By Robert Scucci
| Published
Matthew Broderick is probably best known for his portrayal of Ferris Bueller, and rightly so. While the years 1986 At Ferris Bueller Day off is a coming-of-age story about an underachieving high school hacker who uses technology to play hooky and have the best day of his life while escaping the dean of students. Broderick portrayed a similar character archetype in 1983. War games (streaming on Max), a techno-thriller that still holds up today.
Ferris Before Ferris
war games, now streaming on Max, features Broderick’s David Lightman after first establishing his own technological backdrop. During the film’s opening sequence, it is evident that Missile Wing controllers working for the U.S. Air Force are constantly hesitant to launch missile strikes in simulated and real-world apocalyptic scenarios. Wary of his men’s hesitations, John McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) decides it is best to automate the entire process.
Control of NORAD is transferred to a supercomputer known as War Operation Plan Response (WOPR), a cold-hearted machine that will not hesitate to launch a missile strike at any time. After all, we’re in the middle of a massive arms race between the United States and Russia at the end of the Cold War, so this is serious business.
Hooky Woopsie and the threat of a third world war
You may be wondering where the Ferris Bueller connection is, but it occurred to me shortly after the broadcast. War games on Max.and I promise I’m not making this up.
David Lightman, like Ferris in the 1986 film, loves playing with computers and logs into his school’s database to change his grades, as well as the grades of his romantic interest, Jennifer Mack (Ally Sheedy). Innocently enough, David is inspired to step up his hacking game after discovering a video game company called Protovision, because he wants to see if he can access unreleased games currently in development. Things get complicated when David unwittingly hacks into WOPR and invites her to play what he thinks is a game called “Global Thermonuclear War”.
Luckily, David activates WOPR and agents working for NORAD learn of the breach, suspecting David of domestic terrorism. If what’s happening on the WOPR screen is accurate, David may have instigated the machine to start World War III, and NORAD is questioning him. While War games on Max begins as a teen comedy-drama, the stakes rise exponentially as David attempts to clear his name and spare the world from nuclear annihilation.
Equal parts thrills and comedy
War games plays it primarily as a techno-thriller, but it’s not without humor. Matthew Broderick is the difference between a lovable idiot who is in over his head and a young tech expert who uses his skills to protect his country from impending nuclear war. As David MacGyvers makes his way through the military-industrial complex, he does so with a smirk as if to let the audience know that as serious as War games may seem based on its depiction of Max, it is still a very entertaining work of speculative fiction.
As of this writing, you can steam War games on Max before digging out your VHS copy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to make it a double functionality. Whatever you do, don’t resort to hacking, otherwise you might discover launch codes that are better hidden from the public eye.
