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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.
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 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
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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?
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?