WarGames

"Is it a game, or is it real?"

1983 1h 54m EN

👍

7.1

SOLID

🔥

93%

CERTIFIED FRESH

👌

METACRITIC

⭐

7.1

IMDB

★7.1TMDB · 2,270🍅93%Rotten Tomatoes●77Metacritic★7.1IMDB · 120,530

DramaScience FictionThriller

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

High school student David Lightman has a talent for hacking. But while trying to hack into a computer system to play unreleased video games, he unwittingly taps into the Department of Defense's war computer and initiates a confrontation of global proportions. Together with his friend and a wizardly computer genius, David must race against time to outwit his opponent and prevent a nuclear Armageddon.

“Is it a game, or is it real?”

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Cast

Matthew Broderick
David Lightman
Dabney Coleman
McKittrick
John Wood
Stephen Falken
Ally Sheedy
Jennifer
Barry Corbin
General Beringer
Juanin Clay
Pat Healy
Kent Williams
Cabot
Dennis Lipscomb
Watson

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: John Badham
Writers: Lawrence Lasker, Walter F. Parkes
Languages: English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Grossed $125M — a 10.4× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

ERA

Did you know

43 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

CINEMA

Did you know

Part of the "WarGames Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by John Badham, shot by William A. Fraker. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Original score by Arthur B. Rubinstein. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Tom Rolf shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Matthew Broderick and Dabney Coleman and John Wood carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "Is it a game, or is it real?".

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

John Badham directs. William A. Fraker behind the camera. Arthur B. Rubinstein scores. Tom Rolf cuts. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Grossed $125M — a 10.4× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.
243 years old — old enough to be someone's favourite childhood film.
3Part of the "WarGames Collection" — so the characters or world continue elsewhere.
4Directed by John Badham, shot by William A. Fraker. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Original score by Arthur B. Rubinstein. Worth a dedicated listen after — most great films lose half their impact without the score.
6Editor Tom Rolf shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
7Matthew Broderick and Dabney Coleman and John Wood carry the top of the cast.
8Marketing tagline: "Is it a game, or is it real?".
9IMDB entry: tt0086567 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
10Classified under 16 themes, including "artificial intelligence (a.i.)", "computer", "government", "hacker".

The technical file

Cinematography: William A. Fraker
Original score: Arthur B. Rubinstein
Editing: Tom Rolf
Production design: Angelo P. Graham
Costume design: Barry Delaney
Makeup / hair: Lynda Gurasich
VFX supervisor: Michael L. Fink
Sound: Michael J. Kohut
Stunt coordinator: Michael Adams
Runtime: 114 min · 1h 54m
Aspect ratio (typical): 1.37:1 (Academy)
Status: Released
Budget: $12,000,000
Box office: $124,600,000
Return: 1038% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): PG
IMDB: WarGames (1983)
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 77/100
IMDB rating: 7.1/10 · 120,530 votes
MPAA: PG

Awards

Nominated for 3 Oscars. 4 wins & 14 nominations total

Part of

WarGames Collection

WarGames is a 1983 American Cold War science fiction film written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes and directed by John Badham. The film stars Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood, and Ally Sheedy. The film follows David Lightman (Broderick), a young hacker who unwittingly accesses War Operation Plan Response (WOPR), a United States military supercomputer originally programmed to predict possible outcomes of nuclear war. Lightman gets WOPR to run a nuclear war simulation, believing it to be a computer game. The computer, now tied into the nuclear weapons control system and unable to tell the difference between simulation and reality, attempts to start World War III. A sequel, WarGames: The Dead Code, was released direct-to-video in 2008.

Also by

John Badham

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Trailers & featurettes

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Community reviews

What people are saying

John Chard2020-04-26
★ 7/10
Wanna play Global Thermonuclear War? It was with much interest to me to revisit this early 80s hacker piece armed with the knowledge of just how the advent of change in the computer world had evolved. With that in mind the film could quite easily be classed as a bit clunky due to the now almost Neanderthal toys, games and computers used in the movie, but casting aside the nostalgia feelings I had with it, it still hits the spot as both a poignant piece of interest, and a damn good thriller as well. Matthew Broderick is David Lightman, a young computer gamer geek who is something of a whizz kid on the PC. He can change his school grades and hack into various sites he shouldn't be even looking at. During one eventful sitting he hacks into a computer called Joshua and plays a game called Global Thermonuclear War, he harmlessly chooses to be The Soviet Union and proceeds to launch a nuclear attack on his own country, the U.S.A. Trouble is, is that the game is for real and the wheels are in motion for World War III!. It helps to remember the time this film was made (for those old enough of course), for it was the time of the ever worrying cloud of the Cold War, a time when nuclear war was more than a hearsay threat. I really think that in this day and age where computers literally do run our lives, this film stands up really well not only as a warning piece about messing with technology, but also as a gentle poke in the ribs about defence systems and the people we trust to run them. Though the film is a kind of watered down and accessible 2001: A Space Odyssey for the 80s set, it impacts well and only really suffers from a pointless romantic plot strand involving the sprightly Ally Sheedy (could they not just have been pals?) and the aforementioned dated gadgets. The ending to the film is excellent as the tension builds up nicely and we are left chewing our nails watching a game of Tic-Tac-Toe, sounds simple doesn't it? Not so. Good honest and intelligent entertainment. 7.5/10
GenerationofSwine2023-01-13
★ 10/10
Ally Sheedy, whatever happened to her. When I was a little kid, I mean REALLY little she was one of the few stars I could name...and then she disappeared save for a couple memorable appearances in Psych. It's a shame. Anyway, my fiance is a Millennial and I've been trying to introduce her and her friends to some classic films. This one was a fail. They sat through it, but really only to mock the technology. Mocking things that are old for being old is kind of one of their favorite things. So, despite that, the film made ripples in congress and the only other film that I recall doing that was JFK. It rewrote laws. And, it was extremely entertaining in the process, despite the fact that Matthew looked like more of a push-over than a computer geek. Not that it matters, he still played the part of a teen pretty well.
CinemaSerf2025-06-20
★ 7/10
When the young computer whizz-kid “David” (Matthew Broderick) is showing off to his girlfriend “Jennifer” (Ally Sheedy) about how he can improve her grades and book them on a first class trip to Paris, he inadvertently dials a telephone number that wants to play a game. A game of thermonuclear war! Next day, the news is full of stories about the mobilisation of American defence capabilities and his phone rings again. It’s the computer, it wants to play and he’s just a little terrified. Not so afraid as he is about to get, though, when the FBI turn up and next thing he is in a top secret facility trying to explain to boffin “McKittrick” just how he accidentally tapped into a computer system that now seems to be trying to start WWIII - and nobody knows how to stop it. Can he come up with a solution before the increasingly exasperated “Gen. Beringer” (Barry Corbin) goes to DEFCON 1 and obliterates the globe? It’s a good, solid, sci-fi entertainment this film with Broderick, Sheedy and Corbin on good form, but it also serves as quite a potent reminder that, just as with “The Forbin Project” (1970), the whole idea of automating our defences and letting computers do our thinking for us is fraught with danger. Logic is the ultimate in two-dimensional thinking for a machine. For anything more nuanced, balanced or sophisticated then believe it or not, you need a hormonal teenage boy and some very basic rational thinking.