Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!Bergman.SoftArts@MIT-MULTICS From: Bergman.SoftArts%MIT-MULTICS@sri-unix.UUCP Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: WARGAMES (includes spoilers, not that anyone seems to care) Message-ID: <2759@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Sun, 3-Jul-83 04:04:00 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.2759 Posted: Sun Jul 3 04:04:00 1983 Date-Received: Thu, 7-Jul-83 03:31:51 EDT Lines: 46 I enjoyed WARGAMES. I guess I saw the wrong commercials, because I went to see a crummy movie about a young hacker/wargamer, not a movie with a message. I was very pleased with what I found. I certainly don't think the movie is in the same class as Failsafe; I think it's unfair to compare them. Perhaps the director and the PR people, and maybe the producers, are all making the same mistake, and think that the movie is truly a realistic senario; that's no reason to come down hard on the movie. I feel that the characterizations of the computer people were very well handled, the science was perhaps a little bit of fantasy; but at least grounded in reality, and after listening to reagan for all these months, it was nice to see the point about mutual destruction being made. As for the voice over at the end, I think that was just a dramatic effect, and quite reasonble. I don't feel that the director intended us to think that WOPR had a voder connected to it. The exploding consoles were annoying, but we just groaned and didn't let them ruin the movie for us. As for the payphones and the touchtone lock...so what? C'mon folks. These things work in some places and times, why not here? The point was to make obvious to the audience that the kid was heavily into electronics, security systems, and breaking them. And I've seen plenty of 60's phones still installed. I find the problem of WOPR not knowing the difference between a simulation and a real war far more upsetting than the fact that it had a modem attached to it. And the ending was indeed ridiculous. Especially the fact that the computer played faster and faster. Not knowing that no one wins the game of nuclear war is perfectly reasonable for the computer, it's just a question of having the wrong people decide what the victory conditions are. Not knowing that tic-tac-toe is a draw/tie game is a bit...well, I already said the end was ridiculous. As for the film portraying computers as bad, I though the villains were the military personnel who were responsible for the whole problem. The computer, after all, realized that no one wins a nuclear war, which is more than can be said for some presidents of the United States. (Hmmm...I wonder if sending that out over ARPA is such a good idea?) Mike Bergman bergman.softarts@mit-multics