WarGames (1983)

1 suggested correction

★★★★☆

Starring: Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, Ally Sheedy

Other mistake: When Jennifer meets David in Oregon she says she drove 3 hours to get there. In the next scene they are getting off a bus to catch the ferry. What happened to her car?

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Suggested correction: There are possibilities off-screen as to why. It's possible that the bus used its own private road to get to the ferry which may be closed to the public, or the parking lot may have been too expensive and they parked on a street instead and caught a bus. It's not really known, but those are some possibilities.

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Mistakes

Plot hole: McKittrick says the computer will not accept the launch codes unless they are at DEFCON 1. At the end of the climax the computer is trying to guess the code while they are at DEFCON 1. So why couldn't they just go back to a different DEFCON before the correct code was guessed?

More mistakes in WarGames

Quotes

Stephen Falken: The whole point was to find a way to practise nuclear war without destroying ourselves. To get the computers to learn from mistakes we couldn't afford to make. Except, I never could get Joshua to learn the most important lesson.
David Lightman: What's that?
Stephen Falken: Futility. That there's a time when you should just give up.
Jennifer: What kind of a lesson is that?
Stephen Falken: Did you ever play tic-tac-toe?
Jennifer: Yeah, of course.
Stephen Falken: But you don't anymore.
Jennifer: No.
Stephen Falken: Why?
Jennifer: Because it's a boring game. It's always a tie.
Stephen Falken: Exactly. There's no way to win. The game itself is pointless! But back at the war room, they believe you can win a nuclear war. That there can be "acceptable losses."

More quotes from WarGames

Trivia

Trivia: Closely listen to the TV playing in the background, when Mathew Broderick comes home from school, before all his trouble starts with the Feds. The local news is on, and is saying "a fire broke out in a prophylactic recycling factory."

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Questions

Question: At the beginning of the film, who were the two men in uniform and why did one pull a gun on the other?

Answer: They were erroneously alerted that an actual nuclear attack was underway, and they had been trained to respond by firing a nuclear warhead. However, one was unconvinced that the US was actually under attack, and he wanted further confirmation from his superiors. The other insisted that they follow protocol and fire the missiles. One man alone cannot launch the missiles, it takes two, and the one with the gun is attempting to force his partner to follow through on launching the weapon.

raywest ★

Answer: Actually it would take four men; two men in two separate LCCs (Launch Control Centers) to corroborate. In fact, there are five LCCs in a Squadron and the others can even "inhibit" an erroneous launch order coming from a single LCC.

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