Review for Wargames

Introduction

“Must upgrade Wargames! Must upgrade Wargames!” That’s a mantra I tried to memorise every time I watched my original DVD purchase, and it’s a mantra I promptly forgot as soon as the end credits rolled. After all, that UK DVD release was a rather disappointing non-anamorphic effort that really didn’t show the film in the best possible light. I kept waiting for an anamorphic DVD to double dip on, but it never happened here. It did eventually happen in the US, where the 25th anniversary edition was released with a decent transfer. I made another mental mantra of “Wait a year for a UK release, and then import!”, but that also fell by the wayside into the ditches of lost memory. By the time I got round to watching my DVD again, I had upgraded to HD, and while non-anamorphic may look pants in SD, it looks even more so on a large flat panel display. I was sure that it should be on Blu-ray, but it simply wasn’t at that time. I then made another mental note which I immediately forgot.

It was summer 2012 that a US Region A locked release finally surfaced, and of course I didn’t realise, not that I could have taken advantage of it. It was actually last Christmas, when I was channel hopping one morning and wound up on ITV HD, in the middle of Wargames, presented in native HD. I was at my PC like a shot and learned that it would get a Region B release the following month. No more mental notes I swore. This time I would pre-order it. So January 2013, I have Wargames in my possession on shiny Blu-ray, with HD quality imagery, and HD quality sound. I made a mental note to watch it at the soonest opportunity... Anyway, here we are in 2014...


David Lightman is your typical teenager, growing up in Seattle. He is a bit of a smart aleck, still a little shy around girls, rebels in the presence of authority figures, in short a typical teenager. However, his pale demeanour can be explained by his obsessive computer hacking. His room is an explosion of computer equipment, and through a little theft of Ma Bell’s resources, he spends his free time hacking. When he and a classmate, Jennifer Mack, fail biology, he hacks into the school computer to change their grades. He’s also showing off to Jennifer when he tries to hack into Protovision to steal their games. Instead of finding Protovision, he comes across a strange login prompt. It’s a gateway to an interesting computer named Joshua, and when Joshua offers the chance to play Global Thermonuclear War, David can’t resist. He and Jennifer choose to play as the Soviet Union. Meanwhile at NORAD, the nation’s military goes on alert when a limited nuclear strike by Russia is detected. What started off as a harmless hack may just wind up as the countdown to Armageddon.

Picture

Wargames gets a 1.85:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p resolution. It’s very much a film of its time, with that somewhat soft and particularly grainy stock that was prevalent in the eighties. Having said that, the image is clear and consistent throughout, and the HD resolution allows for far greater clarity than even an anamorphic DVD would have allowed. You can certainly see all the little details and occasional textual in-jokes in the backgrounds of certain shots. The overall image is a little flat though, but the only real problem was that reds were pushed a little too strongly. Things like John Spencer’s scarf in the pre-credits sequence, or Jennifer’s top when she’s jogging all stand out a little too sharply, and can be distracting against the otherwise understated colour palette.

Sound

You get the same audio options as that last DVD release, only DTS-HD MA instead of Dolby Digital. You get DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround English, and DTS-HD MA 1.0 mono French, Italian, German, and Spanish, with subtitles in the same languages, as well as Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese, Dutch and Polish. I went with the English track quite naturally, and it was clear and effective, if by its nature front loaded, although I do feel that an opportunity was missed to add the original stereo track as well.

Extras

This is another one of those slightly annoying discs that doesn’t have a Top Menu. It starts playing the film automatically, and loops back to the beginning after the end credits.

It also collects those extras from the previous DVD release, some of which are here in the UK for the first time.

The Audio Commentary was available on the original UK DVD release, and has director John Badham joining writers Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker to speak about the movie. It’s just as detailed and engaging a commentary as it was when I first heard it. The audio commentary is subtitled if you need it.

The rest of the extras are taken from that 2007 US Anniversary re-release, and begin with Loading Wargames, a 45 minute making of documentary detailing the complex story of the film’s production, with contributions from key members of the cast and the staff.


Attack of the Hackers is a 13½ minute piece on Wargames and how the movie both reflected and inspired the hacker community of the period, and how what started off as intellectual and playful pranks has developed into something far more malicious and criminal.

Inside NORAD: Cold War Fortress lasts 11 minutes and looks a little at the nuclear brinkmanship of the cold war, and takes us into Cheyenne Mountain to take a look at the actual facility that was in use back then.

Tic Tac Toe: A True Story is a little bit of tongue in cheek nonsense about noughts and crosses. This lasts 4½ minutes.

All of these video extras are presented in 480i resolution.

The theatrical trailer on the other hand is presented in 1080p.

Conclusion

Tech thrillers can so rapidly become dated. The pace of technological change is so fast these days that cutting edge films from six months ago begin to look creaky. And when I look back on certain movies that I loved ten years ago, and notice their cutting edge tech now living in a cardboard box in my attic, it’s hard not to find fault with those films. Wargames somehow effortlessly crested that tidal wave of obsolescence and instead became an instant classic. One thing is verisimilitude in the way that it treats technology. When it comes to computers and how the characters used them, it had, and still has a realism that modern films simply ignore in order to tell their impossible stories. The second thing is that the Cold War setting, the nuclear brinkmanship between two superpowers, and the sense of a world rapidly spinning towards mutually assured destruction, is still fresh enough in my memory to resonate. The stakes are very real in this movie, and as such it can still remain suspenseful and gripping.


I still remember growing up in the seventies, and especially the Reagan Thatcher years of the eighties, when the world really did teeter on the abyss, when there would be public information films on what to do in the event of a nuclear attack (we pitied the poor people without cellars, bricks and solid doors), and there was the impression that our leaders were all lunatics intent on sending us all into Armageddon. The media of the day preyed on these fears and made copious use of these themes, whether it was in pop songs, novels, movies and even cartoons. It wasn’t unusual for me to have nightmares about atomic fire and post-apocalyptic collapse of civilisation, and for much of my childhood, I truly didn’t believe that I would have an adulthood. This wasn’t helped by the odd news report of near misses, such as World War III almost being started by a flock of geese, or actual hits, like Chernobyl going up and irradiating most of Northern Europe. With that kind of pervasive atmosphere, you can see why Wargames was just the right movie at the right time, a little nudge in the right direction away from the brink, “The only right move is not to play”.


There’s a lot of more positive nostalgia for the technology as well. I grew up during that initial era of hobby computing, where young children littered their bedrooms with all manner of kit, when Sinclair battled it out with Commodore at the budget end of the market, while the more serious enthusiast loaded up with 12 inch floppy drives and TRS-80s as used in Wargames. The clunky modems too are a sight to filter through those rose tinted spectacles, while there’s a lot more general nostalgia to be had from the sight of kids clustered around arcade games in gaming parlours. The thing about Wargames is that it gets the details right in how these computers were used. There’s nothing impossible or far-fetched here, no Hollywood computer magic used to paper over inconvenient plot holes. That realism makes the antique nature of the technology acceptable to watch even now, where the Blu-ray player processing this disc has a more powerful chip driving it than anything in the film. The only bit of narrative fantasy is Joshua itself, but that kind of smart computer is necessary to drive the plot, and is forgivable.


On second thoughts, maybe Wargames has dated. As a child of that era, I probably have a closer appreciation for the technology and the politics than anyone born after 1989 might have. This film probably does resonate more with someone of my generation. But against all this you also have a really good story, told exceptionally well, and a film with a great cast, giving engaging and honest performances. It strikes a balance between suspense and thrills, and light comedy and even a little romance that really stands the test of time. A modern audience may not get that same ominous flutter in the base of the stomach at the announcement of DEFCON 1 that I might. A modern audience may not have the same nostalgic glee at seeing someone hold a floppy disc with two hands. But a modern audience will certainly appreciate great storytelling, and it is this which makes Wargames a timeless classic and it also makes this Blu-ray one of the best double-dips I’ve made yet.