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The Next Reel • Season 15 • Series: Thinking Machines • WarGames • Member Bonus

WarGames • Member Bonus

“Shall we play a game?”

The Machine Nobody Could Turn Off

Some movies arrive at the exact right moment to become something larger than entertainment. WarGames (1983), directed by John Badham, stars Matthew Broderick as David Lightman—a Seattle teenager and self-taught hacker—alongside Ally Sheedy as his classmate Jennifer, Dabney Coleman as the NORAD engineer convinced he’d solved the problem by removing humans from the nuclear launch chain, and John Wood as the brilliant, reclusive AI researcher whose creation takes on a life of its own. It arrived at the peak of Cold War nuclear anxiety, just as home computers and modems were landing in American living rooms for the first time—and most adults had no idea what their kids could actually do with them. A curious teenager hunting for a preview of a new video game stumbles into NORAD’s supercomputer—WOPR—and accidentally initiates a war simulation the machine cannot distinguish from reality. Join us—Pete Wright and Andy Nelson—as we continue the Thinking Machines series with a member bonus conversation about WarGames.

The Only Winning Move

WarGames is the entry in the Thinking Machines series where the AI emerges as arguably its most complete character. WOPR—the War Operations Plan Response computer—doesn’t just threaten; over the course of the film, it teaches itself something, and acts on it. Andy and Pete dig into what that arc means for the film’s stated thesis, and whether it’s strange—or fitting—that the machine ends up with the clearest transformation of anyone onscreen.

A Script Through Today’s Eyes

Andy first saw this film at age ten in 1983, and revisiting it now, the conversation takes an honest look at what screenwriters Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes accomplished—and what they quietly sidestepped on the way to the end. The human-versus-machine debate at the film’s core is sharp; whether the script resolves it in any satisfying way is a different question. Pete and Andy trace what it raises, what it delivers, and what the 1983 audience was probably too excited to notice.

The Film That Changed the Law

The real-world impact of WarGames is as remarkable as anything in the story itself. Badham’s $1 million NORAD war room set—built entirely from imagination and rear-projected one color filter at a time—hit American culture so hard that President Reagan screened it at Camp David, ordered a full national security review, and set in motion the policy that made hacking illegal. DEF CON, the world’s largest annual hacker convention, takes its name from this film.

Key Discussion Points

  • The generational tech gap—what David’s mom, the generals, and McKittrick all fail to understand
  • John Badham replacing Martin Brest mid-production and warming the film’s tone
  • Arthur B. Rubinstein’s score and the harmonica Falken theme that lodged in Andy’s memory for forty years
  • Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy’s chemistry, and Broderick’s trajectory toward Ferris Bueller
  • Barry Corbin and Dabney Coleman as comedy that earns its place in the heaviest moments
  • John Wood as Falken—beloved in memory, underwritten on rewatch
  • The swimming scene and why Andy has never forgotten it since 1983
  • The narrative resolutions the film never quite delivers—and whether that matters

Both Pete and Andy came away with genuine affection for WarGames and a clearer sense of why it hit the way it did in 1983. It’s a fantastic ride that happens to ask harder questions than it fully answers—and the gap between the two turns out to be one of the most interesting things about it. We have a great time talking about it, so check it out then tune in. The Next Reel—when the movie ends, our conversation begins!

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Pete Wright:
I’m Pete Wright.

Andy Nelson:
And I’m Andy Nelson.

Pete Wright:
Welcome to The Next Reel, when the movie ends.

Andy Nelson:
Our conversation begins.

Pete Wright:
WarGames is over. “Hello, Joshua.” Hi Andy, we’re talking about WarGames. I’m very excited about it.

Andy Nelson:
Yes, I am excited about this one too. This was a fun one to revisit because I hadn’t seen it in a very long time.

Pete Wright:
Very long time. And when you say that, let me just ask you this.

Andy Nelson:
Yes and no. As soon as they played, I’m like, oh yeah, I totally remember this. But there are also sequences in this that have never left my brain, that have been burned in my entire life.

Pete Wright:
Me too. But the beginning of the movie — there’s a lot of military stuff in the beginning that I did not — I mean, it was just like I haven’t seen this movie.

Andy Nelson:
You mean the whole Michael Madsen, John Spencer opening?

Pete Wright:
Yeah, that’s the one. I haven’t seen that.

Andy Nelson:
So I don’t think I remembered it until he pointed the gun at him. Until Michael Madsen points his gun at John Spencer and is like, turn the key, sir. And I’m like, oh, okay, I do remember this.

Pete Wright:
Dark, dark stuff going on there. Okay. So let’s break down where we are. Hello, members. This is a member bonus episode. We’re talking about WarGames because we’re in the middle of our Thinking Machines series. We have talked about Colossus: The Forbin Project — that’s, you know, giant computer in a mountain, might sound familiar today.

Andy Nelson:
And the Cold War.

Pete Wright:
And the Cold War, right. We talked about Demon Seed, which is — computer has a baby with a lady.

Andy Nelson:
And that’s all.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, that’s pretty much that. We know more, but we don’t talk about it.

Andy Nelson:
Nudge nudge, wink wink, know what I mean?

Pete Wright:
So nudge, nudge, wink, wink. So we’re talking about WarGames. Here’s the reason I’m excited to talk about WarGames — it wasn’t on my initial list when I came up with this series. Maybe it could have been, but I’m glad that it ended up there, because this one has a change character in AI. One of the change characters is WOPR — Whopper.

Andy Nelson:
Whopper. Like the burger, yep.

Pete Wright:
It is a maniacal militaristic machine that actually learns a moral lesson. It teaches itself a moral lesson through training. And I have to admit, I kinda like that.

Andy Nelson:
Yeah, it’s an interesting film. I mean, there are examples of films where the antagonist is essentially the one who is your change character — they learn to grow or whatever. I mean, that’s always the case in a romantic comedy or something, where the two people who are so completely different somehow we know they’re meant to be together, and they learn to be together. That’s exactly the sort of thing we get here.

Pete Wright:
But we haven’t yet had it in the form of a computer.

Andy Nelson:
We haven’t yet — not at least in this series, which is interesting. So it’s fun to see how it plays here. But it’s also interesting because — and we’ll definitely talk more about this — this is one of those movies that when you watch it, you realize this script works really well for 1983. And then you look at it through today’s eyes and you’re like, okay, I can see how screenwriting has advanced and how things have changed. The fact that this was nominated for an original screenplay Oscar says a lot — we’re not necessarily nominating things like this today. I think it’s a little — it’s not as complex, I guess.

Pete Wright:
Okay, break that down a little bit further for me. I’m really interested in your thoughts on this. What was going on culturally that caused this film to be something of such intensity that it ends up getting nominated? And to what degree does that have on amplifying a more simple script?

Andy Nelson:
The big thing going on with this script — and this movie at the time — is this movie came out at the exact perfect time for this to hit. This was the era of The Day After and Threads and these other stories of nuclear war and the devastation. This was the period when home computers really started booming — modems and BBSs — and especially video games with ColecoVision and Atari and Commodore 64s, and even just the stand-up video games you’d find everywhere, like we see David playing when he first shows up. All of this is becoming a reality. And this film tapped into cultural fears of nuclear war. It tapped into adult fears of having zero framework for what their children are capable of. And the same thing with the military — just not understanding how some of this stuff worked, and the trust that they put into these systems that didn’t have — I mean, we talk a lot about guardrails. This is a good example of them clearly not having enough guardrails to really think through all this stuff.

So I think that’s why when this film came out it was such a big hit. They were able to tap into all of those different things that spoke to people. I think there are a lot of other reasons this film probably ended up getting a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination — a lot of it boils down to the fact that it felt cutting edge. This is the first time in a film that you hear “firewall.” This is the first time you see hacking and the way that he’s using the modem. Just the fact that people are capable of doing these sorts of things was new to so many people, and it was essentially cutting edge — they were doing stuff that wasn’t fantastical. I think that’s one of the reasons it opened people’s eyes. I mean, this movie opened the president’s eyes to what could actually potentially happen. It felt just right on the nose as far as where things were at that moment.

Pete Wright:
I think it was right before this that Secretary of State Alexander Haig first discussed publicly the levels of nuclear war and preparation for nuclear war — and that gives us the DEFCONs in this movie. NATO was stacking Pershing missiles all over Europe at the time, and it was just a couple of months after this movie was released that the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Flight 007 — which I think we’ll call that a big deal. And so I absolutely agree with you there. I remember the bedroom stuff, right — thinking I need more computers in my life. That modem was amazing. I wanted to have all that stuff. Because we had a computer, we had an Apple II, I loved it, and it wasn’t connected to anything. I was just giddy with anticipation of those sounds. Those sounds I wanted in my life something bad.

Andy Nelson:
And when you got it, it was a thrill. When you would dial in and you’d get that beep-boop, it was just like, oh, I’m actually connecting to something out there in the world. And then you start chatting in these rooms. It was a thrill. I don’t think today people understand how amazing that was.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, because now it’s just everywhere. Too easy, kids today. What was your first computer? Do you remember?

Andy Nelson:
Mine was a Commodore 64.

Pete Wright:
All right. I had a Commodore 64, but it was like a loaner from a friend of my dad’s. We had the Apple II and then switched — I couldn’t believe it — to the IBM PS/2.

Andy Nelson:
Oh.

Pete Wright:
So I was out of the Apple world for some years, and I did not care for it.

Andy Nelson:
Even then, you were like, I just feel something wrong in my life.

Pete Wright:
Even then I knew. I know.

Andy Nelson:
You’ve just heard the opening stretch of our member bonus conversation about WarGames — part of our Thinking Machines series, where we track the movies that asked what happens when the machines start thinking for themselves. And just like that login screen David Lightman probably shouldn’t have found… you’ve hit an access point. What’s in the public feed is the free sample. The unguarded backdoor. The rest of the conversation — where we dig deeper into the film, the filmmaking, and what it all means — that’s in the member feed. To get in, head to trustory.fm/join. Membership gets you monthly member bonus episodes like this one, including special series picks voted on by members; early access to ad-free episodes across the whole Next Reel family — The Next Reel, The Film Board, Sitting in the Dark, Movies We Like, and Cinema Scope; additional pre-show and post-show segments on select episodes; and access to members-only areas in our Discord community, plus the ongoing film talk in our showtalk channel. It’s $5 a month or $55 for the year. Head to trustory.fm/join — that’s T-R-U-S-T-O-R-Y dot F-M slash join. A strange game. The only winning move… is to join. The Next Reel — when the movie ends, our conversation begins!

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