Corrected entry: At one point the General suggests unplugging the system so the missiles won't go off. McKittrick says the WOPR would interpret that as a shutdown and launch the missiles anyway. But if that were the case then why didn't WOPR launch the missiles when David shut down the game from his home earlier in the film?
JW Pepper
31st Dec 2016
WarGames (1983)
27th Apr 2009
WarGames (1983)
Corrected entry: In the scene at NORAD when officials are trying to figure out what happened with the initial security breach, Paul says to McKittrick that the perpetrator broke in using a backdoor left in by the original programmer (i.e., Falken's password "Joshua"). That meeting also reveals that they took the backdoor out, but that the guy broke in again (note that David did not intentionally break in again - Joshua called David). The error comes when David is left alone in McKittrick's office in a later scene and proceeds to login using "Joshua." That password was gone by then (just as it is at the end when Falken tries to use it).
Correction: While the original back door was removed, Joshua demonstrated remarkable initiative by contacting David. Joshua would certainly want to reinstall the back door if he wanted to give David access, and might have closed it down again himself later when he did not want to be distracted.
Good explanation and very possible.
27th Aug 2001
WarGames (1983)
Corrected entry: There is a problem in this movie with time compression. They are racing against the clock to save the world, yet the two main actors manage to travel from Colorado to Oregon, play scenes with the scientist, and get back in what seems like a day or so.
Correction: It is approximately 2 days but that is well within a credible time frame for the film. When Joshua calls David the night David sees the TV news and calls Jennifer, the computer screen shows over 50 hours left in the game. The FBI grabs David the next morning based on that call from Joshua. The FBI immediately flies him from Seattle to NORAD (near Denver, CO); at most a 3-hour flight. David escapes NORAD a few hours later, hitchhikes and then flies to Oregon. The same afternoon he gets to Oregon and meets Jennifer, they find Falken within hours and spend no more than a few hours with him. Furthermore, just before Falken picks David and Jennifer up in his helicopter, we see a shot of the WOPR showing 9 hours left -- plenty of time to get back to NORAD around the time the game is ending, which is exactly what they do. Therefore, it not only is a plausible time frame, it is well executed by the filmmakers.
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Correction: The General and McKittrick don't know the computer is simulating a game and think this is the real thing. The computer won't launch missiles even if they did unplug, even though McKittrick thinks that. That's why it didn't launch anything when David shut off the game either.
lionhead
Exactly right. Joshua knows it's a game at the house. McKittrick thinks the whole thing has been real at the time je makes the comment - which actually raises the question: why didn't McKittrick put 2 and 2 together at that point and realise David was telling the truth about the game? (although in the narrative of the film it is, at that point, irrelevant and would likely be out of step to go there in the story).
JW Pepper