WarGames (1983) on Netflix
David Lightman, a Seattle high school hacker, dials numbers in Sunnyvale hunting a game company and reaches a system that will not name itself. He picks Global Thermonuclear War.
- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.1/10123,142 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes93%
Trailer
Plot summary
When an Air Force drill finds missile crews unwilling to turn their launch keys, NORAD engineers hand launch control to a supercomputer, WOPR, designed to run war simulations and keep learning. In Seattle, David Lightman uses his computer and modem to change his grades and his friend Jennifer Mack's. Dialing numbers in Sunnyvale in search of a game company, he reaches a system that does not name itself and finds a list of games that includes chess, checkers, backgammon and Global Thermonuclear War. He and Jennifer choose that one, with David commanding the USSR and aiming at American cities. WOPR cannot tell a game from reality, and the simulated Soviet attack is taken as genuine, moving NORAD toward retaliation.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about WarGames (1983)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- President Ronald Reagan, a family friend of Lasker's, watched the film and ordered a full national security review; the Joint Chiefs of Staff replied within a week that the premise was technically possible, and his interest is credited with leading 18 months later to NSDD-145, the first presidential directive on computer security.
- The character Stephen Falken was named after and inspired by Stephen Hawking, and John Lennon was interested in playing the role before being murdered in New York while the script was still in development.
- Martin Brest was originally hired to direct and spent a year and a half working full time on the film, but disagreement arose with one of the producers who had developed the script, over a question of authorial control, and he was fired after three weeks of production.
- Director John Badham coined the name WOPR for the supercomputer, feeling that the name of NORAD's Single Integrated Operational Plan was boring and told you nothing; the new name played off the Whopper hamburger.
- Later in 1983, when the hacker group The 414s broke into systems at Los Alamos National Laboratory, news media dubbed it the WarGames case and speculated about the film's scenario existing in reality.
- The character General Beringer was based on USAF General James V. Hartinger, then the commander-in-chief of NORAD, whom Parkes and Lasker met while visiting the base.
- WarGames proved a widespread critical and commercial success, turning a budget of $12 million into a worldwide gross of $125 million.
