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WarGames Sequel Now Filming
iluvcapra writes "This news is a little late, but on November 20th WarGames 2: The Dead Code began filming in Montreal. (I only became aware of the new production when I read that MGM is suing the rightful owner of WarGames.com for his domain name.) The film will be produced and distributed by MGM — distributor of the original WarGames — and directed by Stewart Gillard, director of such gems as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3. Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, the team behind the original film, are not involved. The plot revolves around a hacker breaking into a terrorism-simulation computer."
I can think of no better way to kick off the marketing campaign for WarGames 2 than by filing an outrageous lawsuit that will piss off the very geek fanbase who'd potentially be interested in the film. Well done, MGM. Because wargames-movie.com just wouldn't be good enough, would it?
The chances that I would see this movie just went from slim to none.
It was a good movie for its time IMHO. It was definitely more geeky than those "geek" movies that followed (The Net, Hackers, etc). I certainly enjoyed it then and will still sit through it if it happens to be playing on a boring Saturday afternoon.
This looks like it has nothing to do w/the first other than the stolen name for credibility.
tagging (beta): lame
Odd. While there were huge *glaring* technical problems with the film (acoustic modem wardialing, anyone?), it had a fairly reasonable portrial of "young hacker kid" before it was popularized. Social loner who wardials entire exchanges looking for carriers is EXACTLY how a lot of us spent our time growing up. Poking and probing new systems was always a joy.
Few other movies include the phrase, "I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd help."
It's for scaredy-cat non-geeks who want to be terrified by what those mysterious boxes can do in the wrong hands.
Plus, a romantic sub-plot, a cool chase scene, and some improperly used computer terminology.
Blar.
The title is not exhaustive, but the description clearly says: "MGM is suing the rightful owner of WarGames.com".
People have the right (or ought to anyway) to keep domains that they purchase, develop, and maintain in good faith. MGM is going to try to bully him into giving it up. They will probably succeed, and if they do, it will be because they have more clout and more money (a more expensive lawyer). Ergo, his online rights are now in jeopardy of being violated.
I bet you're glad you posted anonymously now. And to the lazy moderator who gave this guy an "insightful", shame on you. Check more carefully next time. I realize it's too much of a hassle to read TFA, but please take the time to at least read the short description on Slashdot.
The premise behind the original - for those too young to remember - is (abridged) that a hacker breaks in to a NORAD computer and proceeds to run a wargame simulation of an ICBM strike on the continental US. The game plays out on the screens of the main command centre at NORAD and, unable to tell that what they are seeing is not real, a retaliatory strike is nearly launched.
That's probably not an exact synopsis of the plot, but it's close enough to make no nevermind.
Now in the world of Mutually Assured Destruction, which relies on a massive counterstrike against the initiator BEFORE his missiles arrive at their targets, this is at least a plausible scenario - close enough to allow sufficient suspension of disbelief to allow the movie to work. It's true that these command centres were manned 24/7 watching for any sign of an incoming strike, and that the time window between detecting the strike and making the decision to initiate the counterstrike was very small. It's also true that in real life there were a number of "near misses" where technical failures and other issues were initially interpreted as an incoming strike and disaster only narrowly averted.
But we aren't in that game anymore. There is no longer a 20 minute window in which someone has to decide to launch a nuclear counterstrike based on a fairly narrow band of incoming data. No terrorist group - indeed, very few nations - are capable of the "mutual" in "Mutually Assured Destruction".
So a Homeland Security central command centre starts reporting dozens to hundreds of terrorist strikes on US Territory? So what? Response will be in the hands of local Guard units and law enforcement/emergency responders, not a remote C3S cell. The worst that could happen is that troops are mobilized needlessly - and there's time to see if the purported strikes show up on CNN.
The premise only works in a Cold War, MAD environment, not the modern day "ball of snakes" environment.
That doesn't bode well for the success of the movie, methinks.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
It's still a sequel of a movie that doesn't need one.
I also see the idea of not allowing people to put up blatantly copyrighted domain names, and then holding them from the copyright owner (i.e. "cocacola.com" or buying "amazon.biz" and holding it from Amazon.com purely for profit), but something like "apple.com," while a name of a major computer manufacturer, would be perfectly valid had it been bought by a person who used it to sell bushels of apples online, or had apple-picking vacations for sale, etc. Similar to "War Games" - it is a common term. Of course, had wargames.com been squatting the site, that'd be another story.
When the U.N. decided that famous people can sue for their domain name (juliaroberts.com was the case I remember), I assume this does not apply to some 24 year-old girl whose name is Julia Roberts from Ithaca, NY - right? Surely Erin Brockovitch has no-more right to the domain name than the nobody from upstate NY. But they both have a right to it over some squatter of course. But then again, what if someone bought that site and made a legitimate Julia Roberts fan page? Would that be valid?
Does anybody really think the notion of an intelligent computer is realistic any more? I mean, it's believable that a computer won't cooperate with you, but having a mind of its own and actually getting things done? It seems that the popularity of Windows OS has pretty much made such a concept pretty unbelievable among average people these days.
Now maybe when the computer was a mysterious device that few people used, could you get away with portraying them as dubious, intelligent entities, but is that a believable plot device nowadays? This kind of premise should have been abandoned about the same time movies about high school kids building sentient robots was abandoned.
I suspect, like most late remakes, this will fall flat.
"No offense, but the first blew chunks. I don't see how this can be improved."
Rimmerian Nitpick: If it blew chunks, wouldn't it stand to reason that it had plenty that was improvable?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like a remake.
Except, Wargames was pretty good in terms of research and accuracy. The AI philosophy (learn from its mistakes) looks a bit outdated now but was pretty much what researchers were looking at at the time. The voice synthesis on every terminal in the world was a bit daft, and a few bits and pieces were a lttle hokey, but we didn't have the usual computer cliches. There was no "Running Virus" with progress bar. No 72 point lettering. No magic mechanism to break the password. Broderick's character actually had to spend ages rummaging through information just to get past the login. I'll admit that some of this was hokey but it's the least hokey computer movie ever by a long shot.
If they can manage a similar level of realism for Wargames 2, then it would be interesting. Somehow, I doubt they'll do that. I expect to see loads of pointless explosions, a whole bunch of meaningless jargon, and lots of computer nerds totally bamboozled by the genius of some 16 year old kid.
Is it wrong of me to judge the movie so soon?
Can't you come up with anything better than that? Face it: the country is not on your side anymore. Everyone hates Bush, everyone hates this war. You lost, give it up. Snide, idiotic comments like this just prove you are a sore loser with too much hate in your heart.
Liberals under-reacted. Based on what has actually happened, they should have reacted much more. If you think we aren't torturing people, would you mind if I cam over and waterboarded you? Are you really equating Clinton's fuck-ups with Bush's? Not that Clinton did the right thing, but they are orders of magnitude apart. Plus, Clinton admitted he did the wrong thing and apologized, which Bush is incapable of doing. The majority of Democrats were LIED TO BY BUSH! Finally, the last statement reveals the true depths of your ignorance and bigotry. Who attacked us? Shiite or Sunni? Do you even know the difference? What country were they from? Do you even care? Or is it all just evil brown heathens to you?
Does it burn knowing you are in the minority? Does it burn knowing the world does not share in your hate-fest? I certainly hope so, people like you are one of the root causes of suffering in the world. We would all be better off without you. FOAD.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton