Two things from a USAF veteran who saw the film in the cinema when it was released (3 years after leaving the military). First, arguably the greatest hero in history, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov of SOVIET Air Defense, refused orders to launch nukes as a response to a faulty report of a US first strike attack. And this was in 1983. Eerily (and perhaps meaningfully) similar to the story of Wargames. Second, when watching this in a cinema during its first release, the actual, IRL tensions inside the US were horrific. (I get emotional just remembering this.) We were watching the 'fun, fell-good, action romp' as it got closer and closer to the suspenseful ending. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS! We were on the edge of our seats, to some extent, but in the actual times, we lived in a permanent state of terrified readiness (actually, in dread because readiness could do little in an actual scenario of nuclear war, and many of us knew this). When WOPR says the game was interesting because "The only way to win is not to play," at least a quarter of the audience of 100 or so people jumped to their feet and shouted with joy and affirmation. We were wound so tight in those days, without always knowing it, that this simple, but momentous line made people jump and cheer at the message. Do not, under any circumstance, play Global Thermonuclear War. I like to think that the film may have contributed to some policy makers of the time, and decision makers in actual missile siloes, backing down from a figurative DEFCON 1. So, yes, it was a nifty little fluffy film which, in all reality, spoke of and to a time when the risk of a devastating WW III was no joke. Thanks for a great reaction, as always, Minty.
I was born in '80. People don't realize the cloud over the world during that decade. When the wall fell in '91, the collective sigh the world took, younger people just don't understand it!!!
I saw Threads ( the movie) in 83 aged 7! ( Far too young) and obviously developed a dread fear of nuclear holocaust. My 8th birthday was 26/09/83. I've always been very grateful to a certain Soviet officer for not ruining my birthday.
My favorite story about War Games has to do with the NORAD Operations Center. When this movie came out, NORAD was just beginning the process of completely overhauling their operations center, but no one really knew what they wanted. The totally fictional operations center in the movie showed them what could be done by a creative team, and it actually influenced the design of the revamped NORAD.
War Games was a pivotal piece of technology cinema. I saw it opening week with some colleagues from the computer company I worked for at the time. It showed that password aging is a severe security risk over 35 years before Microsoft (and earlier NIST and FTC) finally issued advice to avoid using password aging because it can lead to people writing down passwords. Then in the phone booth scene, we were all going... "It's a dial phone booth... find some metal. Yes! The pull-tab!" to a chorus of "Shhhh"s. The movie inspired "War Dialers" that exposed so many systems that just used unlisted "security through obscurity" numbers with guest logins, and later used to find fax lines to end spam faxes to.
My dad’s oldest childhood friend was William “Billy” Bogart, who played Matthew Broderick’s dad. He was a well known Broadway actor, and one of the earliest spokesmen for IBMs very first personal computer in the very early 1980s. They grew up across the street from each other on Cedar Lane in Woodmere, Long Island. Billy’s wife Erin was one of the very first Muppeteers with Jim Henson on Sesame St and the Muppet Show. Billy died fairly recently, about 5 years ago.
WarGames is one of my favorite movies. And the kid going up against a military super computer to decide the fate of the world, was a pretty nifty idea. And how they ultimately trick it into stalemate itself until it decided to give up, was brilliant.
This still stands as one of my favorite 80s movies. One thing that is so impressive about this film is that almost all of the tech stuff and hacking/phreaking you see in the movie was completely legit and realistic for the day. They definitely did their nerdy research for this one. ;-)
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 He did the proper research to figure out potential passwords. Sort of social engineering without direct interaction with the subject. And what was unrealistic about his home PC setup? That was a legit PC of the day... it was an IMSAI 8080... it was even sort of old in 1983.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 I remember a general angrily yelling that "the phone company screwed up. They left a line open," which neatly explained how he got in.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 Back in those days, many of us actually DID do things like that. It wasn't unrealistic at all. In fact, because of the movie, it was named WarDialing. Typically we were more looking for BBS's but we did find things like banks and computer timeshare companies (Tymnet is one I remember finding). And just like wargames, once you got in, you really had no clue what to do next, so some experimented a bit.
From what I understand some people have actually peed on a spark plug for real. All while the spark plug was getting energized. Let's just say these people are clearly not all that bright to try something like that. From what I understand the shock you get from a spark plug is similar to the shock you get from an electric fence and is quite painful.
@@emuhill Mythbusters busted that "peeing on electric things" myth. A urine stream breaks up before it contacts the electrified object. You'd have to be inches away to get any sort of shock. Or, have the most robust stream of piss that anyone has ever had in human history.
I'm 52, saw it in a Hoyts cinema in grade 7 the same year my dad purchased a Commodore 64, acoustic coupler modem, dot matrix printer, and an amber screen (like a green screen, only orange). We were already "logging in" to the local university computer and Gopher looked exactly like the War Games interaction (without the voice). It felt real, almost as if I could hack into government computers and start Robodebt Wars. $0.02
I saw it before it was released on pirate video. Got a commodore for my next birthday. Couldn't wait to write a program that infinitely repeated a word or drew a line. Those were the days.
@@crusader.survivorI just fired up one of my old C-64's that has been in storage for about 20 years. Started up right away as if it was brand new. I love computers from the 80's. 😄
Wargames has always been one of my favorite movies! Even when I was too young to fully understand it back in the 80s. It's a movie that I still go back and watch a couple of times a year. I knew about the 2008 sequel and even watched it. It's basically a made-for-TV movie in quality. Not completely terrible but doesn't hold a candle to the original!
WarGames is one of my favorite tech movies. The hacking scenes are the most practical and believable for its time. Rather than just having a teenager type in random code on his computer, they have the hero using passwords carelessly laid out, and dialing up numbers to software companies. This movie had such an impact on me, when I got my first Chromebook about 5 years ago, I slapped a WarGames sticker on the back of it. One fact I'm surprised that you didn't mention was that the Galaga game that Matthew Broderick was playing was gifted to him to practice on for the movie. So yeah, Matthew Broderick had a Galaga machine in his house thanks to WarGames.😊
My wife and I still watch this movie every few years and continue to enjoy it. I absolutely loved the Wargames Defcon 1 game on the PS1. A friend and I used to play it every time he came over trying to beat each of the different scenarios and getting through to the end.
I met the WOPR (prop) in LA on a live sound gig years ago. It was covered in dust all by itself in the corner of an empty warehouse in east LA. It was one of the most random and coolest things I'd ever seen. I was laterally star struck by a prop. It was in one of those industrial areas that had been converted to artist flats. There was a big warehouse separated from the flats, which contained the iconic WOPR. It was just this big empty dusty space. One of the tenants was kind enough to show me this hidden treasure...enticing me with something like, "you wanna see something cool?" ...Its condition was not the best of shape, but still going strong. This was 15 years ago. I wonder where or who is taking care of the WOPR now...but in retrospect, I wonder, what the hell was it doing there...like shouldn't it be in a museum?
There is an old, dusty WOPR in the "sequel"...Idk if it is the original WOPR or not, but it looks just like it. Maybe they found it and have it preserved somewhere now.
I remember it being said a few times that the jeep crashing into the fence wasn't a part of the script. It just happened and when Broderick said "are you OK" to Sheedy, it was out of genuine concern and not one of his lines. It all was kept in because the director liked it.
This was a huge sleeper hit in the summer of 1983. I remember it happened to coincide with the first generation of affordable home computers that kids ( of which I was one) could get their hands on. I also recall Octopussy was it's big rival release that summer and both films were released by United Artists. Scary to think this was 40 years ago now. What you missed mentioning was that Matthew Broderick's father died towards the end of filming,. John Badham and the cast were very sympathetic towards him however he bravely soldiered on in order to get his scenes finished.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 Actually the IMSAI 8080 was pretty popular but not cheap. Home computers back then were much most expensive (adjusted for inflation) than they are today. My first computer back then was a TRS-80 which cost $1000 (and the printer cost about another $1000). That was a LOT of money back in the early-mid 80's
What really put the hook in me was the opening sequence with the Missileers in the silo control bunker who get the go-code to launch their missiles, not knowing it was a test.
One of my all time favorite films. I saw this as a kid in theaters and was fascinated by the computer technology. This led me to a very successful 25+ year career in IT.
It’s hard for me to fathom this was 40 years ago n still holds up in its own way. What Minty said about current AI is also kind of alarming in how true his statement is.
There's an actual computer software company in Asia (China, I think) called Cyberdine. When I heard that my first thought was Rut Roh! Shit's about to get real!
I loved how he dialed all the phone numbers in the Sunnyvale area to find just the computers. Just call the phone company and ask for all the prefixes in that city, then run the program to auto-dial all 10000 per prefix and save the computer toned ones. And for getting out of the big phone bill, as he said, "There's ways around that."
@@MordranethThere is a modern spin off of that one which is Wardriving. It's where you drive around untill you find an open (passwordless) WiFi access point. Just make a note of it and move on to find others, or the same one but a stronger signal. Later you come back and explore this new system that you have found. These days, you need to crack the WEP or WPA keys which is not impossible but takes a lot of the fun out of it. Manually cracking those keys? Well there are ways around that also.
Global thermonuclear war. I always liked that scene when all the missiles were flying out of the Soviet Union and the United States. And the computer said no winner.
One of the crazier aspects of the timing of its release would be the whole Stanislav Petrov incident took place that same year, but it wouldn't be revealed for decades afterwards.
One of my favorite childhood movies, and I still love it today. Really struck a nerve with me all those years ago, right smack dab in the 80s Cold War era.
The opening credits of Edge of Tomorrow show the control room from WarGames. Also I think the idea for the movie Sneakers was discovered while making WarGames. Not to mention, the method used to find the computer's phone number was real! I had a program for my Apple II literally called the "War Games Dialer" that used the modem to find other computers by auto-dialing. Anyway, great video!
In terms of the technical side of the film, Wargames was so far ahead of its time. They spoke with actual hackers to get their info, and a lot of the methodology is still relevant now.
I think that was part of the reason it was so successful. It was a totally original, entertaining and well made film. The story was, as you say, years ahead of its time.
One other thing that you might not know about the movie. The hack used to make the telephone call without having any money is based on something real. While the real hack was a bit more involved, it absolutely worked if you found the proper type of pay phone back in the 80s.
I remember my dad renting this movie over and over back when. At the time I didn't know what it was about and thought it was supposed to be some kind of intro to Ferris Bueller or something, considering the main character fiddles around with keyboards in the beginning. Little did I know years later while watching this as an adult. But yeah, a rad trip back to the 80s....
Great cast and writing that went beyond the main leads. Dabney Coleman and Barry Corbin as the General were fantastic. Both of those actors always delivered.
As a 12 year old in 1983 it resonated plenty. I think most kids of the early 80s figured they would all die in a nuclear war. “The Day After” was another movie that brought the point home. To make things even worse, we also lived in the Colorado Springs (home of NORAD and at the top of the Soviet target list)…
The Day After was eerie for when it was released. Watching it now as an older adult, there are a lot of things about the movie that are not that great. 1st, the launch sequence of the Minuteman Missiles from in front of the residence halls on the KU campus makes no sense because the US Air Force would never have silos in that location and 2nd, minuteman missiles were never deployed in Kansas. Also the detonation scene with the Dr. On the highway-if that were the case, him ducking down would have done no good as for the distance he was to that large MT warhead, his car would have been obliterated.
Lichtman's computer, in the film, is an Imsai 8080. The Altair 8080 was the first computer an individual could purchase, as a kit, and assemble at home. The Imsai was the second kit computer. Producers tried to negotiate with computer retailers, for a product placement, and product placement fee, without success. So, they decided to use the Imsai. Imsai and Altair computers had toggle switches and flashing lights, on the front panel, just like the old big iron computers. Each individual flashing light was on or off depending on the current content of the CPU's address, arithmetic and status registers. My older brother paid something like $1000, in 1976 dollars, to purchase an Imsai kit. It took him months to solder all the components on to the motherboard. When it was finally finished I thought he would be excited, trying it out, putting it through its paces, making it do interesting things. But, in fact, he was very disappointed. He found that the kit just hadn't shipped with enough memory. It shipped with a big 1 kilobyte of RAM. Not megabyte, not gigabyte. Kilobyte. For another $1000 he could unsolder and replace his 1K chips with 4K chips. Another one of my favourite TH-camrs has a couple of videos where he plays with a kit that emulates one of those 1976 computer kits... th-cam.com/video/Ko6W_zuHgfE/w-d-xo.html
Just for anyone interested (internet archeologists?). In the early 1990s I bought a 386 SX running at 33 Mhz. It had an internal memory of 1 Mb. When I was thinking about buying more memory, I went to the PC-shop and they tried to sell me another 1 Mb for a whopping 100 Guilders. I politely declined and left the shop, thinking 'one day they'll have memory on sale in a big bucket and someone scooping them out in spades. Literally.
I was there. I was 17 years old at the time. I was also an aspiring computer programmer and quite natural at it I must say. I was already a regular on the computer bulletin boards, using my whopping 300 baud modem. Back then, you would find text based command prompts at random phone numbers. We used dialers to hunt those numbers. When I watched this movie, I saw something quite potentially real because of my experience at the time. The movie has been remarkably memorable.
Minty bro, the imagine joke /pun was A+! Truly one of you best displays of your mastery of the comedic arts. Love your work and thanks for being you. Joy, peace, and abundance upon you friend.
While investigating War Games, the idea for the 1992 movie Sneakers was created. War Games was also the name of the 1969 episode of Patrick Troughton's last adventure. Where the 2nd Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe help ferret out a fellow rogue Time Lord the War Chief, who was aiding the race the War Lords. This would also be the adventure that would give Name to the Doctor's race, and be the second time where he would encounter one of his own people (the first being the Monk from the William Hernell serial the Time Medler).
The hacker scare bit was why the recently departed Kevin Mitnick was punished so severely in the following decade. Abd why the judge even banned him from making phone calls because he was convinced that Mitnick could launch nuclear weapons by whistling into a phone (in the 70s it was actually possible to make free phone calls by using a whistle from Captain Crunch cereal boxes, a guy who called himself that was involved with that as were a certain Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak). When the majority of Mitnick's "hacks" involved social engineering, exploiting human weaknesses to gain access.
I don't know if this already has been mentioned, but I mention it anyway: one possible translation for "hawk" in German language is "Falke". So basically "Falken" is the name "Hawking" transliterated into German.
That's weird. Because Dutch is closely related to German, but in Dutch we have two seperate words, indicating different birds (of prey). Falcon - valk Hawk - havik Turns out both Dutch and English talk about two different birds, whereas German has one name for two different birds! Falcon - Falke Hawk - Falke.
When Kevin Mitnick (who died last week) was arrested, he was kept in solitary confinement. The argument was that he could launch nuclear missiles if he had access to the phone system. Guess which movie the judge was thinking of when he agreed to this. About the sequel, I don't remember much about it but WOPR does make a short cameo as does the character of Dr. Falken with a different actor.
WG2 wasn't horrible. I was living back in San Diego when it came out, and saw it in a small video store. I had to watch, loving the first one at 10 years old. I didn't hate it. Some good Easter eggs in it.
I played Wargames on the Coleco system, and I loved it. You could count on 1 hand how many strategy games there were on those old school systems back in the day, so I really liked this one.
As always, it's fun to learn about what went on behind the scenes of our favorite 80s and 90s movies. Back then we had to rely on movie magazines like Cinefantastique, Starlog, and others to give us the scoop on production details and gossip about the actors and directors. Now we have Minty.
Crazy. I was 14 when it came out. the Arcades were the place to be. It was an amazing time and I dont think its even possible to imagine what it was like if you were born decades later. The excitement was visceral and it was an obsession. The home computer market was blossoming yet no GUI existed yet. You had to write code just to launch programs. I had an apple II and programmed in BASIC to mimic the films "Airline ticket reservation" scene. My friends would come over and they thought it was real ha ha. Imagine never even conceiving the idea of an "internet" and then seeing a kid on a movie dialing into "the internet" to "hack" games. These terms and concepts were so radical and new. I fell I love with Alley Sheedy and then began my love of girls with crooked teeth :) I remember her saying in an interview that hollywood asked her to fix them and she said "Nope!". Thats a rarity in hollywood these days.Anyway I could go on and on so ill stop here. Thanks for covering it Minty. Im so glad I was 0-10 in the 70's and 11-20 in the 80's. I won the decade jackpot!!
I miss BASIC !! I hate C++ although I love a SPELL CHECKER being built into the program editor new generations never have to deal with a syntax error and i still think in GOTO .
Great movie, I remember watching this as a young kid. I loved it then and its still a good movie and thanks for the trip down memory lane. Those where the good times seting in front of HBO cable T.V.
Even though this came out when worries over nuclear annihilation were extremely high, the movie had two of my favorite things of the era: the beginning of home computers and Ally Sheedy.
I read the novelization of WarGames back in 83, and it's opening line was so striking that I remember it to this day "The world ended not with a bang, or even a wimper, but in complete silence". The writer had obviously followed the rule that a book needs to grab it's reader from the first line. (The line was a reference to a non-working computer game that Broderick's character was writing.)
I was heavy radar tech working in a radar station on the Pinetree Line that sent data to Cheyenne Mountain when this movie came out. I really enjoyed it at time. We were kinda shocked as things that we were told to keep secret were actually in the film, such was the Defcon levels.
My dad was drafted during Vietnam, but stationed on a Nike nuclear missile base instead of Vietnam. He loved this film, and totally agreed with “the only way to win is not to play”.
I was nine and my Brother was ten when we saw _WarGames_ premiere on the big screen. As kids, we’d never previously heard of SAC or NORAD. We didn’t know what a DEFCON was. But let me tell you, we felt the weight of the World on David’s shoulders when he realized he almost started World War III! That, of course, was due in no small part to the performances given by Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. John Wood was equally brilliant and tragic as Dr. Stephen Falken! I was happy to see Wood and Broderick team up again in _Ladyhawke (1985)._ Speaking of improv, which Minty mentioned was encouraged by Director John Badham, the best improv’d line, hands down, came from Barry Corbin as SAC General Jack Beringer: _”Goddamn it, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!”_
PS: As someone who only watched _The Dead Code_ because it came included with my DVD copy… It sucked! I can’t remember anything about it except what was horribly done to the only returning character: Dr. Stephen Falken. Also I was completely disinterested in the main protagonists.
Minty! I love your videos. FYI, on WarGames you missed a great fact that the tunnel used in the beginning of the film (especially at the 8 minute mark of the film) is the same tunnel from BACK TO THE FUTURE 2 and for Toon Town in ROGER RABBIT.
What I really respect about the movie is the research put into understanding the real-world technology, culture and plausibility of hacking the variety of targets exploited.
WarGames was a fun movie to watch and looking back it captured the zeitgeist of the early 80's perfectly. And it had something thoughtful to say. Some of the aspects of man in the loop decision making vs automation explored by the film are even more relevant today. Plus its a good spring board to studying nuclear warfare. Perhaps the one point brought up in the film is the incredibly short amount of time the President has to make a decision to launch after detecting suspected inbound warheads which could be a matter of minutes. The doctrine of launching on warning was a real thing. Its a wonder that we haven't nuked ourselves yet.
I was a Senior in HS in 83. Ally Sheedy made we boys beg for buttermilk back then. Her character in this movie was what boys adored. Kind, sweet, shy, cute and most of all willing to help the boy who liked her. I liked War Games better than Farris Buehler.
We had a tape of this movie when I was a kid and I watched it back to back for days it seemed. I loved this movie. The teenagers were really authentic.
I saw "War Games" here in Charleston, South Carolina, when it came out in the summer of '83. I was 18 at the time. The theater was the Pinehaven Cinema and it sat across the road from the Navy base, which led to a rather surreal experience I will never forget. The movie was great! Everyone had a good time watching it. At the end, though, things got a little crazy. During the missile attack scene, where the NORAD commander is sweating bullets while the kid and the professor tried to convince him it was just a simulation, as major cities were apparently being vaporized, the audience started cheering it on. It was nuts! New York, of course, was first to go. NYC appeared on the screen, then 5 white dots where NYC used to be. Then came Chicago, L.A., Houston, etc. About half the audience cheered and jeered each one as it went up in smoke. "FUCK NEW YORK! NEW YORK SUCKS! BLOW IT UP!" and "CHICAGO SUCKS! BLOW IT UP! HA HA HA!" And so it went for L.A., Houston, Atlanta ... Then the Eastern Seaboard, from Washington, D.C., to Jacksonville, Florida, appeared on screen, including Charleston. Then white dots all along the coast, including one where Charleston, South Carolina, used to be. Things got strange! The boisterous audience which, moments before, had cheered and jeered the apparent destruction of so many major cities and the theoretical deaths of millions, suddenly got very quiet when Charleston vanished in a bloom of nuclear annihilation. It was as if someone shut off a switch. It was that completely silent, that fast.."YEAH, FUCK ATLANTA! ATLANTA SUCKS! NEW ORLEANS SUCKS! HA HA HA! YEAH, DC SUC---!!" 😱😳😬🤐 And no one said a word for the rest of the film. I think it dawned on most of them at that moment that our city was a target should Armageddon break out and we were sitting across the street from Ground Zero. In 1983, Charleston had the Navy base, Air Force Base, Naval Weapons Station and the Polaris missile base, so, yeah, we had several targets painted on our backs. The Navy base housed a surface and submarine battle group then. It closed in 1994, but the other facilities are still here. The theater is a church now, and the Pinehaven Shopping Center it was part of was torn down and redeveloped.
My dad worked for Grumman Aircraft in Bethpage Long Island. On the security building at Nassau County Medical Central was a map of most likely nuclear targets in New York. Bethpage had a big circle on it. Grumman is out of business now. We lived about 5 miles from Grumman. But I am still 15 miles from Manhattan.
The hacker method that David uses to find other computers, that is, writing a program that has his computer call all possible phone numbers looking for other computers and then modifying the phone records so as to not get charged for long distance use, was a novel way to do it. In fact, it was such a good idea that actual hackers began doing just that because of this film.
Correct you are. That's why we..errm they called it Wardialing. They'd also left screen capture on because some BBS's had their security info or client type flash on screen for a single frame and was too fast to see, Screen capture allowed them to go back and see the screen grabs and glean everything from ports open, to the type of software they were using and what version. That allowed exploiting software backdoors instead of using brute force hacks. Allegedly.
Great review as always Minty. I love this movie. Just rewatched it for free a few weeks ago on TH-cam, in fact. Two more actors who deserve a mention are John Spencer, who shared the opening scene with the young Michael Madsen (some might remember him from "The Rock," when Sean Connery's character hangs him over a ledge and he says his arm is about to be broken), and the great Barry Corbin, who was always fantastic in every role he played. See ya.
I loved Wargames as a kid when it came out. Great video, though I am a little surprised the cast wasn't talked about more. Michael Madsen (Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs) had one of his first roles as being in the nuclear bunker with John Spencer (The West Wing). Dabney Coleman (9to 5, Cloak and Dagger, Tootsie) was terrific as McKittrick. Barry Corbin (such a great character actor) was great as General Beringer.
Barry Corbin was great as the Warden in Stir Crazy. Also the geeky hackers, Maury Chayfkin (Dances With Wolves) and Eddie Zeesan (Eugene in Grease) as well as James Tolkan(Back to the Future, Top Gun), William Bogart (The Interviewer in Dave Chappelle's great skit about Clayton Bigsby) and Michael Ensign (The smarmy hotel manager in Ghostbusters) and others etc etc etc
Watching the film as a teen, 1980s. Then as a 50yr old: 2021 put a different spin on it. I was also a 1990s era(Cold War) Army veteran. The movie and military 🪖 bits are WAY off in some scenes. The 3rd act is flawed too in my view but overall the movie is +.
@@DavidLLambertmobile LOL was thinking the same upon rewatch. It was believable for a minute but scrutiny finds a million inconsistencies and plot holes. Still a fun ride in spite of them. Plus I could watch Dabney Coleman and Barry Corbin spar with each other all day lololol
@@Jimmietwotimes Many veteran actors were hired to do John Badham's WarGames, because the supporting parts were totally superb. All thanks to the film's casting director Wallis Nicita.
@@markelijio6012 Why you fkn wit' me, bruh? I made an innocuous comment and you just have to shit on it. I dunno what's wrong with you ppl but goddam it's hard to comment on these videos. Ok, Sparky, you win. Feel better. I know more about his movie than you do (for various reasons) and have no time for grouses who just cant's stand it unless they shit on someone's good time. Hope you have a great day, JA.
WarGames Defcon 1 was also available on PC, simply titled WarGames, and had a complete genre swap to real-time strategy. They also managed to distribute some copies of the game with a virus on the CD, which infected the user's PC if they registered the game.
I remember seeing WarGames: The Dead Code on like a off brand movie channel one time and only caught the back end of it, when I saw it I was like "They made a sequel, the hell???"
As a 1980s 1990s era Army MP enlisted 🪖 I found the film Air Force, SP-MP parts a tad unrealistic. In reality, especially after 09/2001 the USAF & DoD are SUPER rigid, strict about 🛰🚀📡💻 stuff. No open tours, no buses, no pranks, no detaining trespassers(un monitored or with no restraints). I can tell you Air Force Security Forces & OSI 🚔 are no joke!
@@DavidLLambertmobile He is talking about the initial silo scene, the opening scene, where they were conducting a training test in a silo without knowing if it was training or not.
Two things. One, the term “firewall” for computers (was already being used in automotive at the time.) was first used in this movie. Two, I’ve seen WarGames: The Dead Code twice. Good movie IMO. And WOPR does make an appearance. As well as Stephen Falken, unfortunately not played by the same actor.
I first watched WarGames when I was 8-9 years old in the mid 1980's, and it was great. It sure did give me an idea on how computers and technology should be serious. Involving teenagers with a world threat also made it real different and interesting. I still watch it today and like it.
I remember spending a ton of money renting that movie over and over on VHS (plus a rental player because I couldn't yet afford to buy a vcr) after it was finally released on tape. I'm not sure, but I seem to remember it wasn't in theaters for long, for some reason. (Yes, I spent too much on theater tickets for that movie, too) I hope they NEVER do a remake of this classic
Love this film!!! I was really young but I did see it in the theater with my family (born in 76). Also remember watching it many times in the 80’s on HBO. Still enjoy it to this day.
Very interesting video as always Minty. This was also released the same year as John Badham's other hit movie "Blue Thunder". Can you please do a segment on that film? That was an awesome film like "Wargames". Thanks always for your content. 😎👍
Fun content. The thought of Lennon playing the doc is so interesting. You should do one on Real Genius (which did use the space laser motif). Thanks for taking the time.
Two things from a USAF veteran who saw the film in the cinema when it was released (3 years after leaving the military). First, arguably the greatest hero in history, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov of SOVIET Air Defense, refused orders to launch nukes as a response to a faulty report of a US first strike attack. And this was in 1983. Eerily (and perhaps meaningfully) similar to the story of Wargames. Second, when watching this in a cinema during its first release, the actual, IRL tensions inside the US were horrific. (I get emotional just remembering this.) We were watching the 'fun, fell-good, action romp' as it got closer and closer to the suspenseful ending. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS! We were on the edge of our seats, to some extent, but in the actual times, we lived in a permanent state of terrified readiness (actually, in dread because readiness could do little in an actual scenario of nuclear war, and many of us knew this). When WOPR says the game was interesting because "The only way to win is not to play," at least a quarter of the audience of 100 or so people jumped to their feet and shouted with joy and affirmation. We were wound so tight in those days, without always knowing it, that this simple, but momentous line made people jump and cheer at the message. Do not, under any circumstance, play Global Thermonuclear War. I like to think that the film may have contributed to some policy makers of the time, and decision makers in actual missile siloes, backing down from a figurative DEFCON 1. So, yes, it was a nifty little fluffy film which, in all reality, spoke of and to a time when the risk of a devastating WW III was no joke. Thanks for a great reaction, as always, Minty.
I was born in '80. People don't realize the cloud over the world during that decade. When the wall fell in '91, the collective sigh the world took, younger people just don't understand it!!!
IRL?
@@taddurrenberger3672In Real Life
such a tale !!! nice one fella ;)
I saw Threads ( the movie) in 83 aged 7! ( Far too young) and obviously developed a dread fear of nuclear holocaust. My 8th birthday was 26/09/83. I've always been very grateful to a certain Soviet officer for not ruining my birthday.
My favorite story about War Games has to do with the NORAD Operations Center. When this movie came out, NORAD was just beginning the process of completely overhauling their operations center, but no one really knew what they wanted. The totally fictional operations center in the movie showed them what could be done by a creative team, and it actually influenced the design of the revamped NORAD.
I recently rewatched this after thirty years and was amazed at how well it held up, not to mention how eerily prophetic it was.
My secret fan theory is that WarGames and The Terminator are in the same universe. WOPR was the first failed Skynet.
Thats awesome!! You should become a writer. 😊
Ripley is mentioned in the sequel
Well you aren't very good at keeping secrets 😊
I'm definitely picking up what you're putting down
Canon accepted
War Games was a pivotal piece of technology cinema. I saw it opening week with some colleagues from the computer company I worked for at the time. It showed that password aging is a severe security risk over 35 years before Microsoft (and earlier NIST and FTC) finally issued advice to avoid using password aging because it can lead to people writing down passwords. Then in the phone booth scene, we were all going... "It's a dial phone booth... find some metal. Yes! The pull-tab!" to a chorus of "Shhhh"s.
The movie inspired "War Dialers" that exposed so many systems that just used unlisted "security through obscurity" numbers with guest logins, and later used to find fax lines to end spam faxes to.
This movie is a main reason I got my education (and later jobs) in the computer field. Very inspirational.
When you mentioned Space Lasers I thought of Spies Like Us. Can you please do that one? It holds up surprisingly well.
My dad’s oldest childhood friend was William “Billy” Bogart, who played Matthew Broderick’s dad. He was a well known Broadway actor, and one of the earliest spokesmen for IBMs very first personal computer in the very early 1980s. They grew up across the street from each other on Cedar Lane in Woodmere, Long Island. Billy’s wife Erin was one of the very first Muppeteers with Jim Henson on Sesame St and the Muppet Show. Billy died fairly recently, about 5 years ago.
Didn't he also play the interviewer in Chapelle's Black Racist skit?
WarGames is one of my favorite movies. And the kid going up against a military super computer to decide the fate of the world, was a pretty nifty idea. And how they ultimately trick it into stalemate itself until it decided to give up, was brilliant.
This still stands as one of my favorite 80s movies. One thing that is so impressive about this film is that almost all of the tech stuff and hacking/phreaking you see in the movie was completely legit and realistic for the day. They definitely did their nerdy research for this one. ;-)
When dial-up modems you had to plug a phone receiver into were cutting edge!
He did not hack anything. He set his unrealistic home pc to auto dial phone numbers. WOPR just answered.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 He did the proper research to figure out potential passwords. Sort of social engineering without direct interaction with the subject. And what was unrealistic about his home PC setup? That was a legit PC of the day... it was an IMSAI 8080... it was even sort of old in 1983.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 I remember a general angrily yelling that "the phone company screwed up. They left a line open," which neatly explained how he got in.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 Back in those days, many of us actually DID do things like that. It wasn't unrealistic at all. In fact, because of the movie, it was named WarDialing. Typically we were more looking for BBS's but we did find things like banks and computer timeshare companies (Tymnet is one I remember finding). And just like wargames, once you got in, you really had no clue what to do next, so some experimented a bit.
Greatest line ever: "I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good."
Saw it in the theater around age 15--classic!
Fun fact: That line was ad-libbed by Barry Corbin.
My dad’s favorite line from the movie
From what I understand some people have actually peed on a spark plug for real. All while the spark plug was getting energized. Let's just say these people are clearly not all that bright to try something like that. From what I understand the shock you get from a spark plug is similar to the shock you get from an electric fence and is quite painful.
@@emuhill Mythbusters busted that "peeing on electric things" myth. A urine stream breaks up before it contacts the electrified object. You'd have to be inches away to get any sort of shock. Or, have the most robust stream of piss that anyone has ever had in human history.
@@dark14life Mythbusters is full of it.
I'm 52, saw it in a Hoyts cinema in grade 7 the same year my dad purchased a Commodore 64, acoustic coupler modem, dot matrix printer, and an amber screen (like a green screen, only orange). We were already "logging in" to the local university computer and Gopher looked exactly like the War Games interaction (without the voice). It felt real, almost as if I could hack into government computers and start Robodebt Wars. $0.02
I saw it before it was released on pirate video. Got a commodore for my next birthday. Couldn't wait to write a program that infinitely repeated a word or drew a line. Those were the days.
Those things are built to last! My uncle still uses his Commodore 64 monitor as his tv screen!
@@crusader.survivorI just fired up one of my old C-64's that has been in storage for about 20 years. Started up right away as if it was brand new.
I love computers from the 80's. 😄
@@rolling-roadkill The 80's was the height of American culture! I miss those days.
C64 ? The same computer hacktivist Julian Assagne learend computing ?
Wargames has always been one of my favorite movies! Even when I was too young to fully understand it back in the 80s. It's a movie that I still go back and watch a couple of times a year.
I knew about the 2008 sequel and even watched it. It's basically a made-for-TV movie in quality. Not completely terrible but doesn't hold a candle to the original!
My colony and I saw it in the theater as a callow. I didn't understand it, but did when I was an adult since I became a computer geek/nerd. :)
lol, what u said could have been my comment word for word. i also love war games, i have seen the 2nd and it was not good but not horrible as well
don't forget the weird role W.O.P.R. had in the sequel at the end.
WarGames is one of my favorite tech movies. The hacking scenes are the most practical and believable for its time. Rather than just having a teenager type in random code on his computer, they have the hero using passwords carelessly laid out, and dialing up numbers to software companies. This movie had such an impact on me, when I got my first Chromebook about 5 years ago, I slapped a WarGames sticker on the back of it.
One fact I'm surprised that you didn't mention was that the Galaga game that Matthew Broderick was playing was gifted to him to practice on for the movie. So yeah, Matthew Broderick had a Galaga machine in his house thanks to WarGames.😊
This movie got me to install a war dialer back in the day and then a port scanner later on. There were (are?) a lot of vulnerable systems out there.
My wife and I still watch this movie every few years and continue to enjoy it. I absolutely loved the Wargames Defcon 1 game on the PS1. A friend and I used to play it every time he came over trying to beat each of the different scenarios and getting through to the end.
I met the WOPR (prop) in LA on a live sound gig years ago. It was covered in dust all by itself in the corner of an empty warehouse in east LA. It was one of the most random and coolest things I'd ever seen. I was laterally star struck by a prop. It was in one of those industrial areas that had been converted to artist flats. There was a big warehouse separated from the flats, which contained the iconic WOPR. It was just this big empty dusty space. One of the tenants was kind enough to show me this hidden treasure...enticing me with something like, "you wanna see something cool?" ...Its condition was not the best of shape, but still going strong. This was 15 years ago. I wonder where or who is taking care of the WOPR now...but in retrospect, I wonder, what the hell was it doing there...like shouldn't it be in a museum?
Damn! Wish you had gotten pictures
@@tammasus man I think I did actually. I gotta go dig in my old photos and see if i still have them. If so I'll post 'em and flag it here!
There is an old, dusty WOPR in the "sequel"...Idk if it is the original WOPR or not, but it looks just like it. Maybe they found it and have it preserved somewhere now.
sweet. i would be star struck.
@@futuree.d.o.podcast604 !
I remember it being said a few times that the jeep crashing into the fence wasn't a part of the script. It just happened and when Broderick said "are you OK" to Sheedy, it was out of genuine concern and not one of his lines. It all was kept in because the director liked it.
This was a huge sleeper hit in the summer of 1983. I remember it happened to coincide with the first generation of affordable home computers that kids ( of which I was one) could get their hands on. I also recall Octopussy was it's big rival release that summer and both films were released by United Artists. Scary to think this was 40 years ago now.
What you missed mentioning was that Matthew Broderick's father died towards the end of filming,. John Badham and the cast were very sympathetic towards him however he bravely soldiered on in order to get his scenes finished.
Fun semi-fact- that computer he was using was not something a family would purchase.
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 I wasa lucky to get some kids computer summer camp at a collegue ...
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 Actually the IMSAI 8080 was pretty popular but not cheap. Home computers back then were much most expensive (adjusted for inflation) than they are today. My first computer back then was a TRS-80 which cost $1000 (and the printer cost about another $1000). That was a LOT of money back in the early-mid 80's
@@insideoutsideupsidedown2218 Real fact: he wasn't using a PC. It was a dumb terminal.
"Shall we play a game?" was a HUGE meme/catchphrase of the time and everyone was saying it.
It remains popular to this day. Scarlett Johansson even quoted it during a scene in 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' back in 2014.
One of my favorite movies as a 80s kid. Ive seen it probably 30+ times.
Space lasers was the plot of Real Genius
What really put the hook in me was the opening sequence with the Missileers in the silo control bunker who get the go-code to launch their missiles, not knowing it was a test.
And one of them being Michael Madsen...😂
One of my all time favorite films. I saw this as a kid in theaters and was fascinated by the computer technology. This led me to a very successful 25+ year career in IT.
One of my favorite all time movies. Still holds up very well.
It’s hard for me to fathom this was 40 years ago n still holds up in its own way. What Minty said about current AI is also kind of alarming in how true his statement is.
AI is Hollywood... not what you think it is ,,,,fake
There's an actual computer software company in Asia (China, I think) called Cyberdine.
When I heard that my first thought was Rut Roh! Shit's about to get real!
I loved how he dialed all the phone numbers in the Sunnyvale area to find just the computers. Just call the phone company and ask for all the prefixes in that city, then run the program to auto-dial all 10000 per prefix and save the computer toned ones. And for getting out of the big phone bill, as he said, "There's ways around that."
That's called Wardialing, and it was a genuine technique used by hackers pre-Internet.
I used Terminate! V1. 4. It had a built in wardialer.
@@MordranethThere is a modern spin off of that one which is Wardriving. It's where you drive around untill you find an open (passwordless) WiFi access point. Just make a note of it and move on to find others, or the same one but a stronger signal. Later you come back and explore this new system that you have found.
These days, you need to crack the WEP or WPA keys which is not impossible but takes a lot of the fun out of it. Manually cracking those keys? Well there are ways around that also.
@@gorillaau Actually the terms you used, "war-dialing" and "war-driving" owe their existence to the film.
"You can go to jail for that.. only if you're 18" LOL 😁
Global thermonuclear war. I always liked that scene when all the missiles were flying out of the Soviet Union and the United States. And the computer said no winner.
One of the crazier aspects of the timing of its release would be the whole Stanislav Petrov incident took place that same year, but it wouldn't be revealed for decades afterwards.
One of my favorite childhood movies, and I still love it today. Really struck a nerve with me all those years ago, right smack dab in the 80s Cold War era.
The opening credits of Edge of Tomorrow show the control room from WarGames. Also I think the idea for the movie Sneakers was discovered while making WarGames. Not to mention, the method used to find the computer's phone number was real! I had a program for my Apple II literally called the "War Games Dialer" that used the modem to find other computers by auto-dialing. Anyway, great video!
In terms of the technical side of the film, Wargames was so far ahead of its time. They spoke with actual hackers to get their info, and a lot of the methodology is still relevant now.
I think that was part of the reason it was so successful. It was a totally original, entertaining and well made film. The story was, as you say, years ahead of its time.
"Id piss on a spark plug if I thought it would help". Classic line.
Wait... lasers in space you say?
That's the plot of Real Genius [1985] with Val Kilmer
One other thing that you might not know about the movie. The hack used to make the telephone call without having any money is based on something real. While the real hack was a bit more involved, it absolutely worked if you found the proper type of pay phone back in the 80s.
I remember my dad renting this movie over and over back when. At the time I didn't know what it was about and thought it was supposed to be some kind of intro to Ferris Bueller or something, considering the main character fiddles around with keyboards in the beginning. Little did I know years later while watching this as an adult. But yeah, a rad trip back to the 80s....
Great cast and writing that went beyond the main leads. Dabney Coleman and Barry Corbin as the General were fantastic. Both of those actors always delivered.
As a 12 year old in 1983 it resonated plenty. I think most kids of the early 80s figured they would all die in a nuclear war. “The Day After” was another movie that brought the point home. To make things even worse, we also lived in the Colorado Springs (home of NORAD and at the top of the Soviet target list)…
The Day After was eerie for when it was released. Watching it now as an older adult, there are a lot of things about the movie that are not that great. 1st, the launch sequence of the Minuteman Missiles from in front of the residence halls on the KU campus makes no sense because the US Air Force would never have silos in that location and 2nd, minuteman missiles were never deployed in Kansas. Also the detonation scene with the Dr. On the highway-if that were the case, him ducking down would have done no good as for the distance he was to that large MT warhead, his car would have been obliterated.
Lichtman's computer, in the film, is an Imsai 8080. The Altair 8080 was the first computer an individual could purchase, as a kit, and assemble at home. The Imsai was the second kit computer.
Producers tried to negotiate with computer retailers, for a product placement, and product placement fee, without success. So, they decided to use the Imsai. Imsai and Altair computers had toggle switches and flashing lights, on the front panel, just like the old big iron computers. Each individual flashing light was on or off depending on the current content of the CPU's address, arithmetic and status registers.
My older brother paid something like $1000, in 1976 dollars, to purchase an Imsai kit. It took him months to solder all the components on to the motherboard. When it was finally finished I thought he would be excited, trying it out, putting it through its paces, making it do interesting things.
But, in fact, he was very disappointed. He found that the kit just hadn't shipped with enough memory. It shipped with a big 1 kilobyte of RAM. Not megabyte, not gigabyte. Kilobyte. For another $1000 he could unsolder and replace his 1K chips with 4K chips.
Another one of my favourite TH-camrs has a couple of videos where he plays with a kit that emulates one of those 1976 computer kits... th-cam.com/video/Ko6W_zuHgfE/w-d-xo.html
Just for anyone interested (internet archeologists?).
In the early 1990s I bought a 386 SX running at 33 Mhz.
It had an internal memory of 1 Mb.
When I was thinking about buying more memory, I went to the PC-shop and they tried to sell me another 1 Mb for a whopping 100 Guilders.
I politely declined and left the shop, thinking 'one day they'll have memory on sale in a big bucket and someone scooping them out in spades. Literally.
I was there. I was 17 years old at the time. I was also an aspiring computer programmer and quite natural at it I must say. I was already a regular on the computer bulletin boards, using my whopping 300 baud modem. Back then, you would find text based command prompts at random phone numbers. We used dialers to hunt those numbers. When I watched this movie, I saw something quite potentially real because of my experience at the time. The movie has been remarkably memorable.
So glad you did this video of an almost forgotten gem of early 80s cinema.
Minty, your videos are amazing. You keep us entertained and informed. Hitting those 80s classics.... icing on the cake my friend. Keep it up!!!!
Brings back nice memories and a bit of nostalgia for an era gone for good...In my mind makes a great double feature with D.A.R.Y.L.
Minty bro, the imagine joke /pun was A+! Truly one of you best displays of your mastery of the comedic arts. Love your work and thanks for being you. Joy, peace, and abundance upon you friend.
I remember first seeing War Games in computer class in high school, and it has since then become one of my all time favorite movies
I liked Wargames as a kid: 1980s but as a older adult, 2020s there are big flaws-parts I'd change, redo.
While investigating War Games, the idea for the 1992 movie Sneakers was created.
War Games was also the name of the 1969 episode of Patrick Troughton's last adventure.
Where the 2nd Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe help ferret out a fellow rogue Time Lord the War Chief, who was aiding the race the War Lords.
This would also be the adventure that would give Name to the Doctor's race, and be the second time where he would encounter one of his own people (the first being the Monk from the William Hernell serial the Time Medler).
Aly Sheedy was textbook definition of adorable!!!
The hacker scare bit was why the recently departed Kevin Mitnick was punished so severely in the following decade. Abd why the judge even banned him from making phone calls because he was convinced that Mitnick could launch nuclear weapons by whistling into a phone (in the 70s it was actually possible to make free phone calls by using a whistle from Captain Crunch cereal boxes, a guy who called himself that was involved with that as were a certain Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak). When the majority of Mitnick's "hacks" involved social engineering, exploiting human weaknesses to gain access.
I don't know if this already has been mentioned, but I mention it anyway: one possible translation for "hawk" in German language is "Falke". So basically "Falken" is the name "Hawking" transliterated into German.
Wow. That’s why a hawk is also called a falcon in English. I never thought about that…
That's weird. Because Dutch is closely related to German, but in Dutch we have two seperate words, indicating different birds (of prey).
Falcon - valk
Hawk - havik
Turns out both Dutch and English talk about two different birds, whereas German has one name for two different birds!
Falcon - Falke
Hawk - Falke.
Ally Sheedy in the jogging pants still haunts my dreams.
Yes, I've been in love with her character for a full forty years now! She's the very quintessence of what a young guy thinks a girlfriend should be...
When Kevin Mitnick (who died last week) was arrested, he was kept in solitary confinement. The argument was that he could launch nuclear missiles if he had access to the phone system. Guess which movie the judge was thinking of when he agreed to this. About the sequel, I don't remember much about it but WOPR does make a short cameo as does the character of Dr. Falken with a different actor.
WG2 wasn't horrible. I was living back in San Diego when it came out, and saw it in a small video store. I had to watch, loving the first one at 10 years old. I didn't hate it. Some good Easter eggs in it.
I played Wargames on the Coleco system, and I loved it. You could count on 1 hand how many strategy games there were on those old school systems back in the day, so I really liked this one.
Coleco holds a special place in my cold dead heart
I saw this at least 3 times in a theatre when it came out. Masterpiece!
As always, it's fun to learn about what went on behind the scenes of our favorite 80s and 90s movies. Back then we had to rely on movie magazines like Cinefantastique, Starlog, and others to give us the scoop on production details and gossip about the actors and directors. Now we have Minty.
Crazy. I was 14 when it came out. the Arcades were the place to be. It was an amazing time and I dont think its even possible to imagine what it was like if you were born decades later. The excitement was visceral and it was an obsession. The home computer market was blossoming yet no GUI existed yet. You had to write code just to launch programs. I had an apple II and programmed in BASIC to mimic the films "Airline ticket reservation" scene. My friends would come over and they thought it was real ha ha. Imagine never even conceiving the idea of an "internet" and then seeing a kid on a movie dialing into "the internet" to "hack" games. These terms and concepts were so radical and new.
I fell I love with Alley Sheedy and then began my love of girls with crooked teeth :) I remember her saying in an interview that hollywood asked her to fix them and she said "Nope!". Thats a rarity in hollywood these days.Anyway I could go on and on so ill stop here. Thanks for covering it Minty. Im so glad I was 0-10 in the 70's and 11-20 in the 80's. I won the decade jackpot!!
I miss BASIC !! I hate C++ although I love a SPELL CHECKER being built into the program editor new generations never have to deal with a syntax error and i still think in GOTO .
@@heathhacker8948 ha ha yeah man, the good ol'..
10 Print "I Am Awesome!"
20 GOTO 10
😄
Ah, yeah, another original '80s movie that an '80s kid like me has enjoyed because of the computer games
Great movie, I remember watching this as a young kid. I loved it then and its still a good movie and thanks for the trip down memory lane. Those where the good times seting in front of HBO cable T.V.
The ColecoVision game was a lot of fun back in the day for the time. We had it for our system.
- Who invented asexual reproduction?
- Er... Your wife?
Even though this came out when worries over nuclear annihilation were extremely high, the movie had two of my favorite things of the era: the beginning of home computers and Ally Sheedy.
Whoppers, also a candy. Malted milk balls covered in artificially flavored chocolate. Another good one Minty, thanks.
In the UK there’s a copy called Maltesers.
I read the novelization of WarGames back in 83, and it's opening line was so striking that I remember it to this day "The world ended not with a bang, or even a wimper, but in complete silence". The writer had obviously followed the rule that a book needs to grab it's reader from the first line. (The line was a reference to a non-working computer game that Broderick's character was writing.)
Might be how it truly DID end a few centuries ago.
Are we not going to mention the "How to butter a corn cob" scene?!! 😂
I was heavy radar tech working in a radar station on the Pinetree Line that sent data to Cheyenne Mountain when this movie came out. I really enjoyed it at time.
We were kinda shocked as things that we were told to keep secret were actually in the film, such was the Defcon levels.
Omg I had a huge crush on Ally Sheedy at the time. Such a beautiful young woman.
Agreed!!
My dad was drafted during Vietnam, but stationed on a Nike nuclear missile base instead of Vietnam. He loved this film, and totally agreed with “the only way to win is not to play”.
I remember I first watched this movie on The Hub channel when I was 15 almost 16 back in 2013.
I was nine and my Brother was ten when we saw _WarGames_ premiere on the big screen. As kids, we’d never previously heard of SAC or NORAD. We didn’t know what a DEFCON was.
But let me tell you, we felt the weight of the World on David’s shoulders when he realized he almost started World War III!
That, of course, was due in no small part to the performances given by Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy.
John Wood was equally brilliant and tragic as Dr. Stephen Falken! I was happy to see Wood and Broderick team up again in _Ladyhawke (1985)._
Speaking of improv, which Minty mentioned was encouraged by Director John Badham, the best improv’d line, hands down, came from Barry Corbin as SAC General Jack Beringer:
_”Goddamn it, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good!”_
PS: As someone who only watched _The Dead Code_ because it came included with my DVD copy…
It sucked!
I can’t remember anything about it except what was horribly done to the only returning character: Dr. Stephen Falken.
Also I was completely disinterested in the main protagonists.
Matthew Broderick is brilliant as David Lightman and Ally Sheedy is brilliant as Jennifer Katherine Mack.😀👍
100%, this is one of the best cast films!
@@RominaJones I agree. 😀👍
Minty! I love your videos. FYI, on WarGames you missed a great fact that the tunnel used in the beginning of the film (especially at the 8 minute mark of the film) is the same tunnel from BACK TO THE FUTURE 2 and for Toon Town in ROGER RABBIT.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
What I really respect about the movie is the research put into understanding the real-world technology, culture and plausibility of hacking the variety of targets exploited.
*unofficial Terminator prequel! WOPR is the "father" of Skynet! 😂
One of my favourite films. Only rewatched it a few days back.
WarGames was a fun movie to watch and looking back it captured the zeitgeist of the early 80's perfectly. And it had something thoughtful to say.
Some of the aspects of man in the loop decision making vs automation explored by the film are even more relevant today. Plus its a good spring board to studying nuclear warfare. Perhaps the one point brought up in the film is the incredibly short amount of time the President has to make a decision to launch after detecting suspected inbound warheads which could be a matter of minutes. The doctrine of launching on warning was a real thing. Its a wonder that we haven't nuked ourselves yet.
I was a Senior in HS in 83. Ally Sheedy made we boys beg for buttermilk back then. Her character in this movie was what boys adored. Kind, sweet, shy, cute and most of all willing to help the boy who liked her. I liked War Games better than Farris Buehler.
Nice pick Minty. I just watched this film with my son last weekend. Last time I watched it was about 35 years ago.
We had a tape of this movie when I was a kid and I watched it back to back for days it seemed. I loved this movie. The teenagers were really authentic.
Maybe do 10 things you didn't know about "Suspiria" or "The Entity".
only seen suspiria in the last 6-8 months. brilliant show ... a deft hand upon its rudder :)
I saw "War Games" here in Charleston, South Carolina, when it came out in the summer of '83. I was 18 at the time. The theater was the Pinehaven Cinema and it sat across the road from the Navy base, which led to a rather surreal experience I will never forget. The movie was great! Everyone had a good time watching it. At the end, though, things got a little crazy.
During the missile attack scene, where the NORAD commander is sweating bullets while the kid and the professor tried to convince him it was just a simulation, as major cities were apparently being vaporized, the audience started cheering it on. It was nuts!
New York, of course, was first to go. NYC appeared on the screen, then 5 white dots where NYC used to be. Then came Chicago, L.A., Houston, etc. About half the audience cheered and jeered each one as it went up in smoke. "FUCK NEW YORK! NEW YORK SUCKS! BLOW IT UP!" and "CHICAGO SUCKS! BLOW IT UP! HA HA HA!" And so it went for L.A., Houston, Atlanta ...
Then the Eastern Seaboard, from Washington, D.C., to Jacksonville, Florida, appeared on screen, including Charleston. Then white dots all along the coast, including one where Charleston, South Carolina, used to be.
Things got strange! The boisterous audience which, moments before, had cheered and jeered the apparent destruction of so many major cities and the theoretical deaths of millions, suddenly got very quiet when Charleston vanished in a bloom of nuclear annihilation. It was as if someone shut off a switch. It was that completely silent, that fast.."YEAH, FUCK ATLANTA! ATLANTA SUCKS! NEW ORLEANS SUCKS! HA HA HA! YEAH, DC SUC---!!" 😱😳😬🤐 And no one said a word for the rest of the film. I think it dawned on most of them at that moment that our city was a target should Armageddon break out and we were sitting across the street from Ground Zero.
In 1983, Charleston had the Navy base, Air Force Base, Naval Weapons Station and the Polaris missile base, so, yeah, we had several targets painted on our backs. The Navy base housed a surface and submarine battle group then. It closed in 1994, but the other facilities are still here. The theater is a church now, and the Pinehaven Shopping Center it was part of was torn down and redeveloped.
My dad worked for Grumman Aircraft in Bethpage Long Island.
On the security building at Nassau County Medical Central was a map of most likely nuclear targets in New York. Bethpage had a big circle on it. Grumman is out of business now. We lived about 5 miles from Grumman. But I am still 15 miles from Manhattan.
The hacker method that David uses to find other computers, that is, writing a program that has his computer call all possible phone numbers looking for other computers and then modifying the phone records so as to not get charged for long distance use, was a novel way to do it. In fact, it was such a good idea that actual hackers began doing just that because of this film.
Correct you are. That's why we..errm they called it Wardialing. They'd also left screen capture on because some BBS's had their security info or client type flash on screen for a single frame and was too fast to see, Screen capture allowed them to go back and see the screen grabs and glean everything from ports open, to the type of software they were using and what version. That allowed exploiting software backdoors instead of using brute force hacks. Allegedly.
@@Mordraneth Awesome! Thanks for the info!!! Also, RIP Captain Crunch.
@@jamesroseii john draper is still very much alive
@@conrad-constantine You are right. I confused him with Kevin Mitnick.
Missile Command is the best video game based on War Games, it came out several years before the movie.
Great review as always Minty. I love this movie. Just rewatched it for free a few weeks ago on TH-cam, in fact.
Two more actors who deserve a mention are John Spencer, who shared the opening scene with the young Michael Madsen (some might remember him from "The Rock," when Sean Connery's character hangs him over a ledge and he says his arm is about to be broken), and the great Barry Corbin, who was always fantastic in every role he played.
See ya.
I watched this about a week a go and STILL love it.
I loved Wargames as a kid when it came out. Great video, though I am a little surprised the cast wasn't talked about more. Michael Madsen (Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs) had one of his first roles as being in the nuclear bunker with John Spencer (The West Wing). Dabney Coleman (9to 5, Cloak and Dagger, Tootsie) was terrific as McKittrick. Barry Corbin (such a great character actor) was great as General Beringer.
Barry Corbin was great as the Warden in Stir Crazy. Also the geeky hackers, Maury Chayfkin (Dances With Wolves) and Eddie Zeesan (Eugene in Grease) as well as James Tolkan(Back to the Future, Top Gun), William Bogart (The Interviewer in Dave Chappelle's great skit about Clayton Bigsby) and Michael Ensign (The smarmy hotel manager in Ghostbusters) and others etc etc etc
Watching the film as a teen, 1980s. Then as a 50yr old: 2021 put a different spin on it. I was also a 1990s era(Cold War) Army veteran. The movie and military 🪖 bits are WAY off in some scenes. The 3rd act is flawed too in my view but overall the movie is +.
@@DavidLLambertmobile LOL was thinking the same upon rewatch. It was believable for a minute but scrutiny finds a million inconsistencies and plot holes. Still a fun ride in spite of them. Plus I could watch Dabney Coleman and Barry Corbin spar with each other all day lololol
@@Jimmietwotimes Many veteran actors were hired to do John Badham's WarGames, because the supporting parts
were totally superb. All thanks to the film's casting director Wallis Nicita.
@@markelijio6012 Why you fkn wit' me, bruh? I made an innocuous comment and you just have to shit on it. I dunno what's wrong with you ppl but goddam it's hard to comment on these videos. Ok, Sparky, you win. Feel better. I know more about his movie than you do (for various reasons) and have no time for grouses who just cant's stand it unless they shit on someone's good time. Hope you have a great day, JA.
WarGames Defcon 1 was also available on PC, simply titled WarGames, and had a complete genre swap to real-time strategy. They also managed to distribute some copies of the game with a virus on the CD, which infected the user's PC if they registered the game.
Wargames is a good film Computer hacking Computer called Joshua releasing the codes to start world War three
I remember seeing WarGames: The Dead Code on like a off brand movie channel one time and only caught the back end of it, when I saw it I was like "They made a sequel, the hell???"
Fun Fact: the scene in the missile silo is dead on accurate.
As a 1980s 1990s era Army MP enlisted 🪖 I found the film Air Force, SP-MP parts a tad unrealistic. In reality, especially after 09/2001 the USAF & DoD are SUPER rigid, strict about 🛰🚀📡💻 stuff. No open tours, no buses, no pranks, no detaining trespassers(un monitored or with no restraints). I can tell you Air Force Security Forces & OSI 🚔 are no joke!
@@DavidLLambertmobile He is talking about the initial silo scene, the opening scene, where they were conducting a training test in a silo without knowing if it was training or not.
Two things.
One, the term “firewall” for computers (was already being used in automotive at the time.) was first used in this movie.
Two, I’ve seen WarGames: The Dead Code twice. Good movie IMO. And WOPR does make an appearance. As well as Stephen Falken, unfortunately not played by the same actor.
There's something to be said about 80s movies 😊
I first watched WarGames when I was 8-9 years old in the mid 1980's, and it was great. It sure did give me an idea on how computers and technology should be serious. Involving teenagers with a world threat also made it real different and interesting. I still watch it today and like it.
"Shall we play a Minty game?"
There's a definite reason WarGames: The Dead Code was direct to DVD, quite frankly it should've started off in the DVD bargain bin.
I remember spending a ton of money renting that movie over and over on VHS (plus a rental player because I couldn't yet afford to buy a vcr) after it was finally released on tape. I'm not sure, but I seem to remember it wasn't in theaters for long, for some reason.
(Yes, I spent too much on theater tickets for that movie, too)
I hope they NEVER do a remake of this classic
Love this film!!! I was really young but I did see it in the theater with my family (born in 76). Also remember watching it many times in the 80’s on HBO. Still enjoy it to this day.
Very interesting video as always Minty. This was also released the same year as John Badham's other hit movie "Blue Thunder". Can you please do a segment on that film? That was an awesome film like "Wargames". Thanks always for your content. 😎👍
watched this again at the weekend past, love this movie. holds up well
Fun content. The thought of Lennon playing the doc is so interesting. You should do one on Real Genius (which did use the space laser motif). Thanks for taking the time.
Real Genius is a classic. Pretty sure Minty did an episode on it.
@@DoubleDguitar Yep, I think he did that classic
John Wood (Falken) and Matthew Broderick went on to star in the movie "Ladyhawke" together.