Eldergays, tell me about the movie War Games” which was released 40 years ago

I went to theater over and over again and never much cared about plausibility. I just thought Matthew Broderick was a sweetie pie.

It wouldn’t have seemed like much of a stretch to believe a military computer might want to play Global Thermonuclear War, though.

Funny you should mention War Games-- I am showing it to my students this final week of school. I loved as a kid, and subject my students to it every year. They like it, and they recognize Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy from two other movies I show them-- Ferris Bueller and The Breakfast Club.

It did seem plausible at the time I think it still does, maybe even more so. I mean, two teenagers stopping a global thermonuclear war wasn't very plausible, but everything else was.

The film spent a couple of years in development. It was originally meant to star John Lennon.

[quote] It was originally meant to star John Lennon

As who? Professor Falcon?

Broderick was very fuckable back then.

It blew my mind at the time. The ending graphics with the mutual destruction missiles firing on the big screen was absolutely amazing to me. Anything computer related at that time was infinitely interesting to me. Another one I love back then was "Tron".

Young Matthew and young Ally worked well together.

Matthew's brief shirtless scene made 12-year old me feel things

I was a war and politics geek even as a wee Gatling and I love love LOVE War Games!

True story, when me and the husbear were in Russia back in 2012, we got to tour an old Soviet nuclear missile silo and command center just outside Moscow. The elevator went deep deep into the ground, like a 15-20 ride down! They had the old giant screen in one area and two old launch panels. They selected two people from our small tour group to simulate a return strike on the U.S. and I was one of them. So I got to “launch” nukes at America! It was so so cool and definitely an experience I’ll never forget.

Sorry, “Gatling” = Gayling.

It was originally going to star his future wife Sarah Jessica Parker with a whole different concept.

R5 yes, Professor Falcon according to the Blu-ray extras

Sure, it was plausible someone like Maury Chaykin would be a computer nerd:

Around 1989, i remember my grade school crush couldn't stop talking about this movie

Didn't something fairly similar to the plot of the movie happen that same year? I have a vague memory, but no idea what to Google.

I was ahead of the curve and it seemed very plausible. It was just before the world wide web and I was working on mainframes at Ma Bell as an intern.

Most of the mainframes had directories on their Unix (actually xenix) mainframes with simple green screen games on them. No thermonuclear was, but plenty of chess games and star trek strategy stuff.

But from these same machines, we could shut down a whole states 911 service.

I thought Bell had been broken up at that point?

Ally Sheedy was every gay guy's girl crush back then.

R18, They had. It was actually south central bell. I just used Ma Bell because back then it was still running on that model, if that makes any sense.

My boss was one of the last holdouts for smoking in the office. It didn't bother me then, but OH HEAVENS!

OP, shall we play a game?

R16 - I think you mean this.

—

On 26 September 1983, during the Cold War, the nuclear early-warning radar of the Soviet Union reported the launch of one intercontinental ballistic missile with four more missiles behind it, from bases in the United States. These missile attack warnings were suspected to be false alarms by Stanislav Petrov, an engineer of the Soviet Air Defence Forces on duty at the command center of the early-warning system. He decided to wait for corroborating evidence—of which none arrived—rather than immediately relaying the warning up the chain-of-command. This decision is seen as having prevented a retaliatory nuclear attack against the United States and its NATO allies, which would likely have resulted in an escalation to a full-scale nuclear war. Investigation of the satellite warning system later determined that the system had indeed malfunctioned.

That's the one.

Everyone that likes Wargames should watch "COLOSSUS - The Forbin Project."

I think even back then when I watched this in theaters, I knew it would be a more meaningful and artistically important decision to have Matty B. actually jerking of in at shirtless, bedroom morning scene.

I also think the same thing about Jonny Lee Miller’s erotic scene in “Hackers”

A good point, but Hackers was dogshit.

Chess and Bees and Dabney Coleman at the end of the world

Ally Sheedy was so cute in this . What was she like in real life?

Plausible? Now more than ever. Look at all of the Pentagon stuff that was out there on Discord for months, the amount of security breeches and incidents that could lead down this path, particularly with the addition of AI.

I don't see anything good coming.

Time for a remake with AI's.

R29 It was mostly reports and maps of Russian troop locations.

[quote]I was ahead of the curve and it seemed very plausible. It was just before the world wide web and I was working on mainframes at Ma Bell as an intern.

Ugh, R17... I think you're a bit confused dear, or just lying. This film wasn't "Just Before the world wide web". The WWW wasn't even openly proposed until almost 1990.

War Games was released in the summer, 1983. It was written, and production planning was underway in the late 1970s. It wasn't "just before" any of that and had nothing to do with "Ma Bell". And for some reason, I highly doubt you were "working on "mainframes for Ma Bell". But the film's concept was indeed ahead of the curve. You, clearly, were not. Next time you attempt bullshitting, do a little research first, okay?

It was a movie about the internet a whole decade before the internet would even be a concept for the average person. There is a scene in the movie where Matthew Broderick’s character books plane tickets online, and Ally Sheedy’s character finds that unbelievable. It was, and the scene gave us a glimpse of what airline reservations would be like in the future.

The movie also introduced Sunnyvale to the world, a decade or so before it would be known as one of the cities in the heart of Silicon Valley.

R32 There were precursors to the internet being used by universities and government institutions well before the internet was thought of. ARPANET went online in 1969, CSNET was made available to universities beginning in 1981.

I'd love to hear more about Southern Bell in the 80s, very cool to get to talk to someone who was there.

I also remember Gopher, which was early 90s.

Sorry r32, maybe I am just old. But my point was that while arpanet had been around for a while ( as people have pointed out about gopher, finger and email) when the movie came out, WWW was not a thing. You acknowledged that fact and we all know that John doe didn't get onto MySpace until then.

I don't know what triggered you. I guess it was me being boastful about being ahead of the curve. My point was that on all the servers I logged into, there was a default games directory that you could find if you knew how to use your awk and grep.

They were very similar to the games that you saw on the movie except of course for global thermonuclear War. And since they all had single player mode, it wasn't a big jump to see that scenario play out.

Back in those dark days, if you wanted to compile something or just run large shell scripts you would have to submit it to the queue. If you are familiar with posix permissions, then you know about group permissions.

We had a regional engineering office that was hogging the queue. I guessed the password for one of their new hires and used those permissions to make all the computers in that group flash "Quit hogging the queue" upon login.

They didn't stop and I rerouted their connection to a dead end one morning for about 2 hours until my boss got wind of it and called me off.

It was network operations for south central bell, fuckwad. 3 years after the breakup. You want to question my authenticity? That's fine. But bring some ammunition with you next time.

Whore Games

War Gamshhh

SouthernLib, I like you. Come sit next to me and let me measure your floppy… drive.

OK, but I have to warn you. I'm the Tandy model II, so it is an 8".

[Quote] Did it seem plausible?

Which: 1) the movie scenario or 2) nuclear war in general?

Nuclear war hung over our heads constantly and seemed plausible then because the USSR had controlled 1/2 of Europe w/ communism and were mortal enemies with us the US capitalist pigs.

Rocky 3 was US v Russia themed, Sting wrote a song about hoping Russians loved their kids too, so they’d not nuke us.

I don’t recall being freaked out by the movie bc Matthew was so boyish and harmless & I has prob seem him in Brighton Beach Memoirs on Broadway.

*had -

[quote] OK, but I have to warn you. I'm the Tandy model II, so it is an 8".

That’s great, but how much RAM can you bring to the workbench?!

That's interesting r33. I wasn't aware of that about Sunnyvale. After I left bell, I worked for a Company with office space there and in Palo Alto and also East Lansing of all places.

I stayed at a place close to the campus in Lansing shortly after 911 and couldnt believe they carried Al Jazeera in house. That is a whole other story.

R43 sadly, my ram would be measured in Ks rather than Gs back then. Now my Gs get wet when I sit on the toilet because they drop so low.

Of course, I can't wait for r32 to come back and tell me how I don't remember my own life correctly.