WarGames - war games

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Movie
German title WarGames - war games
Original title WarGames
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1983
length 114 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director John Badham
script Lawrence Lasker ,
Walter F. Parkes ,
Walon Green (anonymous)
production Harold Schneider
music Arthur B. Rubinstein
camera William A. Fraker
cut Tom Rolf
occupation
synchronization

WarGames is an American film directed by John Badham in 1983. The main roles were played by Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy . The film is set in 1983 during the Cold War and thematizes the danger of an accidentally triggered nuclear war between the USA and the Soviet Union . The film opened in German cinemas on October 7, 1983.

action

At the beginning of the film, the US Strategic Air Force simulates a Soviet attack on the United States. The aim of this test is to check the defense readiness of the nuclear deterrent (in particular the successful execution of a timely counterstrike by ICBMs with nuclear warheads ). The commanders found through the exercise that 22 percent of the soldiers on duty in the missile silos had refused to give a launch order because they had moral concerns. To eliminate this human factor in control of the firing mechanism is an expert system , the newly developed adaptive NORAD - computer WOPR ( W ar O peration P lan R esponse) transferred.

The computer -begeisterte teenager David L. Lightman, who goes in Seattle to school, trying with his IMSAI - microcomputers of the system game manufacturer to hack , there to can try out the latest games. With his acoustic coupler he dials all the phone numbers one after the other in Sunnyvale , California , where the game company's headquarters are located. He also manages to break into a promising system. However, this is not that of the manufacturer, but WOPR , which now controls the US nuclear arsenal.

Unaware of the situation, David starts the strategic simulation "Worldwide Thermonuclear War" from the offer, which includes chess , poker and other games . In the supposed game he chooses the Soviet side with an atomic first strike ; on Las Vegas and Seattle; WOPR takes over the USA side. Unbeknownst to David, WOPR starts preparations to repel a simulated attack by the Soviet Union. When his parents interrupt him while playing, he cuts the connection. Meanwhile, WOPR continues with the simulation, which means that commanders are repeatedly confronted with virtual Soviet missile attacks.

With the help of AI researcher Stephen Falken, the original WOPR developer, the disaster can just be halted. David succeeds in teaching WOPR the futility of nuclear war by making the computer play tic-tac-toe . WOPR realizes that nobody can win here and then tries out all nuclear war strategies, none of which would be victorious either. After going through all possible variations of war, WOPR explains, “A strange game. The only profitable move is not to play. ”(Original:“ A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. ”) Then WOPR ends the game and with it the real preparations for launching the US nuclear missiles at the last second.

synchronization

The German dubbing was directed by John Pauls-Harding based on a dialogue book by Franz Josef Fiedler on behalf of Elite Film GmbH, Munich.

role actor speaker
David Lightman Matthew Broderick Martin Halm
Dr. John McKittrick Dabney Coleman Hartmut Reck
Dr. Stephen Falcons John Wood Horst Raspe
Jennifer Katherine Mack Ally Sheedy Simone Brahmann
General Jack Beringer Barry Corbin Herbert Weicker
Pat Healy Juanin Clay Viktoria Brams
Arthur Cabot Kent Williams Reinhard Glemnitz
Lyle Watson Dennis Lipscomb Eberhard Mondry
Colonel Joe Conley Joe Dorsey Werner Abrolat
Paul Richter, WOPR technician Irving Metzman Gernot Duda
Mr. Lightman William Bogert Horst Sachtleben
Mrs. Lightman Susan Davis Marianne Wischmann
FBI agent Nigan James Tolkan Hartmut Becker
Captain Jerry Lawson John Spencer Manfred Seipold
Lt. Steve Phelps Michael Madsen Michael Brennicke
Malvin Eddie Deezen Tonio von der Meden
Jim Sting Maury Chaykin Peter Musäus

background

role models

The film's writers, Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, based the character of Professor Falken on Stephen Hawking . She was fascinated by the idea of ​​a brilliant scientist who is not properly understood by anyone.

Actual events

A real parallel was a falsely reported nuclear missile attack by the USA on the Soviet Union in the same year 1983 due to computer errors in the command center of the Soviet air surveillance. The officer on duty Stanislaw Petrov classified the attack report as a false alarm and therefore did not initiate a counter-attack and thus possibly prevented World War III . This incident did not become known until years later.

Hacker Aspects

The film contains several aspects typical of the hacker culture and allusions to real methods.

David does wardialing , and when his girlfriend asks whether this would not lead to high telephone costs, he replies with “There are ways around it” (German: “There are ways around it”; see phreaking ). He is practicing an - unrealistic - form of phreaking when he uses a beverage can cap to set up a free connection in a telephone booth . He acts as a cracker when he changes his school grades and those of his girlfriend in the school computer. David also enjoys breaking into a flight booking system and reserving flights to Paris for himself and his girlfriend. He gets his passwords through social engineering . To open a door protected by a key combination , he uses a dictation machine that records the key tones when the code is entered by a security guard ( replay attack ). He gets into the WOPR via a backdoor .

The flight reservation is interpreted by the FBI as preparation for an escape, and the fact that he has made this for two people leads to accusations that he has at least one accomplice or is even part of a conspiracy . Information that originally appeared insignificant and actions that are not at all related to the actual processes become incriminating evidence from which a suspicion arises - a problem that data protection officials are increasingly warning about nowadays.

An important aspect of IT security is misrepresented in the film - probably for dramaturgical reasons: WOPR tries to determine the launch code for the nuclear missiles character by character and is thus gradually getting closer and closer to the correct solution. In reality, this approach is not possible. If an attempted password is not accepted by the system, the attacker will not receive any information as to which passages have already been correct.

Filming

The original director Martin Brest was fired after twelve days of shooting due to differences of opinion with the producers and replaced by John Badham . Many of the scenes shot by Brest were retained in the film. Badham later said in an interview that Brest wanted to turn the story into a very "dark" form. Since Broderick and Sheedy would have looked like people who were carrying out a "Nazi undercover operation", he wanted the two main actors to act with more fun. Badham needed about a dozen shots of David and Jennifer's first scene together to loosen up the actors, as they would initially have looked "stiff as boards" in front of the camera.

Adaptation and reception

At least one video game was produced based on the movie WarGames . It was published in 1983 by THORN EMI Video under the name WarGames or Computer War . The game was produced for the ColecoVision , Commodore 64 , Atari home computer and VC20 . The computer game DefCon (2006, Introversion Software ) also shows elements of the film, especially visually. In the video game Uplink (2001, Introversion Software) can be "Global Thermonuclear War" on a virtual Protovision game server with the (in real IPv4 - address space invalid) IP address 284.345.42.283 and the password "joshua" play.

The music group Welle: Erdball dedicated itself to this topic in 2011 in the song Der Kalte Krieg from the album of the same name. They use the original quote “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. ”And embed it artistically and critically. In the accompanying music video you can also see recordings from the above-mentioned computer game for the C64 .

continuation

More than 20 years after WarGames opened in theaters, production of the sequel War Games 2: The Dead Code began on November 20, 2006, directed by Stuart Gillard . The film was released on DVD on July 29, 2008 in the USA.

Trivia

  • The Missile Command slot machine game was an inspiration for the film.
  • The game DefCon , a nuclear war simulation, is based on the film.
  • Originally, Ally Sheedy was supposed to have a much smaller role as Jennifer and not appear at all in the second half of the film.
  • The name Stephen Falken is a reference to Stephen Hawking .
  • In homage to the film, the Stephen Falken user account has long been the standard for the NetBSD operating system .
  • David's computer - an IMSAI 8080 - was a real existing model, but it had been in production since 1975 and was therefore relatively out of date for the time the film was released. The reason for this was the idea of ​​the producers to give the young protagonist an outdated computer, because as a young person he could not financially afford a more modern device. Besides the hosts David still uses the following technical devices: a keyboard IMSAI IKB-1, a floppy drive IMSAI FDC-2 dual 8 ", a 17" - Electrohome monitor and a 1200 baud modem CERMETEK 212A, which with the company name IMSAI pasted had been. The video recorder (a JVC HR-3300) next to the computer, on which David plays a report about Stephen Falken, was already on the market in 1976.
  • According to Lasker, Parkes, and John Badham's comments on the film, the role of Stephen Falcon was originally written for John Lennon .
  • In the computer game Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare (level: "War Games") the simulation computer WOPR has a cameo appearance .
  • On the eve of the beginning of the air war against Iraq in 1991 ( Operation Desert Storm ), ARD removed the film from its evening program.
  • The two catchy songs Video Fever and History Lesson come from the band The Beepers . It consisted of the composer Arthur B. Rubinstein , Cynthia Morrow (text and vocals, keyboards, viola), Brian Banks and Anthony Marinelli (keyboards). The singing was alienated by a synclavier system. The combo had previously arranged the soundtrack of The Flying Eye .
  • Probably the first German Internet café, opened in Fürth in July 1994 , was named after the film Falken's Maze .
  • David lives in Seattle ; however, the film was shot in the Los Angeles area. El Segundo High School served as the backdrop for his school . It was often used for filming.
  • The exterior scenes on "Goose Island" - the fictional island to which Stephen Falken had withdrawn - were filmed on Anderson Island in the US state of Washington .
  • The scene in which David visits geek Jim and Malvin was filmed on the Microsoft campus in Redmond .
  • In a scene in which General Beringer about WOPR speaks in the German version, the English word "silicon" incorrectly with "was silicone " (Engl. "Silicone") instead of silicon translated. The same translation error may occur. a. also made in the movie James Bond 007 - In the Face of Death .
  • One of the tasks in the novel Ready Player One is the faithful replay of the entire film.

Reviews

The Lexicon of International Films writes: “A thriller in which the focus is on the catastrophic consequences of a video game. A perfectly staged, exciting film that shows the dangers of microelectronics and points out possible catastrophes caused by computer-controlled nuclear armament. "

Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times of June 3, 1983 that the film was both emotionally and intellectually interesting. He marked the end of the film as wonderful ( wonderful ). Ebert particularly praised the characters portrayed by Dabney Coleman and Barry Corbin.

TV Spielfilm wrote: “Intelligent, subversive high-tech thriller entertainment and clever“ war game ”from the Reagan era… Director John Badham developed a respectable thriller from this material of the omnipresent threat to mankind from machines, albeit in the clichéd heroization of the boy David and the collective duping of adults seems very American - and therefore downright stupid in the eye of the enlightened European viewer. At the box office, however, the recipe paid off: the computer-obsessed generation of American teenagers stormed the movie theaters a million times over. Wargames was not granted an Oscar, although the technically brilliant film had been nominated for the trophy in the categories of script, camera and sound. "

Awards

The film was nominated for an Oscar in the categories of Best Sound , Best Cinematography and Best Original Screenplay. John Badham won the Saturn Award for directing; the film was nominated in five other categories for this award, including for the actors Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy and John Wood, for the screenwriters and for Best SF Film .

The film won the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA Award) for best sound; he was nominated in two other categories. Both Ally Sheedy and the film for Best Family Film were nominated for the Young Artist Award . The screenwriters have been nominated for the Writers Guild of America Award . Tom Rolf won the American Cinema Editors Award .

Book and film media

  • Book: “WarGames. War games. ”By David Bischoff , Lawrence Lasker, Walter F. Parkes, Heyne Verlag (1983), ISBN 3-453-01920-2
  • Young people's book: “Wargames” by David Bischoff (in French), edited by J. Landreaux-Valabrègue with illustrations by N. Forster, Hachette (Paris 1983), ISBN 2-01-00-9845-5
  • DVD: "Wargames - War Games" with Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, and John Wood, 2006.
  • VHS: "Wargames" with Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, and John Wood, 1999.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ [1] , German synchronization.
  2. ↑ https://www.wired.com/2008/07/ff-wargames/
  3. ↑ Benjamin Bidder: Forgotten hero: The man who prevented the third world war. In: Spiegel Online . April 21, 2010, accessed June 9, 2018 .
  4. ↑ http://www.allmovie.com/artist/martin-brest-82954/bi
  5. ↑ http://thehollywoodinterview.blogspot.com/2008/08/john-badham-hollywood-interview.html
  6. ↑ WarGames - war games. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used