John Badham
Wargames

I increasingly feel that it’s rare nowadays to come across truly intriguing and stimulating new films. All too often, one stumbles upon movies that seem mass-produced, almost as if they were freeze-dried products, ready for quick and painless consumption. Even when such films tackle weighty topics—such as, for example, the threat of an unexpected global thermonuclear conflict, as in the recent “A house of dynamite” by the otherwise talented director Bygelow (contrary to the usual, I didn’t find myself completely taken by her latest work).

But what I’ve mentioned above doesn’t deter me from seeking out past works dedicated to the theme of global thermonuclear war. And instead of watching “Dr. Strangelove” for the umpteenth time—which remains the best film ever made in this arena (and is reviewed quite often)—I decided to revisit a title like “Wargames” (“Giochi di guerra” in the overly literal Italian release), which is still a film that has stood the test of time beautifully.

Shot in 1983 by John Badham (yes, the same director of “Saturday Night Fever” who brought both himself and John Travolta worldwide celebrity), the film retains many interesting aspects even today. The protagonist is a young Yankee student named David Lightman (played by Matthew Broderick, in his brilliant debut here), intelligent and curious about the world (like any peer just coming of age), and nursing a great passion for computers and everything related to data processing. Sitting at his bedroom desk, he entertains himself by connecting from his personal computer to the information systems of a company called Protovosion, based in Silicon Valley, to hack their latest video games. But one day, entirely by accident, he mistakenly gains access to the server of the computer system that manages none other than the U.S. nuclear defense, equipped with software called WOPR—so sophisticated that it constitutes a form of artificial intelligence (a forerunner to today’s ChatGPTs). With this device, David, from his personal computer, starts a gaming simulation with the unsettling title “Global Thermonuclear War,” which, in the logic of the supercomputer at the American nuclear military command center, is not treated as a theoretical exercise but as a serious activity, with the very real repercussions one can imagine. Needless to say, this sets off a series of frantic and perhaps somewhat far-fetched events (for an IT-nerd like David, luck is always on his side, and all the Yankee authorities prove slow to grasp the real scope of the events—but it’s well-known that bureaucracy is everywhere obtuse and cumbersome).

The finale is quite pyrotechnic and flashy, but a happy ending is of course in store (thank God and a good deal of luck…). But setting aside the main plot points, a few observations must be made.

First of all, watching the film today gives the sensation of returning to that period (early 1980s) when computing was approached and experienced with a tremendous dose of pioneering enthusiasm, perhaps somewhat naively, towards a profoundly innovative adventure. Of course, the Internet and various social platforms were still a long way off, but I felt a certain nostalgia watching the protagonist fiddle with his PC, use floppy disks, and connect via modem—so skilled that he manages to outwit the US government’s information systems. Even though I’m not an IT nerd, I too had such data processing gear at the office back then.

But more importantly, there’s the theme of the nuclear military arsenal held by certain nations and the immense responsibility of managing it. The human factor can be risky (and in the opening minutes of the film, we witness a simulation of an atomic attack that requires the active intervention of two soldiers at the command console, with one of them actually refusing to press the fateful launch button). How do we get around human unpredictability? Delegating the management of nuclear defense to a machine equipped with artificial intelligence software, as imagined in the film, is equally risky. In theory, the so-called WOPR would be infallible, but unable to distinguish reality from play, it could go to extreme consequences. Fortunately, it will discover on its own that a global nuclear war is nothing but a game with no winners, and it’s far better to engage in a game of chess.

In short, the final message of a film so ahead of its time is that it’s better to win peace. It might seem banal to repeat it, but judging by what’s happening today, 42 years after the film’s release, some powerful political figures still have not truly understood it.