Premise: A teen accidentally activates an advanced government A.I. that causes the U.S. to think it's in a nuclear was with Russia.
I miss having the USSR. Sure, the constant fear of the Cold War must've sucked. For 30 years, it sounds like the two world superpowers had their hands over the nuclear war buttons waiting for the other side to flinch. But it sure made for nice cinema. For decades we always had a villain ready for any movie. I mean, the Rocky franchise was almost dead before someone had the brilliant idea "what if he fought a Russian?" We don't have that anymore. Russia isn't a superpower anymore. At best, they are a disgraced ex that we have a long history with. China has the superpower credentials, but we've hitched our wagons to each other too much to make them villains. Besides, the Chinese box office is too lucrative to go after them. If we tried remaking WarGames today, we don't have a good enemy. Sure, they could use North Korea, but that's not a fair fight.
Speaking of missing the old days, it's crazy that a film like WarGames got multiple Oscar nominations. Big awards too. Sure, it got a Sound nomination, but it also got Cinematography and Screenplay. Even Chris Nolan movies struggle to get that. Like, could you imagine Distrurbia getting Academy Award nominations? * What a world.
*Yes, I realize that referencing a 14-year-old thriller as a recent example is showing my age, but it's the first one that came to mind.
The movie is quite good. It's got a young Matthew Broderick, as good as ever. In hindsight it's odd that his post-80s career hasn't been that big. He's worked consistently, but doesn't it feel like he was working toward a couple Oscar nominations by now? Perhaps that 1987 car crash really made him reevaluate things or working on Broadway just brings him more joy. Regardless, he's the perfect protagonist for this. Handsome but believably nerdy. It was cool to see Ally Sheedy as a cool girl in this. I associate her so strongly with her Breakfast Club character, that I forget that she just as easily could've been the Molly Ringwald of that movie. This is a fine Dabney Coleman role. According to IMDB, he was only in 14 feature films in the 1980s, but doesn't it feel more like he was in 50? He's all over that decade.
It's nice to have this movie as a reminder that the internet didn't just spring up with AOL. Most of what Broderick is doing on the computer makes some sense. It's all much more text based and analog, but it definitely seems like the screenwriter knew some things about computers at the time. I was expecting to roll my eyes a lot more. Instead, this is arguably less silly than The Net a decade later.
If nothing else, WarGames is a perfect time capsule for 1983. It's hard to imagine the movie existing in any other time or having the same impact.
Side Thought: What was going on with the corn on the cob scene with the parents? First, the dad butters the corn by lathering a slice of bread and rolling the corn on that? Is that a thing people do? That grossed other people out, right? Why did they bother showing that? Then, we find out that the corn is raw. The mom says it like a punchline. Was that a trend of the time: raw corn? The whole scene, I felt like I was missing something. Why would they leave that scene in? I was so confused.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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