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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