By Robert Scucci
| Published
Matthew Broderick is probably best known for his portrayal of Ferris Bueller, and rightfully so. While 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a coming-of-age story about an underachieving high school-aged computer hacker who uses technology to play hooky and have the best day of his life while evading the Dean of Students, Broderick portrays a similar character archetype in 1983’s WarGames (streaming on Max), a techno-thriller that still holds up today.
Ferris Before Ferris
WarGames, now streaming on Max, introduces Broderick’s David Lightman after first establishing its own technological backdrop. During the film’s opening sequence, it’s made apparent that Missile Wing controllers working for the United States Air Force are consistently hesitant to launch missile strikes in both simulated and real-life doomsday scenarios. Wary of his men’s hesitation, John McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) decides it’s best to automate the entire process.
Control over NORAD gets transferred to a supercomputer known as the War Operation Plan Response (WOPR), a cold-hearted machine that won’t hesitate to launch a missile strike at a moment’s notice. After all, we’re in the middle of a massive arms race between the US and Russia at the tail-end of the Cold War, so this is serious business.
Hooky Woopsie And The Threat Of World War III
You may be wondering where the Ferris Bueller connection is, but it occurred to me shortly after streaming WarGames on Max, and I promise I’m not making things up.
David Lightman, like Ferris in the 1986 film, loves messing with computers and logs into his school’s database to change his grades, as well as the grades of his romantic interest, Jennifer Mack (Ally Sheedy). Innocently enough, David becomes inspired to step up his hacking game after learning about a video game company called Protovision because he wants to see if he can gain access to any unreleased games currently in development. Matters get complicated when David unwittingly hacks into WOPR, and prompts it to play what he thinks is a game called “Global Thermonuclear War.”
As luck may have it, David activates WOPR, and the agents working for NORAD get wind of the breach, suspecting David of domestic terrorism. If what’s playing out on the WOPR screen is accurate, David may have prompted the machine to start World War III, and NORAD brings him in for questioning. While WarGames on Max starts out like a teen comedy-drama, the stakes are raised exponentially as David tries to clear his name and spare the world from nuclear annihilation.
Equal Parts Thrills And Comedy
WarGames mostly plays it straight like a techno-thriller, but it’s not without a sense of humor. Matthew Broderick treads the line between a lovable goofball who’s way in over his head and a young technological expert who uses his skills to keep his country safe from imminent nuclear war. As David MacGyvers his way through the military-industrial complex, he does so with a smirk as if to let the audience know that as serious as WarGames may seem based on its description of Max, it’s still a highly entertaining work of then-speculative fiction.
As of this writing, you can steam Wargames on Max before digging up your VHS copy of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to make a double feature out of it. Whatever you do, just don’t resort to piracy, or you might unearth some launch codes that are better left hidden from the public eye.