John Badham’s film has harrowing implications that mirror our current crises.                            

By Kaela Curtis

Shall we play a game?

It was a timeless line from a movie I had yet to see. While I had heard of WarGames before and of that iconic line, I went into the movie relatively blind, expecting a story about a dumb kid who liked hacking and got into some trouble. Well, I did get that, but also a larger message about the dangers of nuclear war and the absurdity of preparing for or simulating an unwinnable battle.

Our main character David (played by a young Matthew Broderick) is a brilliant computer genius who hates school much like just about every teenage boy in any movie involving a teenage boy. He decides to hack into a computer game company to see if he can play the company’s upcoming game before it’s released to the public. Going through the list of games, he stumbles upon some military simulations, run by a computer named Joshua. Little does he know, the difference between a simulation and real life is blurred by trigger-happy generals and an overly intelligent machine.

WarGames tells the story of what can happen when humans rely too heavily on technology and how the presence of a real human can never truly be replaced by a computer. While in some ways the story appears rather straightforward (spoiler: it doesn’t end in nuclear war), WarGames manages to bring twists and turns to its seemingly formulaic plot. Although it does occasionally fall into the trap of including unnecessary romance and occasionally ridiculous writing, the true message of the movie regarding the “game” of nuclear war shines through to the end and is summed up best by the final words of Joshua: “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

I truly enjoyed WarGames, and even though we aren’t currently sitting under the pressures of the Cold War era like citizens who lived in 1983 were, the warning of WarGames is more pertinent now than ever. As countries refuse to decrease their nuclear arsenals, humans rely more and more on technology, and the world sees a rise in authoritarians, the possibility of a WarGames-like scenario is more likely than one would hope.

I implore everyone to “play the game” if you will and see WarGames, a remarkable and ever more important tale of how technology, given the power of the launch codes metaphorically and literally, is incredibly dangerous in more ways than one.

 

Top photo sourced from of Polygon, courtesy of MGM: “WarGames.” Polygon, https://bit.ly/2qCCtMZ.