drawing is redrawn in a fraction of a second.
The guy you were talking about in the beginning was actor Dabney Coleman. You saw him as the boss in 9 to 5. If you want to see more of him, may I recommend the movies Cloak & Dagger (1984) and Short Time (1990).
I thought he was great in that Chevy Chase movie where he gets radioactive, I forget the name. Also the Dabney Coleman Show was great, that's where I first saw Gina Davis.
Fun fact: Even though Speech Synthesizers already existed in 1982/83, the robotic voice of "Joshua" was no computer voice. These were recorded dialogs, spoken by the actor of Professor Falken, John Wood. They recorded the words of the dialogs in random order and then cut them into the right order again, to give it a more artificial speech-melody. And a Vocoder (an instrument that combines human voice with synthesized sounds) was also used for the electronic voice effect. Also this was the first time in a movie the computer-term "Firewall" was ever mentioned.
Yes Ashleigh, Telephone books were a thing. They were not only in phone booths but were also delivered to every home. The resident phone numbers were in the WHITE PAGES and the business numbers were in a separate book called the YELLOW PAGES.
We had the white pages and the yellow pages in the same phone book. My parents paid a monthly fee to be "unlisted." It COST MONEY *not* to be listed in the phone directory!
I saw this film in the theater with friends when it first came out. I had just finished my freshman year in high school. It left such an impression on me that when I got home, I walked my mother through the entire movie scene by scene. So glad you enjoyed it, Ashleigh!
I was thrilled to see you were reacting to this movie, it's one of my favorite 80s movies. This was Matthew Broderick's second movie, but it got him noticed (he was 21 when this came out but had already won his first Tony Award at age 20). Ally Sheedy was also in The Breakfast Club. And Dabney Coleman was seemingly in every great 80s movie. Thanks for a great reaction.
9 to 5 with Dolly Parton and Lilly Tomlin - that's one of his movies, was a fun movie too. You know, I hope someone can slide Ashleigh one of those special requests for a certain movie, I'm just not computer skilled enough to manage all the various online social crap to get it all and keep it functioning, I had a discord, don't even know if i can still log in, can't remember the last time i was on, and pretty much never had use of it. I have a hard enough time with getting my E-Mails suddenly logged out and them trying to make me remember my Password, which often as not ends up with me having to change it to some new one I also wont remember, or worse, I get permanently locked out and can no longer access it or anything I had stored in there - that's happened at least twice now to me. Anyways, lol - enough "diddly dallying" as Ashleigh says, basically when I heard Ashleigh say "Is this a hacker movie?" I had the sudden obsessive need to get her to somehow know about and add to her upcoming watch list a Movie called "Hackers" it's an absolutely awesome movie about Hacking (obviously), and is one of (if not the first) Anjelina Jolies first movies - I think she was 16 or so when this was made, super early in her career, but the mood in the movie really touches the inner techno nerd vibe, and the 80s feel, and the musical score is awesome so I really hope someone gets her to push it up to the forefront of her "To Watch" list. :)
"Most men try to get in through the back door anyway". I love it when you occasionally make dirty jokes, because you are generally overall so wholesome. Makes it much funnier.
Having your computer dial every single number in an exchange to find the modems was something we used to do. It's called "wardialing." And his hack of the payphone was an example of "phreaking." There were a lot of real hacking techniques (although fictionalized examples) shown in this film.
I love that the film shows the grunt/scut work involved with hacking, and isn’t just flash cuts of fingers flying across keyboards and circuitry and CGI flash.
Yeah, once upon a time, you could actually do the "grounding out" phreaking trick he did on the pay phone. Then the phone companies got smart and started gluing the handset shut, so you couldn't access the guts of it.
@@TheMsLourdes Yeah... they shutdown a lot of the classic phreaking techniques over time... so put away your Cap'n Crunch bosun whistles and blue boxes! ;-) They won't get you free calls anymore... if you can find a payphone anywhere anymore! lol
@@KabukiKid By the time of the movie, it was a thing of the past. But, early phones worked with impulses, that is, going off and on hook rapidly and / or at a steady pace (that's what the rotary dialer did). IIRC, paid phones needed a quarter just to be "activated" so to speak, and get to talk to an operator, but the signal was like a single short pulse on the line, which you could generate by grounding the line very briefly. Also, in very early systems, operators themselves asked to put more coins in and were able to count the 'clicks' on the line to make sure the right amount had been inserted. In the '60s (way before the time of the movie) DTMF (using two tones codes) was introduced. But, it was all but tamper-proof, all you needed was something capable of generating the right tones (like an Amiga) and knowledge of what tones to generate. I've seen (with my own eyes) people still doing that to route calls thru obsolete switches, which messed up with the billing of the call, in the early '90s. Right after that, all systems switched to offline signaling, and that was the end of it.
This movie is one of my all-time favorites. Glad it finally made the list. Surprised that Ashleigh didn’t recognize Ally Sheedy as the weird girl from Breakfast Club. I had a crush on her from this movie. I was so glad Ashleigh appreciated the “piss on a spark plug “ line. I still use it periodically.
You probably saw Dabney Coleman in "9 to 5". My absolute favorite Dabney Coleman role was in the movie "Cloak and Dagger" with the kid from "E.T.". The ending to that movie got to me when I was young, and if I saw it in the theater today I would stand in my seat and cheer.
All of us old Gen Xrs are coming out of the woodwork for this one. Ashleigh, there absolutely were touchscreens in the early 80s. And those were 8 inch floppy disks that came before the 5 1/4 and 3.5 floppies.
We had touchscreens at the shopping mall in 1982. Quite sophisticated. I stood there for an hour looking at food specials and then fish species of northern Ontario! When the Internet showed up I was like, "oh, this again."
I grew up with this movie. The fact that the climax is so intense without any violence is such a breath of fresh air some days. I have loved it since the first time I saw it back in the early 80s and I will always cherish this one.
@@thomasmacdiarmid8251 Which may work against SANE opponents, but now we have fanatical regimes who literally want to trigger the end of the world. Danger, Will Robinson!
This movie, along with Poltergeist, will always hold a special place in my movie loving heart. I was like 11 I think, when we got cable TV in the house for the first time, and HBO would show it's Prime time films over and over again, and in the first month of having cable, I know my sister and I watched this movie a dozen times, easy. Loved this movie and love watching people react to it. Talk about a dose of nostalgia. I'm really glad you enjoyed it.
Those little HBO guides that came in the mail with all the ten zillion dates and times particular movies would play so you could drive your parents nuts that you were watching (whatever) AGAIN....
Easier in execution, yes. But remember there was little to no documentation on how computer systems worked back then. Also, there was no internet so everything you wanted to learn had to be by going to a library and hope they had the book(s) you needed. Most early hackers put in months and years of study as well as trial and error to learn how.
Ashleigh getting indignant when they said 41 was old brought me so much joy, because I'm 41 years old,lol. Also,I think one of the guys in the opening scene was Michael Madison, who played Budd in Kill Bill (along with other roles, of course)
Man, 80's movies knew how to END. You're left thinking "wait, what about all the repercussions of these events, and what's gonna happen to *this* character, and is *that* guy going to get what's comin' to him" and the movie's just like "that's not what the movie's about", then CREDITS. This and Robocop 1 are both so good at the "pack it up, it's over" ending.
100% I know this is neither from an 80s movie or from an ending, but it reminds me of the great anecdote with Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford when they were making Star Wars (1977). At the end of the scene in the trash compactor, Luke's hair is sopping wet. In the next scene, it's completely dry. Mark brought this as up as a problem, and Harrison (in his characteristic drawl) said, "Hey, kid... It ain't that kind of movie. If people are looking at your hair, we're all in big trouble." 🤣 What are the consequences for David hacking into NORAD? "It ain't that kind of movie." 🙂
The Commitments is a great Irish movie. Also, Matthew was not playing Space Invaders, he was playing Galaga. He thought we wouldn't notice, but we did. And making JOSHUA play Tic Tac Toe was to teach the program about Mutually Assured Destruction.
One of my favorite films from the 80s. I recommend this to Millennials and Gen Z peeps all the time. I just did the other day! There are so many phrases that are still referenced today "Defcon 1" or "The only winning move is not to play." "Would you like to play a game?" It was a very intelligent film and like you said, even though the tech is outdated, the premise is still valid and relatable to today. With AI and our dependency on computers and for them to think for us, this is some scary s**t! I'm so glad that you enjoyed it, too. :)
President Reagan watched WarGames at Camp David the weekend it was released, and it freaked him out. A few days later he asked, “Could something like this really happen? Could someone break into our most sensitive computers?” at a meeting including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The answer came back a week later: “Mr. President, the problem is much worse than you think.” This led to major changes not only to defence security but also anti-hacking law.
Whooo! This is such a good movie. I'm so pleased you watched! It really was so much more intense, I guess, to us in the 80's who heard about nuclear annihilation almost every day; it loomed large, for sure. This movie made my ex SO and I want to move to Washington state, and when he was given the option to pick where he wanted to be stationed (in the Army), he choose there and we actually got sent to Fort Lewis, Tacoma, WA. It was AWESOME. :D
I do love this film and it was the first time I heard about NORAD. One thing not talked about much are the two characters in the missile silo at the beginning. The older one is John Spencer who started on the Patty Duke Show, was in The Rock, and was in the whole series of The West Wing. The younger one is Michael Madsen in one of his first roles. He is famous for Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs (among many other roles).
I had a weird reaction when I saw John Spencer [today] in the missile silo drill scene: "Why the hell do they have Leo McGarry participating in an exercise dressed as a captain? He was a colonel and a war hero! Get back to the White House, Leo; your president needs you!"
Another fun fact: the sound made by the keyboard typing belongs to something known as a "buckling spring keyboard" (or, more precisely, a "catastrophically buckling spring" keyboard, as it is named in the patent iirc), the most famous of which is the IBM model M keyboard, which is legendary among keyboard afficionados - supposedly an absolute joy to type on, and an absolute nightmare for anyone in the same room with the amount of noise that it makes. Also - there's a TED talk from february 1984 about touch screen technology (can't remember who gave it), but looking back at it, the things we take for granted, like smartphones, internet, and touchscreens, have been in the works for quite a long time before someone made them a reality.
Nah - that's NOTHING - older IBM keyboards used to have an electric-powered hammer (a solenoid) that thwacked the case to make the keyboard sound more like a typewriter (because, that's what keyboards were 'supposed' to sound like) - you can find examples on TH-cam, they're deafening.
I love how Ashleigh didn't recognize Dabney Coleman's name, mentions that she's never even heard of the name Dabney, then Dabney Coleman comes on screen: "He looks familiar". Well yeah, Dabney was in quite a few movies in the 80's, including 9 to 5, which you reacted to.
21:02 Ashleigh asking a series of obvious questions about payphones that I now realize are no longer obvious to people who didn't grow up with them. God, I'm old. 🤣
The way tech is shown and used in this film is pretty accurate (for the time). The writers have another film called "Sneakers" which is also worth a watch. Their research into hacking yielded both films.
After having loved both films for so many years, this is the first time I am hearing that they were both from the same writers. Thanks for the fun fact.
You should have waited on the Quiet Man, but why not Darby O’Gill and the Little People? Something to consider next year. Your reaction to the eighties technology reminds me of the interesting fact of the minuscule capacity of computers that were used for the moon landing. Cell phones have a ridiculous amount of processing capacity over and above what they used over 50 years ago. Just a few thousand bytes, compared to billions in modern day cell phones.
Back in 83 when US/USSR tensions were really high, a Soviet early warning system detected several nuclear launches from the US. The officer in charge declared it a false alarm, and it was. Others in his stead may have not been so easily to dismiss it, so it could have been much worse.
That happened three months after this film was released. The man's name was Stanislav Petrov, and he literally saved the world. He is widely regarded as being, for that moment in time, the most powerful man who ever lived.
@@MrRSCHECK There have been numerous false alarms that were fortunately caught in time, including simulations accidentally played into live systems and radar which mistook the moon as it rose over the horizon for a massive Soviet missile attack. There's also natural events which could have been deadly - imagine what could have happened if the Tunguska event had a occurred at the height of the cold war and hadn't hit a deserted part of Siberia. It's amazing we're still here really.
Similarly, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was a situation aboard a Soviet submarine near Cuba on which the captain and political officer had decided it was time to launch nuclear weapons. The third man needed to authorize the launch was Commodore Vasily Arkhipov, and he instead single-handedly prevented World War III from happening in 1962.
I seem to recall that officer being punished for not passing on the attack warning. He didnt have authority to decide it was a false alarm lol. Another near miss was 1962. We came within 8 hours. We were going to bomb the missiles in Cuba not knowing they were operational and the General had orders not to let them be destroyed. He could order launch on his own. With the tensions with China and North Korea and Russia and soon to be Iran , its only a matter of time before they are used. Have a nice day...
"It looks like a giant floppy disk!" That's.... exactly what it was. A floppy disk. They were called that because they were a bit floppy and bendy. BUT, the magnetic ring inside them were miniaturized and we had the "floppy" diskette (like how a cigarette is a smaller "cigar"). Those smaller ones were so much better and became so popular most people reverted back just calling them "floppy disks" even though they weren't, well, floppy anymore. And their shape became the Save symbol we know and love today.
And those smaller, less floppy disks is why one of the points on the "Evil overlord" list is "all of my important computer files will be padded to 1.45 MB in size"
@@jakubfabisiak9810 I used a compression program that could split any collection of files into a bunch of compressed files of equal size. It could only be decompressed if you have all the pieces together. So I moved a few hundred MB of data from one PC to another using two dozen disks and a few trips back and forth. I couldn't afford a zip drive and I had no LAN, so it was the only option I had.
Floppy disks came in 3 sizes, 8, 5 1/4, and 3 1/2 inches. A year or so ago I found my 8" floppies (and tape reels) that I used in college. Yes, my beard is gray...😊
One "joke" from a computer help line was someone calling and complaining about floppies not working: *_"I put the sticker on it, roll it into the typewriter to write the label ..."_*
WarGames was to the 80s what Dr. Strangelove was to the 60s, in that it scared the hell out of a whole generation regarding the possibility of nuclear war
"Confidence is high" means confidence is high that it's a real attack. Back when we were hovering on the brink of annihilation "THe only winning move is not to play" had a lot of resonance.
@@danh8804 yes, I feel like we're still hovering on that brink. Though there was a brief moment, between around 1991-1996 where it felt like we took a step back....
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 On the analog phones there were ways to call a local number and then through a certrain tone connect to where ever you wanted and just pay the local rate.
My memory of first seeing this was my sister and I (college and high school students on summer break, respectively) spending some quality time with our grandparents for a long weekend and also hanging out with our uncle and his family, who lived nearby. My uncle drove the family and us to Rockford to see the movie, and we all really loved it. My favorite memory of the weekend though was when my great aunt Dorothy (also visiting that summer) was walking through the living room as Grandma and we were watching the news with Tom Brokaw. She paused, looked at the screen, sighed, and said, “Tom Brokaw…if I were just twenty years younger…” and continued on to the kitchen. My sister and I just couldn’t stop laughing! We had never before heard anything that lustful from the sweetest stereotype of a little old lady you could meet. My favorite memory of an aunt I never really met that often since she lived on the East Coast.
@kathyastrom1315 you gotta watch out for us East Coast ladies... Cold hands warm hearts AND Tom Brokaw wasn't too hard to look at honestly. 😉🗽😎💜😂 #NYGenXBIKERLady
Those were indeed floppy disks... 8" ones. They were replaced by 5 1/4" ones as the 80s went on and later the hard plastic 3 1/2" size. These days they are relics as nobody manufactures them anymore and the existing stock is deteriorating.
@@awkwardashleigh Well even the 8" pre-date me. :) For the others, we had plastic cases we'd keep them in if we needed to transport disks about. The computer David has is an IMSAI 8080, which was the first clone of the Altair. It actually was already obsolete by '83; by then home computers like the Apple II, Commodore, Atari, Radio Shack/Tandy, and others were more prevalent.
The nuclear missile codes were still being used on 8" floppy disks up into the 21st century. Partly, this was because the older technology isn't vulnerable to modern-day hackers, but mainly, because they still worked, and there was no practical reason to upgrade.
If you like this movie, another film from around the same time (1984) and also has Dabney Coleman is "Cloak & Dagger". It has a similar feel to Wargames.
The line "You're not supposed to be running in here. Someone could get hurt," is a ode to Dr. Strangelove's joke about the absurdity of war: "Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
Dabney Coleman was the boss in 9 to 5. Wargames is one of the best movies about kids and computers. One of my favorites. And your reaction spot on. Watch Red Dawn behind it. That would be the kicker.
I really like 9 to 5, though Dabney's best role is in Tootsie. He's also in a rather odd comedy from 1990 called Where the Heart Is that stars Uma Thurman and Crispin Glover as entitled Manhattan rich kids who slum it in pre-Giuliani Bronx.
Dabney Coleman was also in 9 to 5 as the boss. That must be where you recognize him from. But you may wanna check out Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman. He's in that movie too. Highly recommended!
"Confidence is high" means the information is reliable. The Air Force General with the southern accent was played by Barry Corbin, he has had a long tv career, Northern Exposure, The Closer and lots more. Ally Sheedy was in Breakfast Club but looks a lot different. Another good hacker movie is Sneakers with Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, and Dan Akroyd.
I remember seeing this one back in the 1980s as a kid, and just the idea that you could hook a computer up to the phone line and have it "talk" to other computers, felt like science fiction in and of itself. This was what feels like way back in the day now, when playing computer games on our Commodore 64 was the most awesome thing ever. Though to be frank, if I could get to play those games again on that machine, it would still be the most awesome thing ever.
LOVE this movie!!!! Anything on the Cold War gets my interest….loved that you watched Dr. Strangeglove & now this one!!!! To do the proper Cold War trifecta, you gotta react to “Red Dawn” next!!!! It’s got Patrick Swayze Ashleigh 😉
It's funny how people forget that little accident back in 2018 where a missile alert drill was accidentally shunted into the Emergency Alert System throughout the Hawaiian islands as a real world event.
Oh, people will not forget. Those that were on Hawaii island will remember it for the rest of their lives. Didn't Jim Carey has a spiritual experience because of this?
The arcade game that he's playing is Galaga. It was everywhere in the 80s. 10:28 That room full of washing-machine looking things? Those are hard drives. They might have been as big as 20 megabytes. 13:29 "Confidence" as in confidence that the radar is detecting a missile attack, rather than some other objects in the sky. 28:54 "The only winning move is not to play" is one of those money quotes that has stood the test of time. It really was a great summary of the Cold War. Another great hacking movie is "Sneakers"; there are heists. Also, I second the recommendations for seeing Matthew Broderick in the criminally forgotten "Project X".
Hold on a second. Project X is stirring something in my brain. I don’t remember what that is but I’m picturing a monkey for some reason and have a vague recollection of Matthew Broderick holding one. Now I have to go look that up because it’ll drive me crazy until I figure it out. But…he was a scientist, right? I feel like this was a movie I saw in the theater. Hmmm.
"The only winning move is not to play" Intended for thermonuclear war. Obviously doesn't apply to the Cold War, we won. And the only way not to play was to surrender.
Don't know if you've seen "Ladyhawke" (Richard Donner, 1985), but that one stars Matthew Broderick, and also features John Wood (Professor Falken). Oh, and it also stars Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Dangerous Minds), with supporting appearances by Leo McKern (The Blue Lagoon), and a MUCH younger Alfred Molina, nearly two decades before he played Doc Oc in Spider-Man 2. Terrific cinematography, and good editing by Stuart Baird, A.C.E., who, for you James Bond junkies, would later edit "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall." That said, Andrew Powell's score is very much love it or hate it. Arguably a cult classic, but enjoyable.
9:00 -- Yes.. This was what was called "war-dialing" -- And you'd be surprised how many places it could get you into today.. Company as big as TH-cam or Facebook has THOUSANDS of phone numbers.. -- You get the area code and prefixes for where the building is located and just start dialing by the ones .
Might be be all-time favorite reaction video by anyone. Ashleigh, you made me bust a gut laughing so many times. And yes, floppy disks were huge originally, and you could see a 24-hr, 7-11 store (just like that one) every 2-3 miles back then.
The CAST was amazing - fantastic script - everything pointed towards a really intense climax scene which had humor and wisdom. And BRODERICK is amazing in this film. This is a seminal film that informed our notions of what matters most and broke the bank as well.
I graduated HS in 80. In my computer science class we were still programming using punch cards. We did have a 300 baud modem that we used to connect to a "super computer" in Phila and played the lamest game of Star Trek ever devised. Kind of like Battleship but with less excitement and strategy. How slow was 300 baud you ask???... For those that remember dialing into AOL, Prodigy or a local BBS with a 56k modem... you were 168x faster. By the 90's we had cable modems and then FIOS. The strangest thing was that I chose computer science classes over typewriting because I actually thought typing would be a thing of the past within a couple years. I thought we'd be dictating instructions to computers by mid 80s. Decades later... still typing!!!
Ashleigh needs to do a deep dive into the Cold War. I recommend “The Hunt For Red October” and “No Way Out” for espionage thrillers, and “We Were Soldiers” for a war movie that is (IMHO) better than “Saving Private Ryan”. And I would have recommended “Firefox”, but if our gracious host didn’t like ninety seconds of a helicopter chase in “WarGames”, there’s no way she’d stick through Clint Eastwood’s trek across the USSR.
Kids these days ... goldfish attention span. They should all be dropped "somewhere in the wilderness (with a map) and told to find their way out of it again".
12:24 -- Something VERY similar did happen once.. We almost went to war because someone loaded a simulation and the people looking at the screens DIDN'T KNOW it was a simulation. Or at least, that's the official story.. Personally, I think what we see in the movie is closer to the truth..
Lol, watched this one in the theatre! This is one of our Gen X important movies. Thank you for watching it, Ashleigh. Take care and have a great day from Manitoba, Canada
"Not a moped but not quite a motorcycle." Actually, that is the very definition of a moped. That's what they are. By The Way: I saw this movie with a date when it was first playing in theaters. I thought it would be fun. It was not fun. Not for me, anyway. Remember the first place that the Soviet missiles "hit" in the WOPR simulation? Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. I was in the Army stationed at Ft Richardson, Alaska, at the time. Literally right next door. I was practically pissing myself during the movie and had a panic attack afterward. My date was unimpressed.
My favourite John Badham film, thanks for reacting to it - so few do. Other John Badham films to consider (if you've not already reacted to them): Blue Thunder (1983), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Short Circuit (1986), Stakeout (1987) and Nick of Time (1995). He's still directing TV today, at the age of 84. A legend of cinema in my opinion.
From a Gen X nerd, one of the best computer hacker movies ever! A few "that wouldn't happen" or "that's not a thing" moments but for a kid hacking over the internet in 1983? Gold!
I'm so glad you liked it. This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. That was a scary time the 80s, the end of the Cold War wondering if there was going to be nuclear war and radioactive mutants (I was a kid, so I really believed on radioactive mutants)...
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'Thats the kind of lock KFC got on their secret recipe.' That was a great joke! Made me fall of my chair.
thank you - you get me
@@awkwardashleigh A film too little known and good is Project X (1987) with Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt.
@@awkwardashleigh time you need to watch the cartoon Scooby-Doo if you don't know what the name Daphne is and hopefully someone in your patreon votes any of the Scooby-Doo movies you just made my brain explode with that fun fact about yourself
Salt
Thyme
Basil
Oregano
Black pepper
Dried Mustard
PapriKa
Garlic salt
Ginger
white pepper
@@jeffking887 Isn't it 11 herbs and spices?
That autodialling machine that Mathew Broderick uses is now called a Wargames dialler or Wardialler. This movie actually inspired Ronald Reagan to examine the US's cybersecurity, asking if it was as bad as the movie depicted. His aides replied that it was, in fact, far worse.
I hope I'm remembering this correctly... apparently many decades later when they published what the secret passcode was that the president would use to arm the nuclear missiles... it was just all zero's :/
Well, I suspect it would have been Bush Sr. that commissioned that study, given the fact that he was the one more-or-less in charge while Reagan was President in name. The fact that he was former CIA head and would know exactly how bad the potential threat could be was probably no coincidence either.
Read Cliff Stoll’s book The Cuckoo’s Egg to see how weak US military and intelligence cybersecurity was in the 1980s. I think there was a PBS docudrama adaptation of the book you can see on YT.
@@joehoy9242 yeah this movie came out in 83….. but nice try …. If Reagan was as fragile as you want to pretend after only two years in office…. no way would he have mopped the floor with Mondale in 84
@@MrSheckstr Democrats are not only always lying about the future, they are also always lying about the past. Their veracity bereft.
I love how Ashleigh is amazed at the idea of a phonebooth with a phonebook in it.
And where was Superman??
I hated looking shit up in phone books growing up and most of the time the information was wrong.
No 911 you dialed 0, Long distant calls, collect calls, directory assistance, person to person. Phone bools only covered your area. You paid extra for an unlisted number. Area codes actually meant something. Hundreds of thousands of people were employed as telephone operators, telephone linemen etc.
@@carlanderson7618 When I used the phonebooks in the 80s, it was for local calls. I never mentioned using them for long distance calling so what are you talking about. Phonebooks had local business and residential numbers and that's what they were used for.
Seriously, are these kids for real? One time as a kid I found an 8-track player with some tapes. I didn't act like it was a relic from before the industrial revolution.
Ashleigh, as a HUGE Kubrick fan myself, when you quoted “You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!” I snorted my Coke Zero out of my nose with laughter! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻😂👍🏻
I rather enjoyed the fact that she was armed with _multiple_ movie refs, from Dr. Strangelove to 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was refreshing and great to hear.
Snorting coke in to your nose would be more in tune with the 80's.
I've seen James VS Cinema recat to War Games & he even says the opening scene felt very Kubrick like
Not one gun battle not one car chase not even an explosion and yet one of the most intense thrillers to come out of the 80's.
There was a car crash near the end when the jeep was racing into the facility and it rams a fence. At the end when the WOPR is running the game trying to win and just before it gives up, it sparks a bit and the power goes out with some smoke in the air, so it's action packed.
@@secludedmisanthrope6388 I stand corrected
Blue Thunder is another John Badham classic tech thriller.
Subtle anti war message too
Totally intense and it scared me as a little kid in the 80s
Ashleigh, you cracked me up. “You mean you could talk to an operator and she could connect you to anyone?” Yes ASHLEIGH, that’s what operators did back in the day…lol
To quote Jim Croce, “Operator, won’t you help me place this call? See, the number on the match book is old and faded.”
I'd say there are probably still some "help lines" that offer those kinds of services.
Top Gear showed a car (they loved it) that cost $300K ... and has a built-in phone, which connects you to an operator.
She'd really get a kick out of party lines.
Shhh, nobody tell her about switchboards and 'Klondike'. 😄
"They had a whole ass phone book in a payphone?"
Yes! I'm out and about I don't have a phone number for every situation. Half the time pages were missing.
"Arcade Games used to only cost a quarter?" that was such a heart felt real moment!
And minimum wage was $3.25
As an elder Gen-X computer programmer, this film was actually fairly realistic in regards to tech( outside the AI) And we were exponentially more at risk for a nuclear war with Russia than we are now.
That last assumption is simply wrong ... from my european perspective, because *"a kid that has been bullied for decades [Russia] will EVENTUALLY START PUNCHING / USING REAL VIOLENCE".* If you need facts about "the West being bullies (and breaking treaties/promises)":
- USA, GB, F and Germany PROMISED "NATO will not expand eastward" in return for russian troop withdrawal from East Germany and reunification
- look up "James Blunt prevents WWIII" ... an episode from the Kosovo conflict/war, which clearly shows the mindset of US generals
- USA and Russia signed a treaty "guaranteeing independence of Ukraine", BUT ... what is "sending $5bn (or more, during Obama) to a country run by corrupt oligarchs" other than POLITICAL BRIBES to END "independence" of Ukraine?
Here is the real reason why "NATO" (the USA) wants Ukraine (because the West has no economic ties to that country): answer the following question:
*_What does (did in 2014) Ukraine have in common with Syria ... and why did they get destabilised around the same time (2012-14)?_*
Answer: a russian NAVAL BASE
The Cold War was OVER in 1989, Russia was essentially BROKE ... but the USA/NATO kept fighting, because otherwise CIA and NATO would have lost funding!
We are less likely to get ACCIDENTAL WWIII ... but that doesnt really matter if there are people pushing for it in their stupidity / arrogance.
You sure about that?
The closest we ever came was in the mid 1990s due to a scientific rocket launched from Norway and the incompetent Russian command structure not passing along the memo about the planned launch. It was the only time the keys had actually been turned in a real alert and the Russian president only had to push the last button with litterally 10 minutes to decide if it was a real threat.
1983 was one hell of a year. Soviets shoots down a passenger jet. Petrov's nuclear early warning system lights up. And Able Archer that scared the sh*t out of the Soviets... yeah '83 was one hell of a year.
It's *still* easily the best movie about hacking.
Ashleigh: "There's no fighting in the war room!"
Me: "Ah, she has become one of us."
Allie Sheedy was in The Breakfast Club.
She was also in a movie called Short Circuit, which is worth a watch, if you get a chance!
And "Short Circuit" was ALSO directed by John Badham, just like "War Games" :)
Ashleigh - the Ally Sheedy movie SHORT CIRCUIT is definitely something you will just love.
Allie Sheedy also wrote a children's book "She was Nice to Mice" when she was 12 and played a lesbian in "High Art" around 2004...
Floppy disks were originally 8" across. The 5.25" diskettes were first called mini-floppies, because they were so much smaller.
Ahh my favorite original floppy disk containing Oregon Trail... how I miss thee.
@@nikwalters1029 Mine had Z.O.R.K.
I thought the 8 inch floppies were for big business . I've never seen any 8inch floppies in any computer store back then .
Not to mention "mini computers" were the size of a refrigerator!
The important part was that they were partly made out of thin carboard. So they were really floppy.
My dad once told me his boss ruined some expensive new software, because he "opened the envelope".
Also, if you're ever in the mood for another 80's Broderick film, you might check out the nearly-forgotten gem that is 1987's "Project X". Bring tissues. 🍿
I would add Ladyhawke.
EXCELLENT movie!💖
Project X is never talked about. Great movie.
Project X is bittersweet, but a good forgotten 80s classic
Ladyhawke. Excellent 80s movie. Also with Rutger Hauer, early Michelle Pfeiffer. Humor, magic, revenge....
I _love_ the climax where the WOPR is running its wargame simulations and the entire hall is being lit up by the flashes of the simulated explosions. It's so epic!
I was a bit underwhelmed by the supposed "climax" and payoff up to that point, so it was very satisfying to see it escalate to something truly awe-inspiring. I thought for a moment this movie was going to leave me disappointed, but it's worth it just for that ending.
ya this was so EPIC in the cinema as it felt 100% real and very frightening in the 1980s.
The line, "You can't run in here. Somebody might get hurt," is a callback to the line in Dr. Strangelove, "You can't fight here. This is the War Room."
I'm so glad that I eventually make the joke about NO FIGHTING IN THE WAR ROOM
@@awkwardashleigh 9 to 5 boss and you did not spot that strait away , Dolly Parton , Lily Tomlin and Dabney Coleman (the bossman in 9 to 5) do reunite in the Beverly Hillbillies movie in 1993 , by working in same movie ... its OK movie .
Floppy disk formats are 8" , 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" . In 1983 , 5 1/4" floppy could hold only 320KB data , those computers were running some 64000 or 68000 processors , number is from how many transistors those had , operating at 7-21 Mhz ... yeah your modern smartphone has one to two billion transistors.
64000 and 68000 processors are still in use , you may have microwave oven with one of those or thermostat on a heater .
US has sold old nuke missile silos to doomsday preppers , all those Pentagon deemed to be too expensive to upgrade and upkeep
US active missile silos are in Montana , North Dakota, Colorado and Wyoming. (F.E.Warren Air Force Base is in both states)
In Idaho you can go and visit US nuke powered airplane engine , they made it an tourist attraction , idea of a airplane you would not need to refuel , of course it was failure , that why after test lights the real plane was buried under massive concrete dome , it's just too radioactive .
I was fairly young when we saw this in the theater... my dad made the same quippy reference as Ashleigh, at I think, the exact same moment (which, when I followed with a blank stare from me, which prompted him to say, "I've got to show you that one" ... just had to pause and comment: thank you for a side trip down another memory lane side road, in what is shaping up to be another great, FIRST TIME WATCHING :)
@@awkwardashleigh Watch 2 minute warning from 1976 staring Charles Heston, it's about a police detective who must stop a sniper from going on a mass shooting rampage at a football game with his hunting rifle.
@@johnsalazar245 oh, shit! I remember watching that with the family when it aired on network television (probably 1978-ish). I just had a huge nostalgia flashback🤣
The program David was using on his computer is a War Dialer (designed to call numbers and determine if a computer picks up or not). The floppy disks were that big, thats why they were called floppy disks. They came in 8 inch, and 5 and 1/2 inches at that time.
The cradle David was placing his landline phone handset into was an early modem (Modulator/DeModulator) and is what was used to translate digital signals to analog to transmit them over the phone to another modem that would demodulate the analog signal to digital on its end. This is how you connected to other computers at the time. And his IMSAI setup was state of the art at the time, he had to build it from a kit, because they only came in parts and by parts, I mean, he had to solder the thing together :)
5 1/4. You didn't get the half in common sizes until 3.5 popularized in 1984 by the first MacIntosh.
The acoustic coupler used in the movie was already obsolete in the 1980's. it was limited to 300 baud. Modems of that era already using an RJ-11 jack to connect. The IMSAI 8080 was made between 1975 and 1978, so it was several years old by 1982. The IMSAI was a clone of the Altair 8080, which was sold exclusively as a kit.
Y'all making me feel old.
@@timmooney7528
Technology moved so fast back then. If you were a kid in the 80s/90s with your own computer it was usually an obsolete one, since the good ones were several thousand dollars (and would become obsolete yet again in just a few years).
Kids today will be like "It's still like that! My 5 year old machine won't even run my best games in 60FPS anymore!".
And I have to be like "Dude, imagine having a computer that doesn't have USB drives or WiFi while all the newer computers do because your rig is 5 years old and USB drives and WiFi haven't even been invented yet..."
Great memories, one of the first movies I remember as a kid.
To my father, all this was science fiction, computers as well. It's a fad, it'll pass. I had to join a damn high school computer club to gain access to a nice piece of kit.
Technology changes from time to time, I remember when 10 MB HDDs came out, I wet myself with excitement.
The computer teacher, was shocked, why the hell would anyone want that much storage. I guess he was related to a guy named gates :P
"You can't fight in the War Room!" OMG Ashleigh, now you're quoting Kubrick. You had me laughing so hard!
And you shouldn't run in the War Room, somebody might get hurt!
Seeing Ashleigh constantly confused by the technology and lifestyle of the early 80s was probably the best part of this reaction
Yeah. It might blow her mind to hear that, at one point in time, 7-Eleven was only open from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm.
In the early 80s, I lived with my mother in law, who was a computer programmer. She had a dedicated room upstairs with three computers in it. It had a screen door on it to keep her two cats out, because back then, dust and cat hair could wreak havoc on those early computers.
This was a time when the only people who had computers in their homes were those who worked in the business.
Different times!
@@lisaspikes4291 No offense intended, but back then, the only computerized porn was in ASCII art.
@@JL-sm6cg hidden treasures in the woods
omg yes lol 😅❤
I was surprised she didn't recognize dabney Coleman either from 9 to 5. The guy in charge of the computer was the boss in the movie 9 to 5. Love your reactions girl! Keep it up!
Hence the reason she recognized his voice.
Has she not seen Tootsie yet? Somebody please get on that!
@@Widdershins. Or Cloak & Dagger
@@JPSE57 Was gonna say, WarGames is brilliant, but my favorite is still Cloak and Dagger. When I was growing up I used to watch it with my father every time it was on TV. Such fond memories. Also, Flight of the Navigator - which now that I'm older and understand the plot that movie kind of freaks me out. As a kid I just liked the ship.
@@JPSE57 she should definitely watch cloak and dagger. One of my favorite movies as a kid.
I spent 4 years as one of the guys underground controlling the missiles. That stuff is OLD. For a while we were still using the 5.25” floppy disks to load settings. That whole scene was a decent representation of what we did. Great reaction as always!
So you were a minuteman ?
@@garryiglesias40744years = many mintues.
Someone just commented the other day that the missile silos were still using that retro technology and the prohibitive cost to upgrade to current tech.
"The only winning move is not to play."
Such a great summation of the Cold War, and war in general.
It's basically M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction) summed up.
It was also Bruce Lee's basic philosophy
And of course, that was entirely the point...make launching a nuclear war a no-win scenario so no one would attempt to start one. It worked, though it was no less scary for it. I'm frankly more worried about it now, when it could come from rogue actors instead of a government.
Agreed. What a fantastic message about war.
You are overgeneralizing. We won.
I must say it is amazingly appropriate to watch "War Game" while "Dr. Strangelove" is still so fresh in our minds.
Sneakers (1992) is a companion piece to War Games, written by the same duo - Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes. It’s absolutely worth watching! Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, David Strarthairn, River Phoenix, Mary McDonnell & Ben Kingsley. What a cast!
Excellent suggestion!
@@valinn13 Oh it turns out Ashley has already reacted to it 😊 th-cam.com/video/3Sdz36PuBH8/w-d-xo.html
Good job Ashleigh. In the 80s, teen hackers were a real thing. What would become the internet was out of it's infancy, but hadn't quite reached it's teenage years. A small number of people had home computers. It was all on dial up. And some of the kids that had them explored obsessively. Many of them got hired by governments when they got a little older, and became the hackers we know today. Others were hired by governments to combat hacking
Other questions you had giant floppy disks, yes you could call phone booths. Yes, telephone books were a real thing.
The girl was in Breakfast Club. She was the dandruff artist you loved so much. Very cute girl named Ally Sheedy. She was also in Short Circuit, Bad Boys, and a very 80s Brat Pack movie, St. Elmo's Fire.
This is one of the quintessential 80s movies, without question. One of the greatest things about movies is that they’re essentially a time capsule of the period in which they were made and released. This film is a gold mine of a time capsule of the early 1980s.
Encapsulated the life of an 80s teenager too. I like how it shows also how David didn't have interest in regular school but how different he was with computer interests & wanted to study Falken and computers etc. Probably lot's like him in the early 80s...
@@MrRSCHECK Guys like him wound up changing the world, 15 years later.
I was a teenager when this came out and I saw it in the theaters. It freaked us all out! We all had grown up with this threat. This movie kind of made it a little more real for us.
We have yet to live this threat.
You know, I'm 51 years old, I was a draftsman and CAD instructor. I'm still giving classes on autocad and many of the students are so young... it's so funny when I explain them some feats on autocad that come from the early 80s, you should see their faces when I tell you there were computers without even a mouse 😂 Everything was DOS and command lines. It's incredible how time is flying! Hugs girl!
i'm old enough to remember how to use cp/m 2.2 and before that, we saved and loaded our programs using audio cassette tapes on a standard cassette recorder. it was a major jump going from a 300 baud acoustic modem to a 2400 baud hayes smartmodem.
@@marzsit9833 I remember paying nearly $400 for my first 2400 baud modem...and at the same time almost the same amount for 1MB (yes megabyte) of RAM.
I was in the last class at my college that received any instruction on an actual drafting table. I saw them move the tables out and bring in a bunch of computers. I cursed bitterly at autocad until I got used to it. Then I realized it was WAY better.
I talked my company into buying Autocad back in the 80's. After using it for a while and the drawings got complex things got slow. So I asked by boss if I could buy a math composer chip to speed things up. He asked why. So I said watch this. I started a regen on a large drawing, got up, went to the lunch room, got some snacks out of the vending machine, came back, ate a bag of chips and drank a soda and then the regen finished. I looked at my boss and he looked at me...........The purchase was approved. Today the same drawing is redrawn in a fraction of a second.
I'm 50, also a drafter and I started autocad R14.
The guy you were talking about in the beginning was actor Dabney Coleman. You saw him as the boss in 9 to 5. If you want to see more of him, may I recommend the movies Cloak & Dagger (1984) and Short Time (1990).
Loved Cloak & Dagger…also stars ET’s Henry Thomas
I thought he was great in that Chevy Chase movie where he gets radioactive, I forget the name.
Also the Dabney Coleman Show was great, that's where I first saw Gina Davis.
Also ON GOLDEN POND with his 9 to 5 co-star Jane Fonda and her dad Henry. Guarantee Ashleigh's going to cry.
He's also in Tootsie so we might see him again soon
@@FloridaMugwump That was the 1981 movie Modern Problems, which is an awesome movie.
Fun fact: Even though Speech Synthesizers already existed in 1982/83, the robotic voice of "Joshua" was no computer voice. These were recorded dialogs, spoken by the actor of Professor Falken, John Wood. They recorded the words of the dialogs in random order and then cut them into the right order again, to give it a more artificial speech-melody. And a Vocoder (an instrument that combines human voice with synthesized sounds) was also used for the electronic voice effect. Also this was the first time in a movie the computer-term "Firewall" was ever mentioned.
Yes Ashleigh,
Telephone books were a thing. They were not only in phone booths but were also delivered to every home. The resident phone numbers were in the WHITE PAGES and the business numbers were in a separate book called the YELLOW PAGES.
"Let your fingers do the walking" was the slogan for the Yellow Pages.
We had the white pages and the yellow pages in the same phone book. My parents paid a monthly fee to be "unlisted." It COST MONEY *not* to be listed in the phone directory!
Government numbers were in the Blue Pages.
Let your fingers do the walking!
They still throw one of those things on my porch every once in a while.
Nominated for 3 Oscars
Best Original Screenplay
Best Production Design
Best Cinematography.
I saw this film in the theater with friends when it first came out. I had just finished my freshman year in high school. It left such an impression on me that when I got home, I walked my mother through the entire movie scene by scene. So glad you enjoyed it, Ashleigh!
For some reason, one of my favorite movies from 1984 popped into my head today. Have you ever watched Starman? I love that movie!
He'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds
Now I want some Dutch Apple Pie
Starman is excellent... very underrated 80s movie.
Yes, definately one of my favorites!!
Yes! Especially if you want to do more John Carpenter. Also, because it's a great movie in it's own right. ;-)
I was thrilled to see you were reacting to this movie, it's one of my favorite 80s movies. This was Matthew Broderick's second movie, but it got him noticed (he was 21 when this came out but had already won his first Tony Award at age 20). Ally Sheedy was also in The Breakfast Club. And Dabney Coleman was seemingly in every great 80s movie. Thanks for a great reaction.
9 to 5 with Dolly Parton and Lilly Tomlin - that's one of his movies, was a fun movie too.
You know, I hope someone can slide Ashleigh one of those special requests for a certain movie, I'm just not computer skilled enough to manage all the various online social crap to get it all and keep it functioning, I had a discord, don't even know if i can still log in, can't remember the last time i was on, and pretty much never had use of it. I have a hard enough time with getting my E-Mails suddenly logged out and them trying to make me remember my Password, which often as not ends up with me having to change it to some new one I also wont remember, or worse, I get permanently locked out and can no longer access it or anything I had stored in there - that's happened at least twice now to me.
Anyways, lol - enough "diddly dallying" as Ashleigh says, basically when I heard Ashleigh say "Is this a hacker movie?" I had the sudden obsessive need to get her to somehow know about and add to her upcoming watch list a Movie called "Hackers" it's an absolutely awesome movie about Hacking (obviously), and is one of (if not the first) Anjelina Jolies first movies - I think she was 16 or so when this was made, super early in her career, but the mood in the movie really touches the inner techno nerd vibe, and the 80s feel, and the musical score is awesome so I really hope someone gets her to push it up to the forefront of her "To Watch" list.
:)
"Most men try to get in through the back door anyway". I love it when you occasionally make dirty jokes, because you are generally overall so wholesome. Makes it much funnier.
She knows exactly what she's saying and i love that about her ^_^
She's speaking from experience? 🤨
Having your computer dial every single number in an exchange to find the modems was something we used to do. It's called "wardialing." And his hack of the payphone was an example of "phreaking." There were a lot of real hacking techniques (although fictionalized examples) shown in this film.
I love that the film shows the grunt/scut work involved with hacking, and isn’t just flash cuts of fingers flying across keyboards and circuitry and CGI flash.
Yeah, once upon a time, you could actually do the "grounding out" phreaking trick he did on the pay phone. Then the phone companies got smart and started gluing the handset shut, so you couldn't access the guts of it.
@@KabukiKid THey also changed the systems significantly since the movie showed everybody how. Of course.. no payphones anymore ;)
@@TheMsLourdes Yeah... they shutdown a lot of the classic phreaking techniques over time... so put away your Cap'n Crunch bosun whistles and blue boxes! ;-) They won't get you free calls anymore... if you can find a payphone anywhere anymore! lol
@@KabukiKid By the time of the movie, it was a thing of the past. But, early phones worked with impulses, that is, going off and on hook rapidly and / or at a steady pace (that's what the rotary dialer did). IIRC, paid phones needed a quarter just to be "activated" so to speak, and get to talk to an operator, but the signal was like a single short pulse on the line, which you could generate by grounding the line very briefly. Also, in very early systems, operators themselves asked to put more coins in and were able to count the 'clicks' on the line to make sure the right amount had been inserted.
In the '60s (way before the time of the movie) DTMF (using two tones codes) was introduced. But, it was all but tamper-proof, all you needed was something capable of generating the right tones (like an Amiga) and knowledge of what tones to generate. I've seen (with my own eyes) people still doing that to route calls thru obsolete switches, which messed up with the billing of the call, in the early '90s. Right after that, all systems switched to offline signaling, and that was the end of it.
This movie is one of my all-time favorites. Glad it finally made the list.
Surprised that Ashleigh didn’t recognize Ally Sheedy as the weird girl from Breakfast Club. I had a crush on her from this movie.
I was so glad Ashleigh appreciated the “piss on a spark plug “ line. I still use it periodically.
I had a crush on her in the breakfast club. I always liked the weirdos.
Love Ally in Short Circuit
Or Dabney Coleman from 9 to 5
all of us did
15-year-old me may or may not have gasped for air seeing Ally Sheedy in the leotard. I understand that crush completely
You probably saw Dabney Coleman in "9 to 5".
My absolute favorite Dabney Coleman role was in the movie "Cloak and Dagger" with the kid from "E.T.".
The ending to that movie got to me when I was young, and if I saw it in the theater today I would stand in my seat and cheer.
Cloak and Dagger is a movie I've seen several times, I even got the board game and still have it
Loved Cloak and Dagger
I liked him in The Beverly Hillbillies as Milburn Drysdale.
Cloak and Dagger is a favorite from childhood. Short Time is pretty funny, too.
All of us old Gen Xrs are coming out of the woodwork for this one. Ashleigh, there absolutely were touchscreens in the early 80s. And those were 8 inch floppy disks that came before the 5 1/4 and 3.5 floppies.
We had touchscreens at the shopping mall in 1982. Quite sophisticated. I stood there for an hour looking at food specials and then fish species of northern Ontario! When the Internet showed up I was like, "oh, this again."
I grew up with this movie. The fact that the climax is so intense without any violence is such a breath of fresh air some days. I have loved it since the first time I saw it back in the early 80s and I will always cherish this one.
Indeed. Who'd think that a movie with this title WOULDN'T be an action movie?
"A Strange game. The only winning move is not to play." - Greater words of wisdom have never been spoken about Nuclear War and the M.A.D. doctrine.
@@RedwoodTheElf The whole point to the MAD doctrine was to make sure that no one would be tempted to play the 'game.'
the dolby vision version of the climax is exceptional.
@@thomasmacdiarmid8251 Which may work against SANE opponents, but now we have fanatical regimes who literally want to trigger the end of the world. Danger, Will Robinson!
This movie, along with Poltergeist, will always hold a special place in my movie loving heart. I was like 11 I think, when we got cable TV in the house for the first time, and HBO would show it's Prime time films over and over again, and in the first month of having cable, I know my sister and I watched this movie a dozen times, easy. Loved this movie and love watching people react to it. Talk about a dose of nostalgia. I'm really glad you enjoyed it.
Those little HBO guides that came in the mail with all the ten zillion dates and times particular movies would play so you could drive your parents nuts that you were watching (whatever) AGAIN....
@@marceytidwell8251 Exactly!! My dad would come through the living room and see what was on and just shake his head lol.
One of my favorite movies as a kid. Also, shows you how much easier it was to be a hacker in the 80s.
"PENCIL" is always the password to everything. 🤣
Easier in execution, yes. But remember there was little to no documentation on how computer systems worked back then. Also, there was no internet so everything you wanted to learn had to be by going to a library and hope they had the book(s) you needed. Most early hackers put in months and years of study as well as trial and error to learn how.
And a top notch Matthew Broderick 80’s film was “Ladyhawk”. Comedy, action, fantasy and romance, it’s got it all.
With a great Alan Parsons score.
Yessssssss, now I have to go and re-watch it.
The guy who plays Falken, plays the Bishop in Ladyhawke.
@@WilliamTheMovieFan Damn, you beat me to it LOL
absolutely LOVE Ladyhawk
Ashleigh getting indignant when they said 41 was old brought me so much joy, because I'm 41 years old,lol. Also,I think one of the guys in the opening scene was Michael Madison, who played Budd in Kill Bill (along with other roles, of course)
I think Ashley forgot what it was like for her 10 years ago. Every 16 or 17 year old thinks 40 is old.
@@mgordon1100 that's true. Other than my back pain, I sure don't feel 41 and have to remind myself I'm not still in my 30's,lol.
@@amandaasbury7524 30's ? THAT'S OOOLD !
Despite papers saying I'm 46, I'm really still 17.
well when youre 18 that DOES feel really old, double their age. LOL
Man, 80's movies knew how to END. You're left thinking "wait, what about all the repercussions of these events, and what's gonna happen to *this* character, and is *that* guy going to get what's comin' to him" and the movie's just like "that's not what the movie's about", then CREDITS. This and Robocop 1 are both so good at the "pack it up, it's over" ending.
100% I know this is neither from an 80s movie or from an ending, but it reminds me of the great anecdote with Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford when they were making Star Wars (1977). At the end of the scene in the trash compactor, Luke's hair is sopping wet. In the next scene, it's completely dry. Mark brought this as up as a problem, and Harrison (in his characteristic drawl) said, "Hey, kid... It ain't that kind of movie. If people are looking at your hair, we're all in big trouble." 🤣
What are the consequences for David hacking into NORAD? "It ain't that kind of movie." 🙂
You want a sudden ending? Go watch An American Werewolf In London again.
The Commitments is a great Irish movie. Also, Matthew was not playing Space Invaders, he was playing Galaga. He thought we wouldn't notice, but we did.
And making JOSHUA play Tic Tac Toe was to teach the program about Mutually Assured Destruction.
I understood that reference!
Apparently, Captain America watched this movie first before Star Wars.
One of my favorite films from the 80s. I recommend this to Millennials and Gen Z peeps all the time. I just did the other day! There are so many phrases that are still referenced today "Defcon 1" or "The only winning move is not to play." "Would you like to play a game?" It was a very intelligent film and like you said, even though the tech is outdated, the premise is still valid and relatable to today. With AI and our dependency on computers and for them to think for us, this is some scary s**t! I'm so glad that you enjoyed it, too. :)
President Reagan watched WarGames at Camp David the weekend it was released, and it freaked him out. A few days later he asked, “Could something like this really happen? Could someone break into our most sensitive computers?” at a meeting including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The answer came back a week later: “Mr. President, the problem is much worse than you think.” This led to major changes not only to defence security but also anti-hacking law.
Whooo! This is such a good movie. I'm so pleased you watched! It really was so much more intense, I guess, to us in the 80's who heard about nuclear annihilation almost every day; it loomed large, for sure. This movie made my ex SO and I want to move to Washington state, and when he was given the option to pick where he wanted to be stationed (in the Army), he choose there and we actually got sent to Fort Lewis, Tacoma, WA. It was AWESOME. :D
I do love this film and it was the first time I heard about NORAD. One thing not talked about much are the two characters in the missile silo at the beginning. The older one is John Spencer who started on the Patty Duke Show, was in The Rock, and was in the whole series of The West Wing. The younger one is Michael Madsen in one of his first roles. He is famous for Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs (among many other roles).
I had a weird reaction when I saw John Spencer [today] in the missile silo drill scene: "Why the hell do they have Leo McGarry participating in an exercise dressed as a captain? He was a colonel and a war hero! Get back to the White House, Leo; your president needs you!"
I knew John Spencer, but would have never guessed the other was Madsen! Nice bit of trivia, thanks!
I thought it was a young Damian Lewis. Before realizing it was a decade or two too early for that to be possible.
Another fun fact: the sound made by the keyboard typing belongs to something known as a "buckling spring keyboard" (or, more precisely, a "catastrophically buckling spring" keyboard, as it is named in the patent iirc), the most famous of which is the IBM model M keyboard, which is legendary among keyboard afficionados - supposedly an absolute joy to type on, and an absolute nightmare for anyone in the same room with the amount of noise that it makes.
Also - there's a TED talk from february 1984 about touch screen technology (can't remember who gave it), but looking back at it, the things we take for granted, like smartphones, internet, and touchscreens, have been in the works for quite a long time before someone made them a reality.
The thing about the incredibly loud keyboards is, if you grew up with them, there's nothing like them.
I loved the IBM model M
Mechanical keyboards are best keyboards ...
Have you not watched Nine to Five? Dabney Coleman was the boss in that movie.
Nah - that's NOTHING - older IBM keyboards used to have an electric-powered hammer (a solenoid) that thwacked the case to make the keyboard sound more like a typewriter (because, that's what keyboards were 'supposed' to sound like) - you can find examples on TH-cam, they're deafening.
I love how Ashleigh didn't recognize Dabney Coleman's name, mentions that she's never even heard of the name Dabney, then Dabney Coleman comes on screen: "He looks familiar". Well yeah, Dabney was in quite a few movies in the 80's, including 9 to 5, which you reacted to.
21:02 Ashleigh asking a series of obvious questions about payphones that I now realize are no longer obvious to people who didn't grow up with them. God, I'm old. 🤣
The way tech is shown and used in this film is pretty accurate (for the time). The writers have another film called "Sneakers" which is also worth a watch. Their research into hacking yielded both films.
…and Tahiti.
@@Justanotherconsumer That isnt in Europe!
@@Muck006 It's a magical place.
After having loved both films for so many years, this is the first time I am hearing that they were both from the same writers. Thanks for the fun fact.
I think Ashleyg has already seen Sneackers
You should have waited on the Quiet Man, but why not Darby O’Gill and the Little People?
Something to consider next year.
Your reaction to the eighties technology reminds me of the interesting fact of the minuscule capacity of computers that were used for the moon landing. Cell phones have a ridiculous amount of processing capacity over and above what they used over 50 years ago. Just a few thousand bytes, compared to billions in modern day cell phones.
Back in 83 when US/USSR tensions were really high, a Soviet early warning system detected several nuclear launches from the US. The officer in charge declared it a false alarm, and it was. Others in his stead may have not been so easily to dismiss it, so it could have been much worse.
That happened three months after this film was released. The man's name was Stanislav Petrov, and he literally saved the world. He is widely regarded as being, for that moment in time, the most powerful man who ever lived.
I was just watching old Modern Marvels reruns and I didn't know there were also 2 incidents in 79-80 with false alarms that were computer related...
@@MrRSCHECK There have been numerous false alarms that were fortunately caught in time, including simulations accidentally played into live systems and radar which mistook the moon as it rose over the horizon for a massive Soviet missile attack. There's also natural events which could have been deadly - imagine what could have happened if the Tunguska event had a occurred at the height of the cold war and hadn't hit a deserted part of Siberia. It's amazing we're still here really.
Similarly, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was a situation aboard a Soviet submarine near Cuba on which the captain and political officer had decided it was time to launch nuclear weapons. The third man needed to authorize the launch was Commodore Vasily Arkhipov, and he instead single-handedly prevented World War III from happening in 1962.
I seem to recall that officer being punished for not passing on the attack warning. He didnt have authority to decide it was a false alarm lol. Another near miss was 1962. We came within 8 hours. We were going to bomb the missiles in Cuba not knowing they were operational and the General had orders not to let them be destroyed. He could order launch on his own. With the tensions with China and North Korea and Russia and soon to be Iran , its only a matter of time before they are used. Have a nice day...
My friend’s dad is a retired colonel in the Air Force he was one of those guys sitting in the bunker with the keys. Calmest man I ever met.
2:55
Mike E Winfield: "Every warning sign started with one dumbass."
"It looks like a giant floppy disk!" That's.... exactly what it was. A floppy disk. They were called that because they were a bit floppy and bendy. BUT, the magnetic ring inside them were miniaturized and we had the "floppy" diskette (like how a cigarette is a smaller "cigar"). Those smaller ones were so much better and became so popular most people reverted back just calling them "floppy disks" even though they weren't, well, floppy anymore. And their shape became the Save symbol we know and love today.
And those smaller, less floppy disks is why one of the points on the "Evil overlord" list is "all of my important computer files will be padded to 1.45 MB in size"
@@jakubfabisiak9810 I used a compression program that could split any collection of files into a bunch of compressed files of equal size. It could only be decompressed if you have all the pieces together. So I moved a few hundred MB of data from one PC to another using two dozen disks and a few trips back and forth. I couldn't afford a zip drive and I had no LAN, so it was the only option I had.
Floppy disks came in 3 sizes, 8, 5 1/4, and 3 1/2 inches. A year or so ago I found my 8" floppies (and tape reels) that I used in college. Yes, my beard is gray...😊
What was the name of the thing that came after? Was it Hard disk? The hard plastic one with the little metal part that slide to the side...?
One "joke" from a computer help line was someone calling and complaining about floppies not working:
*_"I put the sticker on it, roll it into the typewriter to write the label ..."_*
Ashleigh's surprise an arcade game only costs a quarter made me feel very very old
Her calling the game Space Invaders instead of Galaga made ME feel very very old! lol
I remember the first video game I saw that cost 50 cents to play: The original Dragon's Lair
In fact, my wife and I used to play video games at an arcade called "The Quarter Horse," which I thought was very clever at the time.
Same. Two bucks in quarters was a king’s ransom at ten years old
It was amazing how fast those quarters would disappear.
"Do you WANT Skynet? Because THIS is how you get Skynet!"
WarGames was to the 80s what Dr. Strangelove was to the 60s, in that it scared the hell out of a whole generation regarding the possibility of nuclear war
Although THE DAY AFTER did a much better job for a whole LOT of generations in those days.
"Confidence is high" means confidence is high that it's a real attack.
Back when we were hovering on the brink of annihilation "THe only winning move is not to play" had a lot of resonance.
"back when"?
@@danh8804 yes, I feel like we're still hovering on that brink. Though there was a brief moment, between around 1991-1996 where it felt like we took a step back....
@@TheMarcHicks on a day to day basis we're closest to it since '63
John Badham is an underrated director - and he managed to complete both THIS film and Blue Thunder (another fave) in the same year.
I love seeing Ashleigh being fully immersed in Gen-X-era culture.
Yes the payphone trick actually worked. We had one in my middle school and everyone just carried a paperclip with them to make calls.
I think with a certain dial tone you could also do something similar with cellphones.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6 On the analog phones there were ways to call a local number and then through a certrain tone connect to where ever you wanted and just pay the local rate.
My memory of first seeing this was my sister and I (college and high school students on summer break, respectively) spending some quality time with our grandparents for a long weekend and also hanging out with our uncle and his family, who lived nearby. My uncle drove the family and us to Rockford to see the movie, and we all really loved it.
My favorite memory of the weekend though was when my great aunt Dorothy (also visiting that summer) was walking through the living room as Grandma and we were watching the news with Tom Brokaw. She paused, looked at the screen, sighed, and said, “Tom Brokaw…if I were just twenty years younger…” and continued on to the kitchen. My sister and I just couldn’t stop laughing! We had never before heard anything that lustful from the sweetest stereotype of a little old lady you could meet. My favorite memory of an aunt I never really met that often since she lived on the East Coast.
@kathyastrom1315 you gotta watch out for us East Coast ladies... Cold hands warm hearts AND Tom Brokaw wasn't too hard to look at honestly. 😉🗽😎💜😂 #NYGenXBIKERLady
Those were indeed floppy disks... 8" ones. They were replaced by 5 1/4" ones as the 80s went on and later the hard plastic 3 1/2" size. These days they are relics as nobody manufactures them anymore and the existing stock is deteriorating.
HOW DID YALL CARRY THOSE AROUND
@@awkwardashleigh Well even the 8" pre-date me. :) For the others, we had plastic cases we'd keep them in if we needed to transport disks about.
The computer David has is an IMSAI 8080, which was the first clone of the Altair. It actually was already obsolete by '83; by then home computers like the Apple II, Commodore, Atari, Radio Shack/Tandy, and others were more prevalent.
The nuclear missile codes were still being used on 8" floppy disks up into the 21st century. Partly, this was because the older technology isn't vulnerable to modern-day hackers, but mainly, because they still worked, and there was no practical reason to upgrade.
@@awkwardashleigh Briefcases
@@awkwardashleigh We had a special pouch in our dinosaur saddles
If you like this movie, another film from around the same time (1984) and also has Dabney Coleman is "Cloak & Dagger". It has a similar feel to Wargames.
The line "You're not supposed to be running in here. Someone could get hurt," is a ode to Dr. Strangelove's joke about the absurdity of war: "Gentlemen! You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!"
Dabney Coleman was the boss in 9 to 5. Wargames is one of the best movies about kids and computers. One of my favorites. And your reaction spot on. Watch Red Dawn behind it. That would be the kicker.
Also great in Cloak & Dagger
Red Dawn! highly underratted :)
I really like 9 to 5, though Dabney's best role is in Tootsie. He's also in a rather odd comedy from 1990 called Where the Heart Is that stars Uma Thurman and Crispin Glover as entitled Manhattan rich kids who slum it in pre-Giuliani Bronx.
Dabney Coleman was also in 9 to 5 as the boss. That must be where you recognize him from. But you may wanna check out Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman. He's in that movie too. Highly recommended!
"Confidence is high" means the information is reliable. The Air Force General with the southern accent was played by Barry Corbin, he has had a long tv career, Northern Exposure, The Closer and lots more. Ally Sheedy was in Breakfast Club but looks a lot different. Another good hacker movie is Sneakers with Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, and Dan Akroyd.
"Cow mutilations are up!"
"Sneakers" is such a sleeper hit.
Same writers for both films
I remember seeing this one back in the 1980s as a kid, and just the idea that you could hook a computer up to the phone line and have it "talk" to other computers, felt like science fiction in and of itself. This was what feels like way back in the day now, when playing computer games on our Commodore 64 was the most awesome thing ever. Though to be frank, if I could get to play those games again on that machine, it would still be the most awesome thing ever.
I always wanted the acoustic coupler just for the cool factor back then, but never got one.
LOVE this movie!!!! Anything on the Cold War gets my interest….loved that you watched Dr. Strangeglove & now this one!!!! To do the proper Cold War trifecta, you gotta react to “Red Dawn” next!!!! It’s got Patrick Swayze Ashleigh 😉
It's funny how people forget that little accident back in 2018 where a missile alert drill was accidentally shunted into the Emergency Alert System throughout the Hawaiian islands as a real world event.
Oh, people will not forget. Those that were on Hawaii island will remember it for the rest of their lives. Didn't Jim Carey has a spiritual experience because of this?
The arcade game that he's playing is Galaga. It was everywhere in the 80s.
10:28 That room full of washing-machine looking things? Those are hard drives. They might have been as big as 20 megabytes.
13:29 "Confidence" as in confidence that the radar is detecting a missile attack, rather than some other objects in the sky.
28:54 "The only winning move is not to play" is one of those money quotes that has stood the test of time. It really was a great summary of the Cold War.
Another great hacking movie is "Sneakers"; there are heists. Also, I second the recommendations for seeing Matthew Broderick in the criminally forgotten "Project X".
Galaga is the best arcade game.
This movie had an advance copy of Galaga. This movie was the advertising for it.
Hold on a second. Project X is stirring something in my brain. I don’t remember what that is but I’m picturing a monkey for some reason and have a vague recollection of Matthew Broderick holding one. Now I have to go look that up because it’ll drive me crazy until I figure it out. But…he was a scientist, right? I feel like this was a movie I saw in the theater. Hmmm.
"The only winning move is not to play"
Intended for thermonuclear war. Obviously doesn't apply to the Cold War, we won. And the only way not to play was to surrender.
@@mangerinegirl Correct. Project X (1987) with Mathew Broderick, Helen Hunt, and a bunch of chimpanzees. I highly recommend it.
probably the most realistic depiction of hacking put on film. plus Michael Madsen's first movie role
“Clowns to the left of me,jokers to the right”😂
You reacted exactly how everyone did when this movie came out. A cult classic.
Don't know if you've seen "Ladyhawke" (Richard Donner, 1985), but that one stars Matthew Broderick, and also features John Wood (Professor Falken). Oh, and it also stars Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner) and Michelle Pfeiffer (Dangerous Minds), with supporting appearances by Leo McKern (The Blue Lagoon), and a MUCH younger Alfred Molina, nearly two decades before he played Doc Oc in Spider-Man 2.
Terrific cinematography, and good editing by Stuart Baird, A.C.E., who, for you James Bond junkies, would later edit "Casino Royale" and "Skyfall." That said, Andrew Powell's score is very much love it or hate it.
Arguably a cult classic, but enjoyable.
Ladyhawke was such a fun movie! And a fantastic performance from Leo McKern, as well!
9:00 -- Yes.. This was what was called "war-dialing" -- And you'd be surprised how many places it could get you into today.. Company as big as TH-cam or Facebook has THOUSANDS of phone numbers.. -- You get the area code and prefixes for where the building is located and just start dialing by the ones .
Might be be all-time favorite reaction video by anyone. Ashleigh, you made me bust a gut laughing so many times. And yes, floppy disks were huge originally, and you could see a 24-hr, 7-11 store (just like that one) every 2-3 miles back then.
Funny... until you did the chipmunk voice thing to the professor, I didn't realize he was also the voice of the WOPR. Verified by Wiki.
HAHAHAHAAH
Someone think about “the last star fighter” as a potential movie.
The CAST was amazing - fantastic script - everything pointed towards a really intense climax scene which had humor and wisdom. And BRODERICK is amazing in this film. This is a seminal film that informed our notions of what matters most and broke the bank as well.
Love this classic. And of course who wouldn't love this cast. You should just complete the Ally Sheedy trifecta and watch 'Short Circuit' too.
Johnny5 is Alive!! :)
It's a very problematic movie with the Fisher Steven character.
"Stephanie naked ! " yum
I graduated HS in 80. In my computer science class we were still programming using punch cards. We did have a 300 baud modem that we used to connect to a "super computer" in Phila and played the lamest game of Star Trek ever devised. Kind of like Battleship but with less excitement and strategy. How slow was 300 baud you ask???... For those that remember dialing into AOL, Prodigy or a local BBS with a 56k modem... you were 168x faster. By the 90's we had cable modems and then FIOS. The strangest thing was that I chose computer science classes over typewriting because I actually thought typing would be a thing of the past within a couple years. I thought we'd be dictating instructions to computers by mid 80s. Decades later... still typing!!!
The butter on the bread to roll the corn on was how my family did it!! Lol. I would eat the bread after we were done with it. So tasty!!!
Ashleigh needs to do a deep dive into the Cold War. I recommend “The Hunt For Red October” and “No Way Out” for espionage thrillers, and “We Were Soldiers” for a war movie that is (IMHO) better than “Saving Private Ryan”. And I would have recommended “Firefox”, but if our gracious host didn’t like ninety seconds of a helicopter chase in “WarGames”, there’s no way she’d stick through Clint Eastwood’s trek across the USSR.
Kids these days ... goldfish attention span. They should all be dropped "somewhere in the wilderness (with a map) and told to find their way out of it again".
Red October leads to patriot games and clear and present danger
And firefox is a great one
12:24 -- Something VERY similar did happen once.. We almost went to war because someone loaded a simulation and the people looking at the screens DIDN'T KNOW it was a simulation. Or at least, that's the official story.. Personally, I think what we see in the movie is closer to the truth..
Lol, watched this one in the theatre!
This is one of our Gen X important movies.
Thank you for watching it, Ashleigh.
Take care and have a great day from Manitoba, Canada
You saw Dabney Coleman in 9 to 5. That's why he looked familiar
HE WAS THE BOSS
@@awkwardashleigh Yes, he was.
"Not a moped but not quite a motorcycle." Actually, that is the very definition of a moped. That's what they are.
By The Way: I saw this movie with a date when it was first playing in theaters. I thought it would be fun. It was not fun. Not for me, anyway. Remember the first place that the Soviet missiles "hit" in the WOPR simulation? Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska. I was in the Army stationed at Ft Richardson, Alaska, at the time. Literally right next door. I was practically pissing myself during the movie and had a panic attack afterward. My date was unimpressed.
My favourite John Badham film, thanks for reacting to it - so few do. Other John Badham films to consider (if you've not already reacted to them): Blue Thunder (1983), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Short Circuit (1986), Stakeout (1987) and Nick of Time (1995). He's still directing TV today, at the age of 84. A legend of cinema in my opinion.
I think he did the hard way with Michael j fox and James woods, very funny underrated movie.
@@ninjavigilante5311 He did. Sorry I missed it from the list. Slipped my mind.
@@ninjavigilante5311 I love that movie!
Do you remember the line Natasha says in Captain America Winter Soldier "Shall we play a game?" came from this movie
oh wow... I didn't know that
Neither did Cap because he hadn't seen it either.
@@pondersong5525 Watch again, he actually said "I know, I saw it"
From a Gen X nerd, one of the best computer hacker movies ever! A few "that wouldn't happen" or "that's not a thing" moments but for a kid hacking over the internet in 1983? Gold!
To show my age, my first IT job was managing a computer tape library in 1988. There were 60,000 reel to reel tapes just like in this movie. LOL
GOOD GOD MAN
War Games and The Manhattan Project(1986) are excellent movies that go well together
WarGames (1983)
The Philadelphia Experiment (1984)
The Manhattan Project(1986)
Project X (1987)
What did you mean 'not a moped'? That's a moped! What do YOU think is a moped? Sorry I'm so focused on mopeds, but I REALLY wanted a moped in 1982.
I'm so glad you liked it. This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. That was a scary time the 80s, the end of the Cold War wondering if there was going to be nuclear war and radioactive mutants (I was a kid, so I really believed on radioactive mutants)...
That wasn’t helped by the president joking about launching the bombs on a hot mic.