Tonight’s movie is going to be War Games from 1983. This movie is about as 80s as they come… Matthew Broderick & Ally Sheedy are the leads, to start. Computer games are all text based, and they are virtually indistinguishable from actual applications. The trailer is essentially just a voiceover. And in 2020, the fact that it is an 80’s classic actually makes it more charming. The fact that this plot could never happen today makes this movie a time capsule of a much simpler time.
Now, I have never actually seen this movie. I know it is a classic, but it is a gap in my classic viewing. My dad has always said good things about it, its listed in the 1001 Movies to watch before you die, and as I understand it was a precursor to a lot of the fear we have today towards artificial intelligence. I am kind of looking forward to this one. Here is the trailer, and as always, I’ll come back after I finish the film and let you know what i think.
Let me start by saying that I was born in 1989. When i was a kid, we had more advanced computers and better computer games than literally everything that is featured in this film. And honestly… it doesn’t harm this film in the slightest. Sure, a lot of what happens in this movie wouldn’t happen in today’s world, but you can definitely see what they are going for.
Consider this movie thematically as what a western was back in the 60’s and 70’s. Westerns were cheap, but the setting was simple enough to get at complex issues without a lot of the noise from modern life. This movie can almost be viewed as the same… Sure, our missile systems aren’t tied into a computer simulation, but this concept is pretty reminiscent of modern artificial intelligence and reliance on technology. If we pull human interaction out of complex situations in order to achieve higher efficiency, we lose a lot of the human decision making to control our fate. Essentially, “War Games” is a simplified version of what “Terminator” or “The Matrix” franchises tried to get across… AI opens a lot of doors, and eventually we will get to a few bad ones.
But i have gotten way deep in this review without getting to my general content. Let’s start with the leads that I recognize… Eighties teen stars Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. Broderick looks young in this… I think most people think of him as Ferris Bueller, which came out in 1986. This was in 1983.
Wait… A simple Google Search shows me he was born in 1962, which would’ve made him 21 in this movie??? He was 24 in Ferris Bueller? Holy crap. He looks maybe 15 in this movie, and I would’ve guessed 18 in FBDO. 21 to 24 doesn’t warrant a significant change in appearance, so hat tip to the filmmakers. Broderick was king in the 80s… He does great in this.
Ally Sheedy is someone I also don’t have a lot of experience with outside of a couple of 80s movies, mainly “Breakfast Club”. Loved her in that movie, but she was less of a fully fledged character in “War Games”… She isn’t bad, but she is basically just “80’s teenage love interest”. She is also 21 when this was filmed, playing a high schooler. Dang, they played young back in the day.
All the military guys in this movie do fine. Nobody is GREAT, but everyone does what needs to be done. I guess you really don’t want some random characters stealing scenes, since you want to keep the action on the plot itself.
Next, lets talk about the tech. A lot of it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me today, largely because technology has come so far since this film. I think it is best to look at the 8 bit graphics shown in this one, and extrapolate it to what it would mean today. A film like this doesn’t thrive on graphical superiority anyway; its here to make a point.
So lets talk a bit about the setting of this film and the point behind it. Obviously, this film takes place during the Cold War. The US is constantly prepared for the possibility of a nuclear war, as is the USSR. Out of that fear, a genius makes what is essentially an AI to predict how such a war would play out. Think IBM Watson, just in 1983. When Matthew Broderick hacks the computer accidentally, it starts to play a game, which the US military reads as an actual attack. The movie moves pretty quickly, and covers a lot of ground. Honestly, i dont think i looked at the clock once during the runtime.
The resolution of the movie comes when essentially Matthew Broderick tricks the computer into realizing that sometimes there are possibilities of “no-win” scenarios. This is done through a clever use of a Tic Tac Toe simulation, then interspersed with a simulation of what would happen if the US and the USSR initiated a thermonuclear war. The end result is that “nobody wins in a global thermonuclear war”. Something that generally everyone in the 1980’s knew and was fearful of.
So, how has this movie aged in the past 37 years (wow, that’s a long time). Well, obviously the tech is well-dated. I think, though, that todays internet is indicative that the makers of this movie had some good intuition as to where society was going. The actors in this movie are definitely dated, since I don’t remember any of them doing anything significant after 1990. But the message, I think, is something that still resonates. Even with the Cold War being over for decades, it is good to rationalize who actually wins in a global conflict. The answer… probably nobody.
To close this out, lets talk about who this film is good for. First, baby boomers probably still would love this movie. A lot of good actors from that timeframe. I think tech savvy people would get a kick out of the technology as well… Also, there is an element of science fiction here that is done really well. Fans of that sort of content would also enjoy this movie. I guess just about anyone would enjoy this movie if they give it the chance. I definitely recommend this one to everybody; even though much of it is well-dated, the themes in this one still are very relevant in todays world.
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