Long before we started worrying about how artificial intelligence would take the photos of all of us dressed as if we were 1980s pop stars and use them to access our bank accounts, our social security numbers and our deepest, darkest secrets, Hollywood was already warning audiences about what might happen if computers were given a little too much responsibility.
From The Terminator to The Net, we’ve been lectured on how dangerous AI could be. Years before those two movies, we got an even more terrifying example of what could go wrong when presented with a scenario where a teenager could accidentally bring humanity to the brink of nuclear annihilation simply by trying to play a video game.
The 1983 sci-fi thriller WarGames has officially arrived on Prime Video in the United States, joining the platform on November 1. A teenager, bored by traditional high school subjects like biology, but fascinated by computers, accidentally taps into the Pentagon’s top-secret computer…the USA’s NORAD system. He starts what he innocently believes is a computer game called “Global Thermonuclear War,” but the “game” is real.
The Pentagon’s best minds cannot shut down or reprogram the supercomputer that is readying a missile attack against the USSR, and thereby unleash Armageddon. The teen and his girlfriend attempt to aid the helpless Pentagon and, in a frantic race against a ticking “doomsday clock,” try to persuade the computer to end the “game.”
- The Wachowskis’ 1999 film won four Academy Awards, including Visual Effects and Film
Editing. - Bullet time was shot with a rig of roughly 120 still cameras firing in sequence around the
actors. - Keanu Reeves trained in martial arts for about four months before a frame was shot,
recovering from neck surgery the whole time. - It opened the same year as Fight Club and eXistenZ, in a run of films about not trusting the
world in front of you.
- Mad Max: Fury Road won six Academy Awards in 2016, more than any other film that year.
- George Miller storyboarded the entire film as roughly 3,500 panels before there was a
script. - The chase was shot almost entirely practical in the Namib Desert, with real vehicles and
real stunt performers. - Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth carried the prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in 2024.
- Blade Runner 2049 won Roger Deakins his first Oscar for cinematography, on his fourteenth
nomination. - The film also took Best Visual Effects, 35 years after Ridley Scott’s 1982 original.
- Villeneuve shot it on large-format film and kept the fog and rain practical on set wherever
he could. - Three short films by Luke Scott and Shinichiro Watanabe bridge the 30-year gap between the
two movies.
- Denis Villeneuve’s Dune won six Academy Awards in 2022, including Cinematography and
Original Score. - Hans Zimmer turned down Christopher Nolan’s Tenet so he could score Dune instead.
- Dune: Part Two arrived in 2024 and brought in Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and Christopher
Walken. - David Lynch’s 1984 version and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unmade one are both their
own legends by now.
- The 1977 original won six Academy Awards plus a special achievement award for sound effects.
- John Williams’ score was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and became the
best-selling symphonic film soundtrack ever. - Andor took the galaxy somewhere colder and earned Emmy nominations for drama series in both
seasons. - The saga now runs across eleven feature films and a growing shelf of series on Disney+.
Who Stars in ‘WarGames’?
The cast includes Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off) as David Lightman, Ally Sheedy (The Breakfast Club) as Jennifer Mack, Dabney Coleman (9 to 5) as Dr. John McKittrick, John Wood (Chocolat) as Dr. Stephen Falken, Barry Corbin (Northern Exposure) as General Jack Beringer, Juanin Clay (The Edge of Night) as Pat Healy, Kent Williams (The West Wing) as Arthur Cabot, and Dennis Lipscomb (The Day After) as Lyle Watson.
The movie is directed by John Badham (Saturday Night Fever). Produced for approximately $12 million, WarGames earned $74.4 million during its original domestic theatrical run, according to The Numbers, while the film holds a 93% critics’ score and 76% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Director Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses) previously developed a modern WarGames remake for MGM centered around cyber-terrorism and the Stuxnet virus, but the project stalled and was eventually scrapped.
WarGames is streaming now on Prime Video in the United States. Stay tuned to Collider for all the latest news and updates.
Wargames
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Matthew Broderick
David Lightman
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McKittrick
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John Wood
Stephen Falken
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Ally Sheedy
Jennifer
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