WARGAMES Made Me ANXIOUS! *** FIRST TIME WATCHING ***
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- Опубліковано 1 бер 2024
- Full of classic 80s imagery and fun, with a big dose of Cold-War terror!
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COMPLETELY ACCURATE. once teachers submited grades, they never followed up and there was no security protocols to verify who changed it. Could have been the teacher.
That’s crazy 😂 of course, I did go to very small schools so if you were supposed to go to summer school they’d definitely notice if you didn’t 🤣
And "computers never make mistakes"
This was way more accurate from what people would think. At that time there was almost no digital security beyond simple passwords and "obfuscation"
The movie spooked quite a bit the folks in the government, so much that the first pieces of legislation and procedures were created (the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 and NSDD-145) to avoid these kind of scenarios.
Probably for the best 😆
The computer setup used by Mr. Broderick's character is pretty much state of the art for off-the-shelf home computing at the time. WOPR is the fantasy.
Supposedly president Ronald Reagan got so concerned after watching this movie that he asked to find out whether this scenario was a possibile, and the answer they found was that it was indeed a very real possibillity. And as a result, better security measures were implemented.
- On a different note, the world was actually on the brink of nuclear exchange a couple of times due to misc mishaps: On one such occasion the situation with the person behind the button thinking twice actually saved us, as a russian officer getting readouts from a satellite that mistakenly interpreted weather phenomena as american missile launches, decided to secondguess the satellite and not launch the missile counterattack. So, yes about that scene at the beginning of the movie with the officer refusing to launch, and the whole theme of keeping actual humans in the loop.. Yep. It's a pretty accurate depiction.
- On another occasion supposedly a group of hacker hobbyists decided to try, just for sports, to hack their way into the military defence computer network. They succeeded in getting so far that they could in principle have launched nukes. At which point thouhg they got cold feet and decided to back out and just inform the authorities of their findings and that their defence system wasn't all that secure.
@@promiscuous675 Heh -- that computer was actually a couple of generations *behind* the state-of-the-art in home computers when that movie was made in 1983. The Commodore-64 was introduced in 1982, and the original IBM PC came out in 1981. That IMSAI 8080 computer Matthew Broderick's character had, with those big 8" floppy disk drives, dates back to 1975. 🙂 The IMSAI originally shipped as a solder-it-yourself kit, and it didn't even come with a keyboard, disk drives, or even a video card and monitor; all of those were optional accessories. The main reason they used it as "David's" computer in the movie was because the big metal casing with all the blinky lights and toggle switches made it look good on film. 😀
@@TeddysTube He actually did. I worked with former Reagan White House lawyers for a while and that was one of the things they said was absolutely true. The answer he got was that the movie actually undersold how lacking the security measures were against any kind of computer attack.
I enjoy watching a double bill of WarGames (1983) and Project X (1987) and imagining that I'm watching Matthew Broderick playing the same character when he got older.
Project X messed me up for a long time 😢
@@RhetoricalThrill I still haven't seen that movie in over a decade.. If kills me. I'm getting soft on my old age.. Can no longer watch Casualties of War (based on a true story) a brilliant Vietnam War film with Michael J. Fox from director Brian De Palma.. Fantastic cast, acting.. Everything.. But it just totally murders your soul.
The security lock was a Tone Lock, not unlike a Telephone, in that It recognizes a specific tone as a number. So he pulled apart the microphone and connected it to the tone receiver. So when the guard puts in the code, he recorded the tone, and replayed it directly into the receiver.
This film is actually one of the most accurate depictions of Cyber security and computer technology in a Hollywood film.
I love that! I don’t know enough that I could say, but the comments all seem to confirm it’s very accurate
It's DTMF (dual tone multi frequency) each button, same as a phone would play a set of 2 tones at the same time. That's why it sounds so weird. And yes a lot of phones you could just record yourself pressing the keys and play it back to make a call
"He looks like Michael Madsen for a minute, but I don't think that's him..." This is always my favorite moment in react channels is the reactor either recognizing right away, or not realizing until way later a movie star they know really well. Why yes. Yes that is him 🙂 Also, since you recognize Dabney Coleman right away, I have a suggestion, 9 to 5 with him and Dolly Partton, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin. In my top 5 favorite movies
9 to 5 will happen for sure. That’s one I kick myself for not having seen 😂
At least one reactor described him as "a discount Michael Madsen".
"I have no idea if this is even accurate for the time."
Wargames is failry accurate with its depiction of early hacking, save perhaps for the ubiquitous 'back door' that every system seems to have in movies. The phone stuff (Phreaking - phone hacking) is very real though.
Again recommending Hackers (1995) for the coolest (and most ridiculous) cinematic hacking. It also has a great 90s EDM soundtrack.
I’m sold 😃
A hacker who went by the name of Captain Crunch was able to hack the phone company with a plastic toy whistle.
Grade A soundtrack.
The process of dialing a long list of numbers hoping to see if you get connected to a computer is called War Dialing... A name that came from this movie (though it was a thing beforehand obviously)
Yes, Hackers is a must watch :) Young Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller which actually got engaged during the production of the movie and married afterwards. It wasn't a long marriage though ^^. Typical hollywood romance. Anyways as it was already mentioned the soundtrack is great, The Prodigy, Orbital, Underworld, Squeeze, ...
"Slacker!" LOL You're the fourth person among my fave reactors to do this movie recently. Great job! I look forward to your next video.
Nice! I’m glad you’re here 😊
You'd think the school system would want to interest and motivate the 'smart underachievers' to keep them from becoming the tools of Brezhnev, or Satan, or whoever. But all they managed to do was alienate them completely.
8:40 - Good catch! That was indeed the same actor who voiced those characters, Eddie Deezen. He also stars in a movie called "Midnight Madness", which is an older Disney movie, but live action. Not sure where you can find it to stream, but it's a very entertaining movie itself, and even "child friendly", for a comedy movie of that time period. Eddie has had a fairly good career. He was also in the movie 1941, but was turned down for a part in "Revenge of the Nerds", because he was "too nerdy". I met him a few years ago when he did a meet and greet at a minor league baseball game. He was a really good guy, and autographed my copy of Midnight Madness for me. I have him as a friend on Facebook, but he took a "mental health break" from the social media a while back, and he hasn't been back on since.
Also, Michael J. Fox was in Midnight Madness, in his first big-screen role.
16:40 - Basically, it works the exact same as a touch-tone phone. Each number has a specific tone. So, not only plausible, but highly likely.
18:15 - This one I don't think actually worked. I can't swear to it, though, as I never thought of trying it when I needed to use a payphone. I did the same as you.... "collect", OR.... dial 0 and tell the operator that I was talking to someone and got cut off, I'd ask to be reconnected as I didn't have another dime. That one worked a treat!
19:30 - Have you seen "Real Genius" yet? If not.... you should.
23:10 - You have no idea how many times it actually almost started. One very notable time, nuclear war was avoided by a Soviet soldier who chose not to believe that the US would launch a "surprise attack" of only ONE missile. His radar station showed an incoming missile. One. Uno. Ein. It wasn't even that many, the morning sun had caused a false positive on his radar. Instead of doing what he was trained to do (launch a retaliation), he chose not to listen to the device, and wait until either it cleared, or there was an actual impact. He knew that had he followed procedure and called the Kremlin, a retaliatory strike would have been ordered. Everything from sun glares, to flocks of birds have nearly caused WWIII.
That’s so terrifying how close we got to a nuclear war 😱 I’m glad I was too little to remember any of it! And thank you for all the great facts, I’m learning a lot 😊
@@RhetoricalThrill The Soviet officer's name was Stanislav Petrov. He put Soviet leaders in a bind because Petrov had very clearly been correct and may indeed have prevented world war 3, but at the same time he had violated protocol and thus failed to do his duty. They compromised and gave him a fairly light reprimand for not keeping his log book up to date during the crisis.
Even scarier is that almost the exact scenario depicted in WarGames actually happened, inside NORAD, in 1979. There was no hacking involved, though...they eventually learned that a training scenario had accidentally been loaded onto an operational computer, which then dutifully displayed all the incoming Soviet missiles on its screen and nearly caused a fullscale retaliation.
You mention the Touch Tones..... When I was in the military late 1980's, I had a "pocket dialer" that was a little electronic device (Smaller than a calculator) that you stored phone numbers in... you would select who you wanted to call... #4 - Wayne, and put the speaker up to the mouth piece of the (pay) phone and it would sound the appropriate tones to dial their number.... instead of pushing the buttons....
The phone phreaking with the payphones was definitely real. It was a little more complex than what they showed here, but it worked.
There's a lot of accuracy in David's tech. He's using an acoustic coupler modem. Since a modem just translates sound into data and vice versa to go over the voice band on a phone line, it was originally done by putting the handset into an acoustic coupler. It required you to be reasonably quiet around it so ambient sound didn't screw up the signal (like when you picked up the phone and sang into it to knock someone off the internet in the 90s). The floppies he was using were 8", and that was really the standard for a while. The program that hunted for modems was especially common after this movie, and we called them war dialers. In the 80s and 90s, we'd use them to find BBSes (especially ones that weren't indexed in local lists) to call.
My biggest quibble with the movie is David has a text to speech setup in his house, which is fine. But when he goes to NORAD, the same voice plays. What are the odds they had a big TTS setup to play over the PA?
As far as the grades thing, I rationalize it by saying the grades are out of the teacher's hands at that point, and are being entered into record in the office for transcripts and report cards.
Also, good pickup on Strickland from Back to the Future.
I’d catch Strickland anywhere 😂 BTTF is a staple for me 💜 I had no idea it was the sound being converted to data, that’s interesting!
The IMSAI and 8" floppy disks were maybe a bit outdated when the movie came out, but it wouldn't be at all unrealistic that a High School kid would get them as some office's cast-offs.
One of my favorites from my youth. It really captures the anxiety that comes with living near what are well-known primary targets for a nuclear attack.
E: yes, that’s Michael Madsen.
💜
This and The Day After (filmed near my home in KC) gave me much anxiety as a kid
@@johncasey281 I Grew Up near KC also.... Only watched "The Day Ofter" once, when it first came out....
One of the forgotten things about the Cold War was the paranoia. It was off the scale and well represented here.
Many security measures we have today were made after incidents like the ones you see in this movie and others. Some were even introduced because of this movie.
I was too little to know anything about it during the 80s but man what a scary thing it must have been 😞
When Ronald Reagan watched this movie as President, he asked if the story was possible. The military did a review and found the answer was.. yes. So this movie inspired actual advanced military computer security.
Wargames is a fantastic film. While not entirely accurate, it was 100% plot accurate and, this movie caused a bit of a panic in Washington DC over computer security. As for the dialup security it’s pretty well depicted, people ready did used dumb simple passwords. As for your comment about tech smart not always being life smart, I can personally confirm this to be true and feel attacked 😂😂😂
Thank you so much for the reaction and commentary, Looking forward to what you have next!
I do recommend “Colossus: The Forbin project” (1970)
Thank you! Always appreciate you 💜
1:30
No, that there is a young Michael Madsen. And the other guy is John Spencer, one of those "Where have I seen this guy?" people.
16:40 --- yes.. actually... Let me tell you a story about 1986.... Howard Stern called his (then) wife on the air and dialed his home phone number... I had been recording the radio show and later that evening.... I played the tones back to the phone and yes..... I called his house... --- I talked to him for a few minutes, and he asked how I got his number... I explained it to him and he said, "not cool man.. You don't call someone's home phone." ---- From then on, you'll notice that NO ONE ever dialed their full phone number on the air ever again...
DAMN that is a legendary story!
For another game based cold-war thriller for kids with Dabney Coleman - Cloak & Dagger 1984
the main reason movie wise that all this happens is actually a programming mistake by Falken, WOPR was designed to play itself on the war games, when David logged in and started the game the war program added in the other humans automatically. Had it been designed BETTER Joshua would had allowed David to play without bringing everyone else into the game. once the humans stopped playing it re-entered simulation zero player mode
It’s always humans who screw it up 😂
@RhetoricalThrill I remember a saying: “ To err is human; to REALLY screw up requires the assistance of a computer.”. I think it was in Mad Magazine 🤣
Saw this when it premiered in theater, one of my favorites. Funny how even my phone has more power than his computer. I got a movie reaction suggestion for you it's another one of my favorites, The Final Countdown (1980) The U.S.S. Nimitz goes back to December 6th, 1941. It's filmed on the Nimitz. It's like Top Gun meets Back to the Future.
Interesting, I’ve never heard of that one! I’ll check it out
I'll second Final Countdown, Top Gun a couple years earlier. First film with the F14s.
Using a piece of bread to butter your corn is genius
It’s a smart move but he used way too much 😣
good reaction :)
u need to rem that in the 80's ppl know MUCH less about computers and computer security
also if i rem correctly that was the time that many famous hacking been done , including a kid hacking into the pentagon (did a quick search: Kevin Mitnick In 1981, he was charged with stealing computer manuals from Pacific Bell. In 1982, he hacked the North American Defense Command (NORAD), an achievement that inspired the 1983 film War Games. )
I didn’t know it was so close to reality! And yeah, I don’t know enough about computers in any sense to know how accurate it was 😂
The technology was pretty spot on for 1983. Phoning other computers was possible, with a cradle modem for the phone handset. Door codes all consisted of tones. You had to type every instruction to a computer, although they simplified the communication, making it more direct, because there was no way anyone who wasn't versed in computers at the time (most people actually) was going to understand the C++ language.
As for whether this is possible, well there was the case of Gary McKinnon who hacked into 97 United States military and NASA computers over a 13-month period between February 2001 and March 2002. I'd have said it was more possible in 1983, and the only thing that stopped anything like that from happening was the low number of computer literate people at the time. If everyone had known what they were doing back then, someone would have done it for sure.
I’m shocked that the door thing is actually real 😯 it makes no sense to my low-tech brain but I believe you!
The movie is loosely based on the events of 9 November 1979, but it wasn't from an outside source. In NORAD/Cheyenne Mountain, exercise data was inadvertently routed to the various watch centers, but not tagged as exercise data. I was working in the mountain a few years later (~1985) on a program called SPADOC, and as a result of the 9 November 1979 event, we had to have two-person control on our test message media (big two-foot diameter disks) at all times. It was a major PITA. BTW, the tour thing is accurate too. Prior to 9/11 at least, there were always a couple of tours a day. We would always have to suspend tests because of the unclassified tours.
I bet there are way more close calls than we’re allowed to know about 😑
@@RhetoricalThrilla Canadian Radio/TV student made an audioplay about one of those close calls. It's called The Last Broadcast and it's available here on UA-cam. There's a yearly exercise called Able Archer and in 1983, the Russians didn't get the memo. The audioplay goes through the events of what would have happened if someone in The Kremlin didn't stop and make a call. TLB is actually longer than the version here. There's also a British war movie here that I suggest you DON'T watch unless you are psychologically prepared called Threads. That movie has screwed more than one person up over the years
Not sure if you were joking or not, but the reason Malvin sounds like Mandark and the kid from Polar Express is because they’re all the same person behind the voice: Eddie Deezen.
I always get a kick out of Eddie showing up in stuff. He's a hoot in Teenage Exorcist.
I had to confirm it, but yeah, I was being serious. I threw the clips in just so people knew who I was talking about 😂
@@RhetoricalThrill he was in Critters 2. You should watch that and the first one.
"Somebody answer it... before he gets pissed off"
At this point in time, people weren't inundated with thousands of games to play. Getting early (and free) access to new games was a quite common motivation for hackers, especially as games started to evolve beyond replicating board games like Chess and Checkers. Remember that there was a time when a game like Pong was all the rage.
True! Anything new would be appealing
Anytime you hear the question "would you like to play a game?"
RUN!!!!
Definitely!
Unless your running underground, good luck when room temp becomes 6000F in less than a second.
2:54 NORAAD runs a Santa tracker every Christmas. I used to love tracking Santa with my daughter in Christmas Eve.
6:22 I have a good friend like that. His freshman year in college, he created his own night vision goggles to improve his chances at capture the flag. However, he couldn’t get the quality capacitors he actually needed so the goggles buzzed loudly. He still tried using them and couldn’t figure out how everyone kept finding him. He is literally one of the smartest people I’ve ever met but he literally couldn’t spell “cat” if you have him the c and a.
I still check the Santa tracker 💜
“Is it flame-broiled?” If something goes wrong, we will be.
🤣 😭
😎👍 Back in 1983, people often didn't even refer to home and office computers as "computers." They called them "word processors." Most people purchased them for the simple reason that it was much easier to correct a mistake than it was with a typewriter. None of that messy liquid paper to deal with. Plus, you could easily make multiple copies without using carbon paper. If one wanted to play some (extremely low resolution) video games, that was a separate accessory that one purchased along with a plug-in joystick from Atari. As indicated near the start of this movie, arcades were still all the rage, as the home versions of the likes of Pac-Man and Space Invaders were so crude that it was still a much more satisfying experience to pump a quarter into a machine that was designed specifically for that purpose. 👾 It's interesting how in the 21st century, Matthew Broderick has managed to carve out a whole new career for himself doing cartoon voices in multiple full-length features. I highly recommend checking out the much under-viewed "Wonder Park" (2019). 😆 at 14:16. SLACKER! 🤪
I don't remember anyone calling computers word processors. They called word processors word processors. They were seen as different things.
There's a reason why they simply use the word computer in this movie. Its because that's what they were called.
FYI...Even if someone in a control room failed to turn their keys, the missiles would all launch anyway in accordance with the launch program. All the launch sites are connected over a descreet network (not the internet). I think the key turns were there just acknowledge which sites were still active in case they got hit before launch.
Exactly! There are tons of movies about times you didn't exist in ... Watching those movies "together" could always be a fun AND learning experience... If I watch movies together with friends or family and there's always ONE who is permanently and moreover loudly playing the "wise guy", it disturbs everyone, especially those (kids AND adults) who FIRST think or ask when something is not (yet) known or heard ... That's the way real LIFE works.
I’m not here to watch “with you,” I’m here to watch by myself and talk about it in real time. That’s the whole damn point 🤣 You don’t have to like how I do things but I’d advise some deep breaths and a long walk before you have a stroke. It ain’t that serious.
There are quite of number of accurate things in this film. Let's start with the soda pop tab and the phone:
That worked. In fact, you didn't neet a tab, you could touch the metal of the mouthpiece to the metal coinbox and short the phone. You could then make calls anywhere you wanted. You had to be a little careful, because if you were electrically grounded, you became the circuit and would get a mild shock.
The biggest problem was that on most pay phones, the mouthpieces weren't just screwed-on, they were also contact-cemented.
In college, an engineering student friend of mine carried two pipe wrenches in his backpack. He could use these to break the contact cement and unscrew the mouthpiece. However, it would leave teeth marks on the handset.
This led to a constant race between my friend and the phone company. He'd leave teeth marks on every handset on every pay phone on campus, and the phone company would be right behind him replacing the handsets. It went on for the entire six years he attended, through his first Master's Degree.
Many years later, after 40 years in IT, I was at a local gathering of IT guys. I started chatting with one of them and laughingly recounted what my friend used to do.
His face went slack. It turned out that one of his first jobs was with the phone company. He was assigned to replace all the handsets that my friend cracked. We had a good laugh about it, having cleared-up a 40-year mystery for him.
The auto-dialer that David used to call all the numbers in Sunnyvale:
That didn't exist at the time -- though the acoustic coupler he used was standard. You could get a whopping 300 bits per second on it.
However, after seeing the autodialer in this movie, hackers actually wrote it. It was called "the WarGames auto-dialer."
Computers were physically huge compared to today. The text-only monitors were standard. 8" floppy disks that stored 80 kilobytes were standard.
There was no speech synthesis, that was pure fiction invented to keep the pace moving. Otherwise, the viewer would either have to read the screen or a character would have to read what the screen said.
Backdoors were relatively common through the late 1990s. By then, we'd realized the obvious security issues and largely eliminated them. I haven't seen one since 9/11.
There's a lot of things that the film got right. Those of us in the computer hobbiest arena really enjoyed the film because it was very accurate in some areas. It wasn't 100% accurate, but so close that we loved it.
The machine learning that it predicted didn't happen for another 40 years, but it was something we wistfully discussed even in the 1980s.
That’s great that they made sure it was more or less accurate! I think it shows a dedication to filmmaking to do that. The voice is so creepy, I’m glad they added it.
@@RhetoricalThrill Joshua's voice was definitely creepy, and I'm sure it was on purpose (beyond keeping the pace). It semi-humanized the computer as both fantastically dangerous, yet also kind of childlike. It suggesting a "nice game of chess" seems so innocent.
At the end, it saying that Global Thermonuclear War was a strange game whose only winning move is not to play represents Joshua sort of "growing up."
Uh... there was definitely speech synthesis available in 1983. The original TI "Speak & Spell" came out in 1979, and Radio Shack had a voice-synthesizer add-on available for their TRS-80 Model I computer in that same year. (And I know that, because I have one. 🙂 )
Also, 5-1/4" floppies were the standard for home computers at the time, and pretty much always were once the TRS-80, Commodore PET, and Apple II made their debuts in 1977. The bigger 8" floppies were mostly only used by business machines and mainframes. It was rare to see an 8" floppy outside of offices and data centers. They used the big 8" ones for David's computer in the movie because that computer, the IMSAI 8080, dates back to 1975, a year before Shugart introduced the 5-1/4" "mini-floppy". 🙂
The opening scenes were a realistic depiction of a Minuteman missile launch control center and the process of launching a nuclear strike. Today there are still 400 Minuteman missiles, carrying 3 warheads each, in underground silos in western states, controlled by 40 underground launch control bunkers with 2 man crews ready to launch their missiles as shown here when they receive a launch code. It requires two launch control centers, each with two officers turning their keys, so 4 men agreeing, to launch a missile.
I mean, so far so good at least 😬
If your ever in south eastern WV you can see one of those bunker doors up close. The Greenbier Hotel was once the bunker for Congress. From Charleston WV myself but I have driven by it several times.
Wargames is one third of the "Holy Trinity" of Hacker movies...the other two being Hackers and Sneakers. Whilst all of them obviously do contain elements that are exaggerated for dramatic or artistic effect, they all contain pretty accurate depictions of hacking culture relative to their time, and they all portray an emphasis on research and social engineering, which are really two of the core skills to hacking
Regarding historical accuracy, this particular movie was VERY accurate. The computer Broderick uses in his bedroom is an IMSAI 8080 with dual 8" floppy disk drives, very cutting edge for the time the movie was filmed. A lot of the modems used at the time were acoustic as well, like the one in the film, and yes, the lock was indeed sound activated. That's literally how touchstone telephones worked: each number on the keypad was represented by a two-frequency chord, so using the tape recorder to play the combination back was kind of genius. Oh, and yeah, the beer tab being used to ground out the speaker with the lock cylinder on the pay phone to get a free phone call also was a thing. For more old school hacker shenanigans, look up the Cap'n Crunch whistle, and welcome to the rabbit hole.
That’s really cool that they did things that were real, I didn’t expect that but it’s great to know they did!
Never understood that. A "super genius" dude creates an AI for war, which repeatedly plays out WWIII to see the different results, but could never get his AI creation to learn THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON ... which he then immediately conveys by asking the two kids if they ever played Tic-Tac-Toe, which he knew is a game for which there is no way to win, and the game is pointless. But this "super genius" never thought to have his AI creation to play Tic-Tac-Toe to learn that???
Right? 😂
I loved this movie when I saw it in the theater. Your commentary is so hilarious. I love it! You have a new subscriber
I’m glad to have you!
The tech was pretty accurate -- although that computer Broderick is using is actually a generation or two behind where the state of the art was in 1983. 🙂 By 1983, the most popular home computer was the Commodore-64, followed closely by the Atari 400/800 series and the Apple II. The IMSAI 8080 Broderick has in his room came out in 1975, and the giant 8" floppy disks are because the smaller 5-1/4" ones hadn't been invented yet (Shugart would introduce them a year later in 1976). The moviemakers used the IMSAI because all the toggle switches and blinking lights looked more visually interesting on camera -- and also because this was still in an era where when it came to home electronics in general, "bigger" was still perceived as "better" or "more powerful", so the IMSAI looked more impressive than a C=64 just due to its size.
The acoustic-coupled modem, where you set the phone handset into a cradle, is also a bit "old tech" even for 1983 -- direct-connect modems which plugged directly into the phone line had existed since 1980, at least. That style of modem stayed around in movies and TV much longer than they remained in actual use because, again, they were more visually interesting, gave the actor something to do with their hands, and were a familiar "visual shorthand" to show the audience what was happening without having to have your character explicitly say "see, I'm going to have my computer call their computer now." 🙂
It also works because even though it’s probably still far fetched that he’d have all that equipment, at least it isn’t bleeding edge stuff
The one scene that didn't make sense to me was in the opening, when Leo McGarry's partner ordered him to "turn your key, sir" at gunpoint. So, "if you don't turn your key, I'll shoot you dead, and... well, I guess you _still_ won't turn your key, will you?"
It was very accurate. The only fiction is the AI. security measures for the government were changed because of this movie.
I can imagine!
The General is one of my favorite characters in the movie. He just makes me laugh.
In my professional opinion, your high tech security system…SUCKS 😁
"28:07" Exactly my thoughts. No one answers him. That actually could be a great opener for a sequel :)
😂 angry WOPR 😱
"I can't swim."
"You can't swim?"
"No, I can't, okay? Wonder Woman, I can't swim!"
"Well, what kind of an asshole grows up in Seattle and doesn't even know how to swim?"
"I never got around to it, okay? I always thought there was gonna be plenty of time!"
"Sorry."
"I wish I didn't know about any of this! I wish I was like everybody else in the world, and tomorrow it would just be over. There wouldn't be any time to be sorry... about anything. ...Oh, Jesus! I really wanted to learn how to swim! I swear to God I did."
Fun Fact: The film is still a favorite in Silicon Valley. Google held a 25th anniversary screening in 2008.
Historical Fact: This movie inspired Congress to create the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984. Democrat Rep. Dan Glickman (KS-04) opened the committee meetings by showing the movie.
What Script Fact: According to John Badham, the jeep trying to crash through the gate at NORAD and turning over was an actual accident. The jeep was supposed to continue through the gate. They added the scene of the characters running from the jeep and down the tunnel and used the botched jeep stunt.
Computer Enthusiast Fact: The computer in David's room is an IMSAI 8080. According to the person who supplied the computer, Matthew Broderick saved a shooting day by figuring out a programming sequence for the keyboard on his own after instructions were lost. It could do everything shown in the movie (see: Historical Fact). The movie includes the first cinematic reference to a "firewall" concept, a security measure used in computer networking and Internet security.
Location Location Fact: The NORAD command center built for the movie cost $1 Million, making it the most expensive set ever constructed at the time. The producers were not allowed into the actual NORAD command center, so they had to imagine what it was like. In the DVD commentary, director John Badham notes that the actual NORAD command center isn't nearly as elaborate as the one in the movie. The tunnel and exterior used for the entrance into NORAD is located in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, California. The same tunnel was used to enter and exit Toontown in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and in the climax of Back To The Future Part II (1989).
Thank you for the great facts! 💜
You're welcome! Always a pleasure. 😁
I know especially that people wonder about the computers in the movie.
Go with God and Be Safe from Evil. 😎 👍
Is HACKERS on the ballot?
"Hack the planet"
They dial in w/ the new 14.4k modem!
😂
It’s been added to the wishlist, yes!
In the early computer days, breaking into systems was about that easy. I took programming in the early 80s and the computers didn't even have monitors yet. EVERYTHING was printed out. And every so often someone would break into a part of the system we weren't supposed to be in. Within a few minutes a phone would ring in the teacher's office. And someone would warn, "gods calling", meaning one of the monitors saw us digging into the programs. Immediately, tear off the print outs and rip them up. And log out. 😅 We were mostly looking for early games.
There was a very primitive Star Trek simulator that was fun,, or so I heard 😉
I love modern computers and games but it must have been really exciting to be on the front lines of it all back when it was new!
This film portrays well how technology can be threatening to humanity.
Biloxi blues is another good matthew Broderick movie!
22:47 - You brought tears to my eyes.😥
RIP big man 💜
When he draws the gun it's an empty threat. If he shoots the other guy then that key CERTAINLY isn't going to get turned.
Whew 😅
@@RhetoricalThrill so many first time watchers always question if the guy got shot until they're shown he wasn't.
I absolutely love how the name of the movie is the major spoiler of the entire movie.
Basically, yeah! You still get invested the whole way through too, that’s clever
Fanfold paper, like a comfort food, it is.
9:18 This thin actor was known for playing nerdy characters. He had a recurring role in the tv series, Punky Brewster.
He has a very distinctive voice!
WWIII: definitely flame-broiled!
I loved this as a kid growing up in the 1980’s. Red Dawn and Roadhouse were also great.
I loved Roadhouse when I did it last year! Red Dawn is on the list 💜
Two years after this we get Matthew Broderick and John Wood(Dr. Falken) teaming up again in my all time favorite movie LADYHAWKE.
Which I think I need to see now
Tech stuff aside; when the FBI arrest a hacker, they tend NOT to take him to the very place he hacked (even if he was immediately handed over to the military, they then wouldn't take him to their most sensitive installation).
You’d think, right? 😂
Oh, that was very much Michael Madsen!
It was so obvious in editing when I could pause and go back 😂
1. The authorization code tells the operator if it's a drill or the real deal. That mistake wouldn't happen IRL.
2. Barry Corbin (General Beringer) also played Ed in "Anger Management". One of Charlie's wacko patients.
3. Raw corn. 🤮
4 You cannot get phone connectivity with a can top.
5. If you would like something in the same genre but a little lighter you should do Ally Sheedy in "Short Circuit"
6. Ally Sheedy is my FUTURE EX WIFE. Since Hollywood marriages are short the week long honeymoon would work just fine by me.😍💕 Too bad she's a vegetation.
7. FUN FACT: John Lennon was going to play Falkin but didn't make it. 😇
Ooh, I wonder if they had the actor playing Falken use some of Lennon’s mannerisms. I can kind of see it.
Short Circuit seems to be a hot recommendation, so I’ll definitely be doing it at some point!
The real cold war terror movie is the movie ''the day after'' 1983...terrifying !
We watched that in history class, it’s horrifying. Though Threads is much worse 😱
During the Cuban missle crisis we actually had a nuclear war that was averted. Russia initially ordered their subs to launch and then rescinded the order. One sub didn't get the cancelation but their 2nd in command refused to launch without confirmation. They Soviet officer became the single most important person in the history of the world and saved the majority of the human race.
Geeeeeeez 😓 I’m very grateful for that guy
A rather solipsistic view of the "human race", I'd say.
Good reaction. Very good movie. Two others I would recommend since you liked this are Red Dawn and Short Circuit. I think you'll enjoy them.
I plan to get to both at some point! Thanks 😊
@@RhetoricalThrillcan't see Short Circuit without Short Circuit 2.. Personally I find it even better ..
@@mcgilj1 Short Circuit 2 is great; I saw it in the theater when I was a kid. However, I like the first just a little bit more.
@@JoeCool7835 both are great fun.. So you can't do bad with either.
He had three hits in a row. This, Ferris Bueller and Ladyhawke (which is awesome).
In the dvd audio commentary, the writer said he was actually inspired to call it the WOPR by the Burger King Whopper.
I love it
Because there was a computer system in the real world called BERGR or something like that.
This movie was way ahead of its time.
It sounds like it! I generally assume they’re mostly fictional but I’m impressed they mostly got it right here
Thank you.
I hate how you figure out everything before it happens, but I also love it. Is that a Tri Lambda sweatshirt?
Yes, Tri Lamb! 💜 One of my favorite movies ever, sadly no one reacts to it, though I imagine it could be tough to edit 🤣
Yeah not PC and YT would be upset by something. YT censors comedy more than the guys Mel Brooks fusses about in his movie To be or Not to Be. Also with his wife in that one.
In the 80s when this movie came out, there was a nuclear hysteria common among the masses at the time.
No there wasn't. Only the Reaganite sheep bought the fear mongering.
Story goes Ronald Reagan watched this movie, shit himself and told the military that they needed to develop cyber security. This movie is the BOMB (no pun intended).
Please stop with the "no pun intended". It *clearly* was intended! And to top it off, you typed 'no pun intended', so even then you recognized it. (That it wasn't a very good pun doesn't get you off the hook).
Classic movie, always very fun to watch.
This came up in my recommendations just after Dabney Coleman's death was announced. Godspeed, Dabney. This was one of your best movies. There is a sequel called WARGAMES: THE DEAD CODE, which was a direct to DVD release. Falken iz the only character to return, and the WOPR, does factor in, and is referred to as The Joshua Project. Personally, I wouldn't mind a prequel exploring the origins of the whole Joshua Project.
Oh no, I hadn’t heard 😞 I remember him best from The Beverly Hillbillies movie, and I only recently saw him in 9 to 5, which he was of course fabulous in. May he rest in peace, and all the best to his loved ones 💜
Director John Badham did great with this movie, but his follow-up Short Circuit (1986) is one of my all-time favorites! Seen that one yet?
I haven’t but it’s been getting recommended a lot in the comments, so I think it will have to happen
Hi I just found your channel. I really like your channel. If you want your channel to grow you need to react to movies that the other channels don't. Here are some movies that you can watch that the other channels don't. 1980 movie "Watcher in the Woods" starring Bette Davis, 1979 movie "1941" directed by Steven Spielberg. 1987 movie "Project X" starring Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt. 1981 movie " Zorro the Gay Blade" starring George Hamilton. 1995 movie "Powder" starring Jeff Goldblum. 1977 movie "Slap Shot" starring Paul Newman. 1984 movie "Red Dawn" stars Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson and Jennifer Grey. 1985 movie "The Last Dragon" stars Taimak and Vanity. 1988 movie "They Live" Starring Roddy Piper and Keith David. 1981 movie "An American Werewolf in London" stars David Naughton and Jenny Agutter.
I loved the Hodor reference
Auto dialers like what is shown is named Wardailers after this film.
WOPR becomes SkyNet, SkyNet becomes self aware August 29th 1997
We’re only a few years off from Kyle Reese going back in time 🤯
HI good looking..🙂. Thank you for the reaction(s).. I was around eleven or twelve when this came out in theaters..one of the best times at the big screens that I experienced.. in the 80's time. Keep up the good work( s ) Love
Thank you!!!
As many computer scammers we have these days this could make you wonder if the government could have some getting into other countries if they launched a mistle and make their computers turn them back to home bound lol
great watch
Atually funny commentary. That's rare.
It's deeply ironic, but I loved this movie so much as a kid that my first passwords online were "CPE1704TKS", the launch codes.
I’m so happy you think so!
i believe that was a real things with the payphone but theres none left to check - if you dont have a cell go into the grocery if you ask they will say ok - to save time skip that step and dial 9 to get an outside line
Ha! That was Michael Madsen!
It was completely obvious when I went back to edit, especially in profile! 😂
@@RhetoricalThrill the other dude that was with him, I can't remember his name, but he'd been in other stuff when I was young, and was bigger than Michael Madsen at the time. In fact a lot of the cast, were in stuff that was probably way before your time. The dad buttering his corn, the computer nerds, the general, the teacher, etc. I'm old enough to remember when my family got our first VCR, and at first, we only had a couple tapes we borrowed from a friend that recorded stuff of TV, that we never returned to them. I watched this movie, and the first Police Academy over and over again so many times, and I wasn't really old enough to be watching either one of them.
The most unrealistic part of this movie is that any kid who can afford an IMSAI computer in 1983 can afford a faster, 1200 baud modem.
I’ll take your word for that 😂
Yeah, when going early Hacking this was good, then game Sneakers which is amazing thriller too. I wonder if WOPR was then upgraded to Skynet in the time line....?
Whats funny to me is this was early 80s, certainly back when a computer is not as sophisticated as today. And it was literally about where technology was eclipsing humanity because everybody was listening to a machine and not as you say having eyes on anything that was going on we're not going on. Just like I don't know maybe like how we do things today? social media, the internet, very advanced computers that the government uses and the military. This movie was very much psychic because it foretold what was happening today 40 years ago.
I imagine computers still being so out of the norm for lost people made it scary, but knowing what they can really do is even scarier 😬
@@RhetoricalThrill very much agree
That is Madson in the beginning.
24:03 How the heck did that 'LAUNCH' button get so worn out ?! It should be in perfect condition ! 😄
Oh jeez 😂 good point
1:29 Actually that really is a young Michael Madsen
On the edit I absolutely could see it 😂
Inspired by a real event. A training tape left in nearly triggered WW3. When Reagan asked if this was a real risk the response was, It is far worse.
Oh my god, the size of that disc
Right? 😂 you could eat dinner off it
From the same writers i think..but took a while to get made.. The underrated "Sneakers" which has become very beloved in the computer community since very similar idea to hacking, more social engineering. But such an amazing cast.. Great, smart script and just plain fun.
Ooh, that’s one I haven’t heard of
@@RhetoricalThrill from the director of Field of Dreams btw.. He also directed the fourth Jack Ryan film which I personally liked a lot and there is a great sneakers in joke in it too called "The sum of all fears" (I know it's not liked for Jack Ryan fans because it's not very well adapted from the book) with Ben Affleck.
Whopper is a burger at burger king, great reaction and commentary.
Fun fact: some of the obviously illegal stuff depicted *wasn't illegal yet* because the tech was so new!
That would make sense! Staying ahead of that stuff has to be exhausting!
@@RhetoricalThrill One of the hacking techniques shown in the movie-calling through the list of numbers to find a computer-is even named after the movie: Wardialing.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardialing
You should see THE MANHATTAN PROJECT about a kid who builds a bomb for a school project.
I’ve heard of that, but I haven’t seen it, so thank you!
@@RhetoricalThrill The main actor in that movie, Christopher Collett, did another great movie in the same period of time called FIRSTBORN. It's well worth watching, especially because it was the first movie for both Corey Haim and Robert Downey Jr.!
Is it flame broiled? LOL 😂 You are hilarious as you are cute. You are also very intelligent. Thanks for that laugh you made my day! Good luck on your channel sweet. 😉
Thank you! I thought it was funny 🤣
@@RhetoricalThrill you're most welcomed. By the way, it was Michael Madsen, it's right there on the end credits. You probably saw it out of the corner of your eye and didn't even realize it. But your subconscious mind did... ha ha ha. Have a nice night. 😉🤘🤣
Joshua likes boardgames😊
"Hackers" would be a great follow up to this. Ahem. Hint hint.
I’ve seen that recommended a few times! Might just have to go on the list!
Its mostly accurate. The one big thing that I didn't even think about until watching it on your reaction is that in order to brute force a 10 digit alphanumeric sequence consisting of only uppercase letters and numbers would take a CPU in the 80s about 5 months to brute force crack. Even a modern dedicated GPU would take upwards around 18 hours so even though on the face of things all the technology in the movie is accurate it is only accurate until the narrative deemed it impractical. In other words yes the computer can brute force it and maybe it was to be deemed a supercomputer of the time but the time it took the WOPR to brute force that was astronomically illogical for the CPU power of the time or our time. But I don't mind that Hollywood has to do some stuff to add tension like you said. That lady counting down was more for us then the people at NORAD, lol. The war dialing of phone numbers looking for dialup handshakes and the old 5.4 floppy disks to boot up a command based operating system is all basically accurate. I do find it interesting how all the people that watch this movie now comment on how he has an infinite amount of tries to guess the password. You are right and those old UNIX systems systems have logs for that sort of thing but unless someone specifically configured the system to monitor it then they may not check the logs and it was not as common at the time to create limits on the amount of password attempts as it is today because that was one of the evolutions of computer security was to limit the attempts so that it couldn't be brute forced automatically. Anyways, another great reaction. Thank you. :)
oh yea, and just to add onto the historical interest, audio tones on phones and keypads were made with analog circuitry meaning that the tone itself could reproduce the act of pushing the buttons so theoretically what he did to the keypad is possible by recording it and playing it back while tapped into its wiring. Similarly people used to do that to get payphones to think they paid for the call until all systems that used tones like that were moved from analog to digital making audible playback inert.
@@NapalmThunderbum that’s crazy that it worked like that!
Hello Rhetorical, How was your day Saturday, everything okay?
This movie is on my list of my favorite movies in the history of MGM Amazon Studios 🎥✨
Don't you plan to make the reaction video for the second part of the movie?
Hello, I’m well! I hope you are also 😊 im not aware of a second part, unless you mean I missed parts you wanted to see, sorry about that, copyright really hamstrings me.
That is definitely Michael Madsen.