Shall we play a game?

I've been looking forward to seeing "WarGames" since I found out about a month ago that they were going to be showing it on the big screen for one night in celebration of the film's 25th anniversary. We ended up seeing it with three friends, who we met for dinner before the movie. After we had taken out seats and were waiting for the movie to start, I joked to the husband that he wasn't supposed to be at that particular movie with four women, and he responded that four women weren't supposed to be at "WarGames" together in the first place! By the time the show started, the theatre was probably about half full - not too bad a turnout.

First, they showed a series of interviews with filmmakers associated with the film - producers, writers, director and other crew. They talked about how the idea first came about and how it was developed. There were also interviews with people who had been consulted about various parts of the story, as well as people talking about the impact and foreshadowing of the movie's events. They also had interviews with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy and Barry Corbin, who played the General in the movie - I wouldn't have recognized him if I'd just seen him as he looks very different now, but I certainly recognized his voice.

It was really interesting to hear about how a lot of the things came about. I was surprised to hear that the "piss on a spark plug" line was something Corbin had ad-libbed after being asked to come up with something that would express the urgent need to let David Lightman (Broderick's character) have access to the computer. It was also interesting to hear that in the scene where David tries to excuse himself past Jennifer (Sheedy's character), she had ad-libbed the move of trapping him between her legs, and she had thought it was a totally innocent but playful move and had not begun to suspect the sexual tension connotations until she saw the footage. It was also funny to hear the crew guy talking who was responsible for all the blinky lights on WOPR, and as ominous as all those scenes were with the close-ups and the camera circling WOPR, I kept thinking about the guy typing away to make the lights blink menacingly.

Both Broderick and Sheedy talked about how they got their roles and what that one role did for their careers, as well as how well they got along and how much fun it was on the shoot. Broderick also said that he was given a Galaga machine to practice on because he had to be really good at it, and he said he really enjoyed that "research".

After that came the trailer for the "sequel", "WarGames: The Dead Code". There is yet another computer that wants to play a game for real, and yet another hacker who stumbles upon more than he intended.

Here's a link to the trailer they showed tonight.

I could not stop laughing when they revealed that the name of the new computer is RIPLEY - and they refer to it as a "she"!

It looks pretty much like a throwaway movie, but I'm going to have to get it and watch it anyway.

Here's a link to the 25th anniverary DVD release of "WarGames" and here's a link to the release of "WarGames: The Dead Code", both of which will be released on Tuesday, July 29, 2008. This is apparently the "official website" that has information about both films, though I haven't browsed the site to see what it actually contains.

As for "WarGames" itself, it's been years since I've seen it, and even though I knew what was going to happen, I was still tense at parts, and I loved seeing it. Some of the music early on seemed completely out of place, and I don't remember thinking that at the time. Broderick and Sheedy were just so good together, and there was a lot of laughter with all the old computer technology. The oddest thing for me was that a sound particularly struck a nerve - the clicking of the keys as they typed. Keyboards nowadays sound different, mostly because they're a lot smoother and easier. I remember being on terminals in college that still used the more difficult to hit keys, the ones you had to hit harder and clicked harder, and they sounded exactly like the keys that David and everyone else was typing on.

One weird story bit struck me though - Falken mentions that the last ferry to leave the island is at 6:30pm, and when they're in his house and he hears the ferry boat whistle, he mentions that they've missed it and they're welcome to stay, and he says goodnight and goes upstairs. He goes to bed at 6:30pm?

Oh, and yes, I did notice the discrepancy with the Paris flight reservation. On screen, you can see that David made the reservation in Jennifer's name, and yet, when David is being interrogated, he's being asked about going to Paris. Since his name wasn't on the reservation and they presumably didn't know about Jennifer, they shouldn't have known about the Paris flight reservation. But they needed it as a plot point. :)

I hadn't known/remembered that the film had received three Oscar nominations, including one for Best Screenplay, which I think is well deserved. The film also won the award from the Editors Guild - and I didn't even know this when I decided to do a paper in college about the editing, specifically the segment right as and after Joshua finds the complete launch code.


I have recently had the occasion of correctly guessing a password for something that I wanted to get into, and I thought that my ability to know how to guess came from all the hacker books I read after college. Nope. I didn't even realize that subconsciously, I'd learned from "WarGames" that passwords often have a connection or personal meaning (like Joshua), and the words I tried and the actual correct password that I eventually guessed came from my knowledge of that.


Watching and remembering this movie made me think of another movie, "Sneakers", which I also loved. And it hadn't even occurred to me that the two writers of "WarGames" were also two of the three writers on that film. Hmmm, I've love to see "Sneakers" on the big screen again.