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Maybe a Matthew Broderick Throwback Series?

Last Friday night while scanning Netflix for a throwback from my list to rewatch, I found a great 80s classic with Matthew Broderick. BEFORE his memorable role as Ferris Bueller, he starred as a computer genius named David in War Games.




War Games takes place in the 80s during the Cold War. After a failed launch exercise (featuring Mr. Blonde, Michael Madsen) the US government is convinced that they should give control of the nuclear program to a computer. That is, until it's hacked by a high school kid. When David (Broderick) successfully accesses this super-computer, he's trying to get into the computer of a software company to play their latest game before it's released. He unknowingly begins a showdown between the US and Russia that could lead to World War III if he doesn't help stop it. 

I am not going to go into what happens....just in case you haven't seen it or it's been a while for you. (I'd like to know what you guys think....in the future do you want a lot of the details or just a quick overview? I'm torn.)

I was bit surprised that I still liked this movie after all these years...and my boys really enjoyed it too! I honestly thought they'd be bored by the old tech. If you watch this, do yourself a favor and skip the opening AND closing credits. The music is really painful.

My favorite things???

  • David playing Galaga at the beginning (I loved that game!) his dial up connection, 5 inch floppy disk and dot matrix printer...brother, remember our computer class at Kent when we were kids?! Oh, back in the day.
  • You need to hack a pay phone? Find a pop tab! Have neither? Hope you have a cellphone!
  • And, Ally Sheedy's leg warmers. Yes, I forgot to mention that Ally Sheedy is also in this movie.


Memorable lines from the movie? 
My favorites were given to the computer. "Would you like to play a game?" And "Strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?" And finally, "Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks."

Overall, Friday was a pretty fun night.
-Graphics Girl

Don't forget to let us know in the comments if you'd rather have more detail in these summaries or you want to avoid the spoilers in case it's been a while for you.

Comments

  1. Back then, Hacking involved logic, brute force password breakers and random number dialers. Now it's someone leaving their facebook page logged in. How did I get in this handbasket.

    ReplyDelete

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