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By Robert Scucci
| Published
Matthew Broderick is probably best known for his portrayal of Ferris Bueller, and deservedly so. While 1986 Ferris Bueller’s A day off a coming-of-age story about an underachieving high school-age computer hacker who uses technology to play hooky and have the best day of his life while avoiding the Dean of Students, Broderick portrays a similar character archetype in 1983’s War Games (streaming on Max), a techno-thriller that still holds up today.
Ferris Before Ferris
War Games, now streaming on Max, introduces Broderick’s David Lightman after first establishing his own tech background. During the opening sequence of the film, it is made clear that the Missile Wing commanders work for the United States Air Force consistently hesitant to launch missile strikes in both simulated and real day scenarios. Wary of hesitating his men, John McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) decides that it is better to automate the whole process.
Control over NORAD is handed over to a supercomputer called War Operation Plan Response (WOPR), a cold-hearted machine that will not hesitate to launch a missile strike at a moment’s notice. After all, we are in the middle of a massive arms race between the US and Russia at the end of the Cold War, so this is serious business.
Whoopsie Hooky And The Threat Of World War III
You may be wondering where the Ferris Bueller connection is, but it occurred to me shortly after streaming War Games forward Maxand I promise I’m not making things up.
David Lightman, as Ferris in the 1986 film, loves to play with computers and logs into his school’s database to change his grades, as well as those of his romantic interest, Jennifer Mack (Ally Sheedy). Innocently enough, David is inspired to step up his hacking game after learning about a video game company called Protovision because he wants to see if he can get access to any unreleased games in development at the moment. Matters become complicated when David unwittingly hacks into WOPR, prompting him to play what he thinks is a game called “Global Thermonuclear War.”
As luck would have it, David activates WOPR, and the agents working for NORAD get wind of the breach, suspecting David of domestic terrorism. If what’s playing out on WOPR’s screen is correct, David may have triggered the machine to start World War I, and NORAD is bringing him in for questioning. While War Games on Max begins as a teenage drama-comedy, the stakes are raised exponentially as David tries to clear his name and save the world from nuclear annihilation.
Equal Parts Thriller And Comedy
War Games mostly plays it straight as a techno-thriller, but it’s not without a sense of humor. Matthew Broderick treads the line between a lovable goofball who is way in over his head and a young technological expert who uses his skills to keep his country safe from an imminent nuclear war. As David MacGyvers his way through the military-industrial complex, he does so with a smile as if to let the audience know that as seriously as War Games It may seem based on his description of Max, it is still a highly entertaining work of speculative fiction.
As of this writing, you can steam Wargames on Max before digging out your VHS copy of Ferris Bueller’s day off to make a double feature out of it. Whatever you do, don’t resort to piracy, or you might discover some launch codes that are best left hidden from the public eye.
