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Retro SciFi Film of the Week…
WarGames (1983)
The authenticity of this film has held up pretty well over time. They apparently had very good technical consultation with only a few incredulous “Hollywood moments” thrown in here and there. The film also provides an excellent snapshot of the early hacker culture and the 80’s cold war posture. At the time the film was produced, only a small portion of the population even knew how to use a computer, let alone owned one.
Production wise, it was pretty well made and is still entertaining even though it’s now been 40 years since it was produced. The filmmakers made liberal use of stock character actors in the film who played it a bit over the top at points, and there was quite a bit of awkward exposition, which is not uncommon for a film that is trying to introduce new concepts to an audience, which at the time, was digitally illiterate.
The film has acquired substantial cultural significance over the years and was likely influential in forming public opinion about technology, nuclear weapons and the cold war.
Recommended for anyone who needs to understand the early days of the computer revolution and the American cultural environment during the years leading up to the fall of the Soviet Union.
movie spoiler - WarGames
*** MOVIE SPOILER – WarGames (1983) ***
That's right. At the climax, the inventor of the AI war games machine (which has taken over control of all of the missiles at that point) tells the machine to play tic-tac-toe. The AI quickly plays all possible games and learns that playing against a knowledgeable opponent is pointless because it always ends in a tie – nobody wins.
The AI then applies the same tactic to nuclear war, working out all possible war game scenarios and learns that the result of nuclear war is that nobody ever wins, everyone losses. So it concludes that the only logical move is not to play the game.
movie spoiler - WarGames
@Pat Translates surprisingly well to real life.
movie spoiler - WarGames
movie spoiler - WarGames
I tried to paraphrase the ending tag line of the film and messed it up. Here's a clip from the ending of the film with the whole sequence:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s93KC4AGKnY
(It's funny that when he tells him to enter 0, he types in "zero".)
movie spoiler - WarGames
@Pat @trinsec @tyAnT
This just reminded me as well that on the Green & Red Podcast, they recently had an episode where they talked about 1980's Cold War resistance movements, including film and t.v. They mentioned War Games as a kind of anti-Reagan/anti-nuclear war film of the time. Interesting discussion.
https://greenandredpodcast.org/2022/10/24/we-begin-bombing-in-five-minutes-cold-war-culture-in-the-reagan-era-w-prof-andrew-hunt/
movie spoiler - WarGames
Another one, a TV film called "The Day After" was released about the same time as this one, which was more somber and graphic. It was promoted heavily and had a very large audience.
@Pat I remembering seeing it in the theater when it came out. I think I saw it more than once. Love it. Fun and thoughtful film. I had a small amount of computer background at the time, having learned coding in BASIC on a Commodore PET computer four years earlier. But it was still a cool and somewhat advanced sci-fi film at the time. A year earlier was TRON, another great sci-fi with AI causing havoc.
I reviewed TRON in an earlier #FTW. I have an index of them pinned to my profile, which I update periodically.
@Pat Is this the one where it ended with a game of tic tac toe?