WarGames

WarGames (1983)

2 suggested corrections

(6 votes)

Plot hole: Why is David the only one aware that the computer is still playing the game? The NORAD people should have been aware the "simulation" was still running including the countdown. They believed the Soviets were really carrying out troop movements and bomber attacks over Alaska, did they never once look at the screen telling them "game time elapsed/remaining" and conclude none of it was real?

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Suggested correction: They didn't see what they didn't expect to see. There's a saying that goes something like, "The answer was staring me in the face the whole time." This means that it's easy to miss something that might otherwise seem obvious. The concept of it not being real was completely alien to them, so even if they had seen it, they'd have simply dismissed it.

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.

Factual error: At the end of the movie WOPR tries to crack the launch-code using brute force. So far so good. When WOPR finds out one digit of the 10 digit code, the first digit locks and the search goes on with the remaining 9 digits. Then he finds the second one, it locks too and so on. Problem is, brute force doesn't work that way. It would be too easy (26 letters and 10 numbers = only 36 possibilities for one digit). Brute-Force works only "all or nothing", you can't sneak your way to the whole code one by one.

Goekhan

More mistakes in WarGames

David: What kind of an asshole lives on an island and he doesn't even have a boat?
Jennifer: Maybe we can swim for it. How far do you think it is?
David: No, it's uh, 2 or 3 miles at least, maybe more.
Jennifer: Well, what do you say? Let's go for it.
David: No.
Jennifer: Come on!
David: No! I can't swim
Jennifer: You can't swim?
David: No, I can't. Okay, Wonder Woman? I can't swim.
Jennifer: Well, what kind of an asshole grows up in Seattle and doesn't even know how to swim?

Bishop73

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Question: How could WOPR not know the difference between a game and real life?

Answer: While merely speculation, the WOPR is not alive and knows only what it's been programmed to do. It would have no concept of life or death, and as such would see no difference between the simulation and the real thing. That being said, an easy way to make it see the difference would be to program it to not waste physical resources. It would then see the use of all its actual warheads as less desirable.

Answer: This film is science fiction and hardly reflective of a real-life scenario. The WOPR is depicted as being almost semi-sentient that is flawed. The movie employs an illogical, suspension-of-disbelief plot line.

raywest

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