David and the government now have to find a way to stop a nuclear war that no one really wants. So not only does David have to convince everyone of the imminent danger, he has to do so while the US government believes him to be a Russian spy.īut meanwhile, WOPR wants to keep playing - and figures out how to break out the real missiles. It didn't help that David booked himself and Jennifer on a flight to Paris before he started this game (he was showing off that he could do it booking tickets online was novel back in the '80s). It takes a while for David to explain that he didn't want to cause a real thermonuclear war - he was just trying to play some video games, and impress his classmate Jennifer (Sheedy) along the way. They have no problem figuring out who the hacker in question is, and forcibly capture him for questioning. The Government does figure out that someone has hacked into their supercomputer before they release any missiles. This launches no real missiles on the Russian side, but it plays hell with said computer opponent, WOPR, the US military's computerized missile-detection and launch system.

Believing he has hacked into a video game software company, he challenges the computer to a game of 'Global Thermonuclear War'.

A 1983 Cold War sci-fi thriller directed by John Badham, starring Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, Ally Sheedy, and Barry Corbin.ĭavid Lightman (Broderick) is a teenaged Playful Hacker from Seattle who nearly sets World War III into motion by playing a game with a computer that doesn't know the difference between games and reality.

Two hour wargames man-to-man variant