Hello everybody and welcome to hold up the show where we dive deep inside your childhood nostalgia pull the movies from your past out to see If they hold up, I'm hold up with Kyle, Andrew, and we have a special guest with us. He is known as DJ Gnosis and has been in the video store rental community since the mid nineties.

We got John Robinson with us. How are you, John? Hey, doing good. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming in. Yeah. Yeah, bring in some expertise onto the show, which we don't have a lot of these days. I mean, I don't know about that. You're going to show us up again. I guarantee it.  You're the best expertise we've had on.

I mean, even that includes Aaron, right? Oh, I don't know about that.  Aaron's an encyclopedia. Oh, he trashed Aaron, like  jungle to jungle. Oh, it was great. Oh, I loved it. It  was fun. Watch. Yeah. Yeah. It was. Interesting to say the least and yeah, and surprisingly,  looked good. I understand. I haven't gone back and watched the movie You know the podcast but I think we did say it I mean it did the cinematography at least it's a really pretty movie.

It's very pretty. Yeah, it's like funny it's fun when we like watch  movies and We look at movies from the 90s, we know where it is trash, and it's not good cinema, but we'd rather watch that over some of the movies today that are just like in front of a green screen the whole time. Yeah. With some of the worst acting ever. 

I'd take a D script with a C performance over anything Netflix has in general. , so we, yeah, , this is why this is a fun show. Anything? I would say. Anything Kyle? I would say anything.  If I'm looking at the top 10 on Netflix right now, I think maybe once or twice in the last five years I've watched one of those recommendations and was like, oh, yeah, that was actually pretty good.

I don't even know what the top 10 is. I couldn't tell you. Don't fucking care. I did watch Logan Lucky the other day and that was actually really good. Yeah, but that's older now, isn't it? It is like 2018.  It's ancient now. Filmed right here in Atlanta. Wow. As most things are these days. Well, speaking of ancient, we looked at thermonuclear war, um, with, uh, war games.

Ancient. Yeah. That's a hot topic now.  Welcome back. Uh, everything comes back. So, John, this was your movie, , this is your pick, so. You know, yeah, we get started you have something you want to ask Kyle  well, I was wondering how  Kyle was doing but I was wondering if  I was wondering if you could express it  in the mode of general of the general from this movie that Barry Corbin plays Yeah, maybe with like a couple curse words and some Redman chew  Yes, I'm Redman chewing tobacco.

Yeah, you know, I'm feeling like two frog legs fucking each other on a Sunday night I'll tell you what. It's not not doing too great  It's  pretty rough You know, and then they eat it afterwards too they eat the sex, you know,  that's it's  He's okay. Happy Sunday everyone. Thank you. Yeah. It's the Lord's Day.

It's the Lord's Day. That's why we've come to discuss Matthew Broderick,  the Lord and Savior himself. So this, this movie  predates us. We don't want to date you, but like, I'm totally dated here, by the way, for all listeners, I'm far older than  my hosts here. And, uh, so my childhood nostalgia movie pick was, , before their time, but , I thought it would be good because it made it did make a really big impact on me.

, I didn't get to see many movies growing up because I was raised fundamentalist Christian.  And so this is like 83, so I was like 14 or 15. Yeah. And, , when War Games came out and . It just crystallized all of the nuclear, , holocaust fears that were in the air anyways.

Yeah. But I figured it was, , it would be a fun one for this too. , cause most of the ones that I loved as a child, , are not even worth, , Making fun of on a podcast.  No, I'm just kidding. They totally are,  but I didn't want to come with something that just to tear it apart. And then, , when this, when war games occurred to me, I was like, Oh yeah, that that's one that I should revisit because I bet it still holds up  and we'll find out.

We'll find out. Yeah, we shall. , did you get to see it in theaters? Yeah, I saw it at a perimeter mall theater. I grew up in Dunwoody. So, uh, and. Yeah. It must've been PG. It was. Yeah. It was PG. Confirmed. Yep. PG. Yeah. 80s PG. Early 80s PG. So plenty of swearing. Lots of swearing. A lot of goddamn shits. Possibly some nudity.

Tons.  Yeah. You never know what you're going to get out of PG. No. 80s PG. Yeah. So I was allowed to go, I think, by 14 to see a PG movie. Did you go to the arcade before you went to the movie? Man, Perimeter Mall's movie theater was a rip off, , but they did have Ms. Pac Man, like the first ones in Dunwoody with Ms.

Pac Man. And , I think they had like a Japanese Pac Man. So this is 83. So the video, uh, Galaga is at the beginning of this movie. So  that was the cutting edge, you know, of arcade games at that time. But they did not have Galaga there, did they? You know, I wasn't very good at Galaga, so. They probably did. It was ubiquitous, but it was just a few, a few games, no pinball.

Yeah. Yeah. What's it worth then? A lame, yeah, pretty lame four screen theater in the suburbs. I mean, you know, we talk about like being dated, but , I know that I can resonate with that because like when I was growing up, like when I was five or six, I think the first plays when the first PlayStation come out.

It was like 96, 96 I think. I wasn't even allowed to have one of those until I was like 12. So , I, we went, we would go out to places like Dave and Buster's or like a Wild Mike's or something. Chuck E. Cheese. It's all arcade stuff like that. Like it had a bunch of that kind of stuff. So , we definitely grew up on the tail end of it, or at least I did, but like I still in it.

Yeah, you know, like you have, you have that one game that you're like, hell yeah, like, that's a, like, time crisis is always a fun time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's bad, but it's good, you know?  The movie theater that we had growing up on the west side of Cincinnati was had multiple things like that in it that you could that you would do before or After or if you're going to see two movies at once, you know, you would do something in between So it was you don't see those little arcades in theaters.

Not in theaters. No. Yeah They're kind of making a little bit of a comeback because I know there's a couple popping up on a round one It's been a big chain that's seems to always be kind of busy and it's, you know, kind of bringing back a little bit of mall life, but Yeah  If just as a kid if if we wanted that experience we had to go to Lenox mall and there was a Video arcade there was a movie theater and the bottom of the food court If you can imagine that, it was tiny and it was terrible because it was full of rich, , high school kids in Buckhead who were Some things never change, eh?

They're my favorite people. Yeah, exactly. Talking through the movie. , but there was a video, there was a full fledged arcade called Time Out. Oh. Close by. Time Out. So you could hit the food court, you could, yeah, see a movie with your friends and then walk around the mall. What was like the food court food to get back then?

Was there like an essential? Oh, God, they really They haven't changed so much. There was, I mean, Orange Julius. Oh yeah, yeah. Hovahn Roll, is that how you say it? Joven Roll, yeah, . It's whatever you want to say in Georgia. Yeah, it  depends on the person. Yeah, , but mostly it was like, , Someone you had a crush on, who went to like a cooler high school.

Lenox Mall was like the cosmopolitan version of it.  I was like, oh they go to Northside, they go to Paideia. Oh wow, at Westminster out there.  , Was there a game that you lost a lot of quarters in? Like what was your number one arcade cabinet that you went to? Oh, Tempest. Oh yeah. . I guess around this time.

, but if Galaga's around  I guess they were kind of  , contemporaneous. , , Tempest is what I dreamed about Tempest as a kid, and that's when I knew I had to, , stop going to the ark.  . You lost probably a small fortune in there, . Well, yeah, it was giving me like OCD Yeah, like where I was. . , looking out the car window, driving to school and like trying to, , tempest it.

Was it a quarter per play back then? Or was it five cents or like, what was the, it was a quarter. Yeah. That's a, that's a lot of money.  Yeah. I mean that you could have put all that into Bitcoin. Think about where you could be. Oh my God. If only I had been investing in crypto instead of playing Tempest. You couldn't have known.

Don't beat yourself up.  Oh man. , so this movie stuck with you, I mean, obviously we're watching it today and it's, you know, 83 to 2025   that's some staying power if you remember it. So what kind of made you gravitate towards picking this one over anything else?

Cause you, you mentioned on the phone when we talked, , we may have do MIA.  , oh, yes, which would have been a lot of fun too. Yes. Sorry to disappoint you. Well, so the, my, I guess my, , instinct is to think about, , how little culture I had as a kid  and what I thought were great movies,  , it's like the boss baby meme where  the guy who's only ever seen boss baby, , sees the second movie and he's like,  It's giving real Boss Baby vibes. 

I don't know if you guys have ever seen that. I love it so much.  So I thought of like when I was a little kid Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was on TV a lot. I remember Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It's classic. And it terrified me. , and then, ,  Missing in Action, the Chuck Norris movies I was like an older teen  and then I was thinking The reason I brought that one up was because, for some reason, I saw all three of those in the theater, I think.

Dang. At the Dollar Theater in high school. Oh, yeah. And, , I don't know why, like, I'm not a Chuck Norris guy. Fuckin Chuck Norris. , but I realized later that it was like What I was interested in was the country of Vietnam, not the war in Vietnam, and I didn't know how to access cultural, you know, information about like other cultures.

And I think , that's like what I was really looking for. And then I watched part of it again, , before deciding on War Games. , and the war games I thought would  be a more valuable use of our time for Just ripping on a canon movie  For real, which is not it's it's fun to do but I appreciate your choice next time next time.

Yeah next Yeah, there was always a next time.  And  It's still culturally relevant, you know,  nuclear war is always going to be a thing since , the cold war. So it is, I, that's why I found it such a fascinating choice. I don't have any  nostalgia to this movie. I knew of it. , my brother was older, so a lot of my eighties nostalgia comes from him.

Sure. Which Brian. ,  this was one that kind of slipped through the cracks though, but I knew of it and I knew how culturally relevant It was at the time and now we flash forward here.

We are and it's still culturally relevant Especially now more than ever with AI taking over. Artificial intelligence. Yeah, so now it's becoming more and more You know, scary, but I will turn it into a horror movie real fast if we're, if we're going to, I mean, , it is relevant because they are a lot of people in the, my people, I mean, defense contractors and a lot of. 

Entities that to supply our weapons of war are very much  Contemplating AI and its actual ability to make decisions on life or death and Spoiler alert, it's pretty far away Like they're not that's not gonna be happening anytime soon Just because like they're first of all to take humans out of that chain is an AI just going to go Well, that's an acceptable law.

I mean they talked about acceptable losses, right movie, which is Kind of the crux of mutually assert destruction, which is like, you know, is that an acceptable loss? Where's the cap on acceptable losses  would a an AI enabled drone? Just go well,  if I down this,  airplane it's gonna kill 13 people, but they kill They could kill 30 people here.

So we're just gonna we're gonna down it in this point and it's gonna it's gonna implode and destroy all these people like  It's just  it's not really a feasible thing Although it is it is they say within the next like 20 to 30 years Right pretty rapidly going to be taking over certain aspects of decision making  but I don't know if it's gonna be getting to the point of holding our Nuclear arsenals in the palm of their hands and making those decisions because that would be a pretty Gary thing, especially if you can, if there's a ways to hack or get into that or manipulate it.

So it is, I found watching this movie, especially if Sony's taken over it, like Sony every fucking five minutes. Bye bye.   I don't think a lot of people know  that the military is a separate entity from like the government and  there's so many like gates and gatekeeping that you have to go through just to levels of command Yeah, and  

so it's it would this movie was interesting at how dumb Everybody was yeah But, and there's a technocrat, ,  make it even more timely, you know, this technocrat, which is Dabney Coleman, which is Dabney Coleman, him as like our lawn, like substitute or whatever. But I mean, yeah, this, this is also very relevant as well.

Yes. It's here we go. Quite timely. I'd say 40 years ahead of its time, but still  very relevant. , and before we even go any further, Andrew, Kyle, you guys don't have any like nostalgia to this. I, I kind of thought you didn't, but I want to make sure. I saw it on TV once, but I don't remember. I had never seen it.

, I knew of it. , I actually texted , my buddy that we were going to be watching this movie. He's like, Oh, I love war games, DEFCON, baby. I was like, Oh, is that where that came from? He's like, well, no, it's a real military, you know, real thing. I was like, I knew that. It popularized it. It popularized it.

For sure. I had no idea it came from this movie. And, you know, Matthew Broderick is nostalgic for all of us. Second time on the show. Yeah.  He gets a redemption too. Oh. The first time he  failed. Oh. Godzilla. Yeah. In 98's. Well, listen, I didn't come here to clear his name. Godzilla. I don't know if there's any coming back.

No, we can't clear his name. This came first, so he destroyed his name.  And he has a respectable career. I mean, he was what, like 20 when this was filmed? And he had just won a Tony by like the age of like 19.  You know, Matthew Broderick is, you know, nostalgic and great for a reason. There were opinions. Yeah, because this was before Ferris Bueller, right?

It was. This is 83. This is the second movie, I think. Yeah. Yeah. He did another one that was written by Neil Simon, I think, before this, but it wasn't that big. This was his first big hit, but it was his second movie. At the age of 21, was it a Brighton Beach memoirs? No, that was  the play that he was in. I forgot the name of the movie I can find it if you really want, but it was a neil simon movie script And that was the one that he did before war games.

Yeah, so I don't yeah. Yeah, it's funny because it's just like a proto john hughes. It's like just before  him and ali sheedy. Yeah  But they're nothing like those, you know, those characters in his movies. Nope. Oh, man. But, , yeah. And then also, I'm sure that somebody was going to bring it up, but I love that, , in Ferris Bueller, he also hacks into the school's computer.

Yes. He doesn't change his grades in that. He changes Like his absentee days, maybe or something. Because he's a, he's an ace student. He just doesn't show up to class. That's right. Yeah. So  there was a lot of movies in the eighties that like really focused on hacking because like computer technology had come  to the forefront of, , modern society.

And  you can speak for this, like eight, A lot of hackers, I feel like , the nineties is probably like getting towards the mul Millennium is , like the golden age of hacker movies. But from what I'm reading about this, it's like  pretty novel.  I mean there had been up to, you know, till then, like there were just, .

It's like science fiction movies, you know, that didn't have any basis in reality. Whereas this felt real with, you know, of course Apocalyptic consequences and not like the Martian computer. We have to you know, get through kind of thing And apparently they did so much research writing this movie yeah, absolutely and Yeah, there is like  an attention to detail.

That's Pretty amazing, especially if you're, , 14 watching it. And, , these are the kind of terms being thrown around in the news. , but I'm thinking just from what I've been reading, that it might be kind of like really at the vanguard of hacker movies, like this,  set a new level, , and maybe establish some of the tropes of future hacker movies.

And there's some good ones in this. Yeah. Quite a few. Yeah. And it really is like  a golden era movie because. It is at a time when computer technology kind of had reached to the point to where it was capable of doing  Different things and like controlling. Yeah, I wouldn't say missiles Like controlling like it's it's the point where a computer wasn't the size of a fucking refrigerator And you could have one in your home kind of you know Like it but his right his setup was pretty comprehensive and a little unrealistic.

I'm like, I don't know I don't know how much money you spent on that, but it was, it would have been quite a bit. Back in the, back in 83, that was 30, maybe 4. 05, 18 cents. Actually, I think he put in a bunch of like cereal box tokens and got the whole setup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Span of six months.  I actually think that his, ,  that his PC is, his tower is like 90, 000.

I would have read that. I believe it. I totally believe it. Oh my God. That whole setup was possible I think and realistic because of like the onset of the personal computer and how small Technology was starting to get and like that's really kind of what set the stage for  Yeah, like all the hacker movies that people are like, oh, that's not real.

That's not well this what this was actually believable Yeah way more believable than anything and say hackers  There's no yeah elaborate Like psychedelic, you know, screensaver type of stuff. Darn.  Andrew, how did this movie do? , this is our favorite point in the show. , had a nice hefty budget of 12 million.

Oh! Really not, , Not what I was expecting. Not that crazy. , I thought it'd be a little bit more, a little more elaborate, but 12 million, , that's probably a little bit more for 83, but now it's like, eh. That's, that's nothing. That's nothing, yeah. Uh. What, my question is.  Do you have the domestic?

I have all. All of it? I have all of it. John, do you want to take a guess on what it did? On the domestic opening? Oh, man, it was With a 12 million dollar budget?   You, you would have been around at the time, you know how it was. Yeah, I was checking box office numbers.  Age of 14, naturally.

Yeah, 14. That's, that's what we're, here's what , I'm terrible at this, I'm, I don't know anything about box office, but my, I will guess that it made  Twenty five.  So, domestic opening. Just the domestic opening was only like six point two million. Oh, okay, but it's not bad for the made back half But domestically gross altogether was right around like  80 million.

Oh, yeah. Yeah They did so domestic opening like the first week like six point two, but altogether 80 then international it was about 49 So total international together was like 125 million. So that's not so their total was like What they spent on the movie was like 10 percent of what they actually made.

Maybe not even. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, that that's so wildly successful Matthew Broderick's second film. This is what he walks into like, holy shit  you know and keep in mind that this is the dawn of the  Video yeah, you know era. Yeah, and so this like I'm sure you know, it wasn't , ubiquitous in 83, but people were, had VCRs, , not every home, but yeah, that would be a big part of this and word of mouth.

And as I played it like dollar theaters and yeah, it had some staying power. Yeah. Was this a big time rental? So you've worked in video stores for a very long time. Did you?  No, no, it's kind of, yeah, it's like you're saying it's, it feels like a movie that should be this like, oh yeah, canonical, like. The 80s nuclear war movie, but , yeah, it does seem to have slipped through the cracks, you know.

, that's the purpose of this episode is to get people.  Stop what you're doing right now. Go to Videodrome and rent war games. Actually, no, wait till the end of the episode here.  So let's start the blow by blow. Let's let's get into it. Everybody ready for this? Oh yeah, baby. All right, let's do it.

Do the honors. Where does this movie start off? So the movie starts off with a, , like a Ford Bronco pulling up to a snow covered, rural house in the mountains, and immediately a helicopter lands, maybe, or they pull up in the They pull up in that Bronco, and I think they walk in through , the front door or whatever, and they think it's like a house, but it's not.

Yeah, it's a, yeah, it's a cover, , whatever government nations, the U S air force. Yeah.  So that part is actually very real. That, that is really, yes. Those, those silos like that. They have a lot of them, but granted now they're, it's almost pop public knowledge, kind of where almost all of them are.

, but I remember if you heard about the Chinese balloon incident that happened recently, that a lot of that was, they were going over those sites. , and you would not be able to really tell, , when you're driving on the road, it kind of just looks like government land with barbed wire, but like there are, they're kind of hidden underneath things.

, I know some people that have worked in the, in the upper echelons of government like that and they've, .  Kind of describe like you don't really they're there You're not really gonna know like all the time, but they're out in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Montana Like big Colorado Colorado big open swaths of land like that is that's actually very real.

Oh sure. Yeah, so check box for realism already, they're starting, so. Yeah, and for like the, the, , cloak and dagger, you know, they go into this like grandma looking house and, uh, And it looks like, it looks like they're standing in front of , a mirror. Yeah. But it's not, it's a window to the inside of the fort and they, you know, flash their IDs and they're like, oh, cleared, you're in.

Yeah, and then they can hear him through the window. Yes. He goes, come on through. And then he presses, then he presses the security door open thing and I was like, oh, they can. Also, I have to say that right at the beginning. The very first edit in the movie is bad.  That's the only one I noticed, but I'm coming through opening the door and then cutting to the interior of them coming through.

There's this flag and it's like, Oh my God, why does it need to start this way? What have I done? But I love, so yeah, there are these two, , we find out are there , the two guys who have the, you know, um, the nuclear codes or they have the, , the guys who both turn the keys, push the button, so to speak.

, and , they're talking about weed, you know, when  they first roll in.  There's a lot of drug references, excuse me, drug references. Perfect for your, , Christian upbringing to go see this movie. Yeah, yeah. But it made me curious why they're painted in this sort of like Not wholesome, but this sort of, and not sleazy, just like recognizable, manly American.

They're talking about like weed and chicks. And did you guys notice the sign next to the big, , the bay that they go into their, , the nuclear.  There's a sign behind that says, no urinating in this area. I did not see that at all. Cool. So I'm just like, okay, so these are like dudes, these are like salt of the earth dudes.

They piss where they want to piss. It's a problem. All over the launch codes. Like, uh. Yeah. That's good stuff.  Right. , too many PBRs in the missile silos that are protecting our country, so. That's right. That's another check for realism, probably. I mean, probably. So yeah. So then, so then we figure out that these are the guys, , that, that are  in charge of, , whether or not the nuclear, , missiles get launched and suddenly they're put to the tests and it's an early.

What would you call that? Uh, kind of drill. Yeah, like a little simulation. Yeah. Yeah, but it's like a Pre chorus or something like in the movie test for them in a sense, right? Yeah, it was but they were they're unaware Yeah, they get  the call basically to get out the keys Put in the codes and they're about to turn to launch the missiles  And one of them fails, right?

He couldn't do it. He wouldn't, yeah, wouldn't do it. Because they weren't getting confirmation that it was like anything was actually, it was just like you've been alerted.  You need to do this now to get the steps ready. However, there was no confirmation that the enemy was launching it, that they were going to do it.

They just had to do it, which, you know, I don't know the validity of that. I don't know how, I mean, obviously nobody would really be privy to that. ,  For national security reasons, but, um, And it gets intense. It does get really intense. It gets like very intense. Because the guy pulls a gun on him and says, Hey, you.

Okay.  Why the fuck would you pull a, if you need to launch them at the same time, why would you threaten the other person's life? Unless you have 15 foot arms. I thought the same thing. I don't know. I mean, logic there didn't make sense. He was really sweaty.  Now, if they had another person in the room and he was like, do it or I'll do it.

And I'd be like, well, okay, that makes more sense. That sounds like what the Russians would do. But like, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I don't know about that. The guy that was having the gun pointed at him was like freaking out. He was like, 20 million people? I, I, I, I can't be responsible. Like he was having like a full on like panic attack.

Also, who was pointing the gun? It was the, the guy who actually No, no, I know, but who was that? It's one of our favorites. Was that actually him? That was actually him.  Oh my god. Isn't that interesting? It didn't even look like him at first. No, but now I, now it's all coming back to me. Crazy, very young, handsome Michael Madsen.

How did I miss that? How did I miss that? Yeah, very cool. Yeah, pointing a gun. Yeah, in a situation. A revolver nonetheless. Which I was like. In a very sweaty situation. Yeah. Like, interesting. Yeah, but so that whole scene, , really is like a microcosm of later, you know.  , and it's, yeah, it's really intense.

And then, and then it goes from intense, sweaty gun pointing, no nuclear launching people into Galaga. Yeah, exactly. It just slams into the titles. Great. Suddenly, , it goes from that intense moment and just cuts to, you know, whatever the theme song is. Which was really catchy. Yeah. 

 I love the setup to all 80s movies and now you just get that  Stupid transformer farting. Yeah, and all the beginning of the movie Yeah  Cool soundscape, uh, right so then yeah my ears It slams right into the opening credits, , which are in this great, , digital font.

 On the screen and then it's all , the, , exteriors of NORAD. Yeah. The North, what does NORAD stand for? I gotta look that up. I have it up here. But that digital font you were talking about was, was something else. It was very, it was almost word art esque. Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. Um. I think it's supposed to look like computer punch card.

Yeah. . So North American aerospace defense is the NORAD and then got to love those military acronyms that don't make any  sense, but right. So we have this whole, we have this whole setup, , during the credit sequence, it's like establishing, you know, this is the secret military outpost and there's all these exterior shots and people looking busy and some of it looks.

impressive and some of it is like kind of flimsy like  where you're like there's like two guards guarding it outside yeah and it's like on the inside it's like the Pentagon but it's like it looks like you could somebody with a pizza could walk right through and exactly and at some point like we'll get to it later but there's a tour  military base well let me okay hate to burst your bubble but they do they do off not offer tours but they like if you are with Something that will purport a positive image of the US military.

There have been, I, you can look it up. Vox did one I think a couple years ago where they had it at a reporter go into certain aspects. Probably not the whole command control area, right. Where there's a bunch of sensitive information but like going actually in there it showed you like the vaults and shit and like it's supposed to be able to withstand.

, but , , I was like, that's an odd school like tour group to have in there. It was a little unrealistic. , usually it's like one or two people.

It's not like, make sure you stay on the path, keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Sit in our chairs. We're going to remove this commander. It was a little weird. There's a group of like 75 people too. Yeah, it was a lot of people. Too many. It was way too many. The city of Birmingham.

Yeah, yeah. Essentially. Um. Oh God. Yeah, but that's us jumping ahead. So no, that's all right. Just skip that part. We just got we just finished gala I think he doesn't he like run to school or something like that because he's yeah We were introduced to matthew broderick's character lightfoot's his name lightfoot.

Is it like is it like gordon lightfoot gordon? It's something light. , david light david light, you know something like that. Yeah, , but he's  late to class, he gets in, and We establish really early on that this dude's a hacker, he's He doesn't give a shit about anything. Yeah, he's He's nice to that kid, he gives him the rest of his game.

Yeah. I felt like that was like a Good dude. Yeah.  A little cue that we're supposed to be sympathetic with him. Yes. He's got a heart. We should have a heart for him. Absolutely. He's very unlikable.  Yeah. He's not. Yeah. There's not a whole lot to him other than he's obsessive over technology. That's true. Yeah.

And he, he doesn't perform well in the classroom. Again, doesn't give a shit about anything outside of his own little computer setup, essentially. You know? Yeah. Which, which comes into play when he's late for class. And his, his science. His teacher hands him his test and he clearly has an F, puts it on blast in front of the entire class, like what an asshole.

That wouldn't happen in today's, you know, school environment. No, would that happen in the 80s? Or when you were going to school? No, I think that's pretty over the top. That's really over the top. I appreciated it though. I thought it was funny. You know? Yeah. And then, yeah, he pulls that out as like, and then on Ali Sheedy, he's like, well you got an F too. 

She can't be bothered.  She laughs. So much in this movie you can oh my god, like she will not stop smiling the entire time I was like what  is wrong with you like even in like some of the craziest situations She can't take it seriously. It's like she's high the whole time.

She needed to do a little bit more breakfast Yeah, then then you know, she seemed like she was Of the popular crew though. Did you get that vibe? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, I didn't, so , in this scene too, it's like he makes a joke. I forgot. Pretty, pretty good joke. Yeah. Like calling the teacher's. 

Do you remember the out It was, it was, wasn't it like  something like, like predating, like what, what becomes the, oh, who was the first scientist to something about sex theorize? , asexual reproduction. And he goes. Your wife?  Impeccable comic timing. Yeah, great. That's like damn. Yeah, that's rough.

It's cold. It's really mean Yeah, and he just and that teacher just like he's been eviscerated. You might as well chopped his balls off in front of the class He has no more authority over that class.  I mean he does kick him out, sends him to the principal's office or whatever.

That's right, where he finds , , the code to, that he knows where they write down the code to get into the school's computer system. We didn't know what that was at the time, but it all made sense, you know, a couple minutes later. On a pencil. Like they weren't really trying very hard.  I found that to be pretty realistic.

Absolutely. Yeah, they change it every two weeks and that the other codes they just crayon  Chalk cross it out with the number two pencil, baby  easily erasable That's great. They'll never guess so he goes into the principal's office and And then he starts smitten with the the girl right? She laughed at his joke in class.

Yeah. She's kind of the cool crowd, and he's kind of like,  They're kind of mixed, like, right? Like, he's supposed to be kind of this nerdish kind of guy, but he's  cool, too. He's kind of got this like, Almost nihilistic. Like,  punk rock kind of vibe. Yeah. And it's, I think all of this, yeah, it just points to how sort of underwritten their characters are.

Yeah. Although, I will say, It, I think it, I think it passed the Bechdel test. I think. Really? I think so, because she's having a conversation with her friend that we can't tell, I will say it's ambiguous, we can't tell if they're talking about a boy or not. Oh. So at the beginning, remember when she, when they're in class and they're talking?

Oh, right, yeah. So they're whispering to each other? I think either I don't and she's not looking at other boys. So I'm like they could just be talking about like the only female character We get though the whole way through that's actually of note. No, there's there is someone there was another like the defense, you know defense room 

There's also David's mom Mm hmm, but like yeah, it has some line lines a lot or two. Yeah, come on. This is a this is a feminist. Yeah, yeah  I don't know if it passes the back door. I don't know  Out of the three maybe I'm gonna say that for me that's good enough because there's too many things that don't even come close So what's fair?

Yeah, we don't know about the conversation that they have but they were probably having a conversation under breath about a boy Well, then that you're just what you're doing right now is being sexist. , yeah, I think they're just It they didn't think that much about their social standing each of the characters. It was just like why would you? And then yeah, uh, it's it's it's pretty weak.

Yeah, so yeah, so yes,  they meet  and then what happens next there? She she like follows him home like a puppy. She has a motorbike That's right. She gives him a ride home. Yeah No, no, no , she initiates the moment by  letting him get on her motorized bike That's right. Which is Honestly, like, uh, it's like a two stroke engine from a fucking lawnmower, but like, it still counts. Gets you around town, baby. That's all that matters. Oh, he's running, he's running on the back of her. He's got her arms around her waist.

Yes. Roles are reversed here. Yes. So I'm saying, pass, pass the Bechdel test.  You know what? Collin? You got, I think you got a point there. , I totally forgot about the five mile per hour moment.  Yeah. You forgot about that. With no helmets and no safety. Yeah. That's how we like it. She's definitely after him.

Like Oh, a hundred percent. Absolutely. She's intrigued. Yeah. That she's, and he's a little intimidated too, you could tell. Oh yeah. Like I would be like, , she's putting on the moves and he is backpedaling hard. Absolutely. They get home to his place. She's like, your parents not around. He's like, no, they work.

Let's go upstairs. Yeah. Walk right to the room and play with some computers. And he hops on the computer. And isn't that when he like. Yeah, exactly. He has pencil written from when he was, , waiting outside the principal's office. How could you forget that password? Yeah. It's hard. It's really difficult. 

18 digit code.  Right. Whereas now we have Wi Fi passwords that are like, you know, Fresh Fox 42, XQ, bleh, you know. Is that yours? No. That's what I made up.  You can hack Andrew's bank account right now. You could. , and then, so, John, what does he do with the computer? Oh, so then he, um, he offers to. , change, , Ali Shidi's grades, , because he's changing his own.

And then he decides to war dial, which actually that's pretty interesting. Speaking of this being, we're talking about this being like an influential hacker movies , that term still exists, like war dialing war. I remember hearing about, , war driving. In the 90s people driving around scanning Wi Fi codes and trying to yeah  So yeah,  what prompts him to oh because he's looking for a  He's reading of a game magazine and in the game magazine.

There's an article that a  Total Co or whatever the toy company is. Proto something. Yeah. That they're releasing new, they have new games coming up and he's like, Oh, they're in Sunnydale. Let me just, , Sunnyvale, California, just dial everything, every single phone number in that area. And then he comes across what he thinks it is because it's, , the menu is a series of games.

And he chooses the most intense one. , and this point his character is like,  one track mind, he's like games. Games. Games. Woman in my room. Now, a woman in my room can go because I'm thinking about the games. Games. All right. I want to talk about his computer setup first.

I feel like that's something that we shouldn't, you know, just brush over. It's a little, , elaborate, , maybe a little fictional. I don't know. John, do you want to do us the honors and kind of describe this behemoth he has set up in his room? Oh, yeah. From the floppy disks, to the printers, to the, you know, modem, to whatever the fuck he has there.

But It's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. He's got like the military modem like that, the great kind of where you, , pick up , the old telephone Yeah. Receiver and place it on a new cradle. , which like  nobody would've had, no, he had two, five and a half inch floppy drives. I thought that was great.

I love that. Dual floppy. Yeah. I miss floppy disks, but I bet you do. And, and like a $90,000.  This day and age, if we keep saying the word floppy, we're going to get banned from YouTube.  How does a 16 year old come in contact with this equipment? , a 16 year old that fails at school and doesn't seem to give a shit outside of anything and it's innocent, isn't in his room.

Like what do you, I guess Seattle rich kids, somewhat plausible  that could be obvious.  You know, 90, 000. Do you think he stole any of this equipment? I feel like he could have, honestly. Probably. He seemed like he had no moral code. He's nihilistic. Yeah, so he could have, he could have done that. And this is also like Seattle at the, probably right before the tech boom with Microsoft and, yeah, and Apple and all that.

So like, yeah, who knows? Yeah, it's interesting. . Or he had some help from Bill Gates. Yeah. You never know. Never know. Probably both. Yeah.  Both of them.    But right. And , because he,  oh, she's like, don't all those long distance phone calls cost a lot of money?

And he was like, not if you know what you're doing. Hey,  he does seem morally. He smashes a jukebox. 

Yeah. So he has a very elaborate, , computer setup. ,  It's very unrealistic, but I guess just like a requirement for a, for a hacker movie. And so I guess that leads us to saying that he, he ends up hacking one of these, one of these government, I guess this NORAD base by accident because , the computer that's in NORAD, the Whopper. 

That's right. WPR whopper. I just want some Burger King. , which I guess we're skipping over I guess we did kind of gloss over that but it is like it's happening at the same time, right? Yeah, but like it is concurrent like there we're kind of going between both of these worlds right now And what we're finding out is that  because of our situation in the beginning.

They can't really trust. I said they said 22 percent of the  humans that were  tested to see if they would follow the orders 22 percent of them did not which they were like, it's unacceptable We can't do that. So we're gonna put it in the hands of a machine that hasn't been tested before so and that's where the Whopper comes in and this is where The defense contractor that he is hacked into, unknowingly thinking that it's a game, they're teaching it all these games of strategy so that it can learn how to be more strategic than the enemy, and so that they can get war game these situations, but he doesn't know that, and he goes to the hardest one, which was what, what was it, John?

Thermonuclear. Global thermonuclear war. Cool.  Sounds good. Yes, thank you for that. That was an important thing. Kyle. Got it. We got it. You got to get that in there. And yeah, check checkers wasn't whether you wanted to play in that, although tic tac toe comes into play later. Yeah. That's right. Later. I thought was actually a pretty, pretty good idea.

Yeah. That's very clever. Yeah. ,   so , we're jumping back and forth. So they established the fact that they can't trust humans on turning the keys and launching the missiles in a critical situation.

So this.  Guy I don't even know they don't even say what he was. He's like the tech guy of NORAD , and at first, , the chief or the general is like, No, that's stupid. I will never trust a machine to make these decisions.  And somehow, I think They just like have like a bunch of like arguments, right? Or like, Yeah. They're like showing him the stats. And I think that they talked to the president and the president's like, I like that idea.

I like the idea of not having, you know, humans fuck this up for us. Who would have been the president Oof. Explicitly. I mean, it's like a fictional world, but at one point,  this is the scariest part of the movie to me. It was, that really sent chills down my spine was, , they cut to, , the DEF CON, , sign going like, you know.

To a more dangerous situation. And there's a portrait of Ronald Reagan next to it.  And I was like, ah, okay. Cause they never say they never, if he could have launched those, he would have. , so basically they're now this system is in charge of all the nuclear silos at this point and you even see  The people in the silos getting relieved of their duties, especially the guys we saw earlier And they're like packing up their shit and leaving and they're like removing like the key and like Putting on like a computer system in place.

They took out their  chairs. Yes. Like yeah, you don't even get to sit anymore, idiots. That'll show them. They'll never be able to use the space again if they can't sit.   Yeah, that's right. Why is there bullet holes on the wall?  Right. So, yeah, so that sets up  one of the main threads, which is the military and the technocrat at battle, , the general and, , Dabney Coleman, I guess he's the, yeah, , the one in charge of the, , he's the contractor with the computer and sets up the Burger King Whopper in controlling our, that's like, that's right.

And then we see yeah, , the big artificial intelligence computer, which looks, like a art deco steam engine. Yeah, it does.  Yeah, it looks like an old, like, like an old lighting panel in a theater. Like it's like, it just looks like something archaic and dumb and antiquated. In the 80s that thing was just used to make copies.

State of the art. It was like a giant printer. Yeah. And, uh, boy, it gets a lot of beauty shots, too. Oh, yeah, it does. A lot of pretty colors, and They almost make it look sentient, which is Yeah. I do appreciate that kind of style of directing. They gave it a face. They gave it, like, eyes and, like, a mouth. Yeah.

So they created a character out of it. , so he acts in and he's like, I'm going to play some games now. And he plays thermonuclear war in the. He basically, he's hacked into Whopper now.

So stupid to say Whopper. I f ing hate it. I read that. I know. W O P R. I read that it was a play on, , an earlier system, a real system that was like B R G R. It was like burger.  Something else.  A little wink to the, , national security  contracting community. Fun in context, but not fun to say.  Whopper does stand for It's W O P R, not W H O P P E R, but War Operation Plan Response.

So great acronym. Love it. Yeah. , But , he can't get into it at first, right? He doesn't have the password. Right. Doesn't he have to, he goes and talks to like some hacker friends or whatever. So  at this point, he kind of knows he's not hacking into the Protovision.

Right. Like he knows he's into something different, but he's like allured to this and he's like, I want to play the games it's playing. And it's like, you're an idiot. Like, , you're like really smart, but also like this, like, kind of like addiction to playing a video game is. Like, where you're crossing these boundaries.

Right. So, you get this, like, compilation of him, like, going around trying to figure out how to hack into this, like, obviously military, , system. And the hackers he meets up with What characters?  The one with the glasses was the kid from the Polar Express. Yeah. Like, the kid who wouldn't shut up. That was, it wasn't the same voice, but it sounded identical to him.

It sounded like he was talking like this the whole time! Yeah!  I'm like, I was so obnoxious. He was one sentence in and I was done already. Yeah, and he was and they got there the other guy who they were like the perfect foils for each other because the one kid Was like   What do we talk about about you being insensitive and loud? 

I was like, I needed to see more of that, but I was also done with it in the first like two seconds. Yeah. And, and the whole time that he's doing running around his, this girl's with him and what was her name again? I totally forgot. Uh, Jennifer, Jennifer. So Jennifer's with her. Jennifer Mack. She's just standing in the corner, smiling the whole time and like biting her lower lip.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, I was going to say, she's so underwritten more than anyone. I feel like that's when you get. People who are just smiling and like the director's just like you got to be in there and act like you're alive  Bite bite your lower lip bite bite your lower lip like look like when he pulls that paper out Like you just want to have sex with him right there on the desk Like it's i'm like, oh my god, like keep it and keep it together.

 And so  He finds out through all this like knowledge that's steven falking Falken falken falken whatever millennium  Stephen Hawking, , which is a play on Stephen Hawking, and it was meant to be that character. They just didn't change a whole lot of it. Was that before he was in the chair?

No. No, I don't think so.  They wanted him to be in it, I read, and he was like, no, they'll make fun of my disability. Really? Yeah. That's sad. Yeah. I wouldn't, I don't, I mean, he was like way beyond whatever this movie is doing. That is very true.  And so he found out that this guy created Whopper basically.

Right. So he does his research. Yeah. Finds out that the guy passed away. There's air quotes in here.  After his son and wife died, right? Yeah, correct on that. The son and wife died in a car accident and then he, you know, died at the old age of 41.  I had a small stroke when I heard that.

Because you're what, two years away from that? I'm two years older. That's next year, right? Yeah, coming up, . Yeah, I know. Yeah. When we were talking earlier I about that, I felt like, yeah, that's just a mistake. . I don't know how they got in there. I thought it was joke, a dark joke. Did you? But I don't think it was, I don't think joke.

So by mistake it wasn't read that way. No. There are some really dark moments. And did you guys read that? , originally, , they had a director on this for like 12 days who shot a ton of stuff. And then  they handed it over to this John Battam, , and apparently the studio didn't like the direction , it was too dark.

Interesting. And, , he also used, , sorry not to get too off track, but he also used a different film, , color process. Really? Yeah. And you can see that sometimes some of the scenes that he shot are like. Developed differently and have the kind of smeared. Yeah, there's a lot of like patina on it. It was very like Glossy almost is really kind of yeah, it gave me that kind of gave me like the heebies.

I was like, oh, yeah Yeah, so I think they had this first director like  it was really dark when he was working on it It's just a survived so that could be from that. Yeah, I wonder how it would have turned out if they had you know Stayed on that path and made it super dark. I wonder how it would be received.

Yeah Well, didn't they have another wasn't there a TV show that came out around that time about thermonuclear war? That was like really really really heavy. Oh freak people  out day after yes the day after that's what was yes That was like 80  maybe 79 or 80 Um, there was, there was , the British movie too, , I'm blanking on the name, but Threads?

Threads. Yeah. And Threads kind of did the same thing. Right. And I don't know if that was the same time or when that came out, but it, yeah, late seventies, early eighties. This is yeah. Prime cold war, everyday nuclear,  yeah, fear, which I, as a kid was very aware of, you know, we had drills and where we were like.

Get under our desks or put our hands over our head to protect ourselves from nuclear radiation.  That'll do it. Make sure you cover your neck and your thyroid. If the hydrogen bomb lands on your back, make sure that you're under this like plastic desk. That'll do it. Exactly. So, uh. Yeah, 

I was gonna say , we're still in his room. , his friends, Ali Shidi or whatever, Jennifer walks in and he's like in his underwear like passed out. So he hasn't been in school all week and we learned that he's been trying to like crack , this code or , the password and you know, they get to talking and we talked about the, you know, the old age and the family beforehand.

And we learn that his wife and child died, his son's name, , was Joshua, and then lights start to go off in his head, and then what does he do? He puts in Joshua as the password, and that gets him into, you know, the game that he's trying to play. Right. Right. , and we forget a small detail to, he's kinda showing off his hacking ability.

And he books them a flight to France. Paris, yes. Just for France.  It looks like a minor detail at the time, but it comes back later on. So he's like, he hacks in and he's like, Yeah, we got reservations to Paris now with our names on it. Because he's able to just put them on the flight. Yeah, and then so eventually they played the thermonuclear war game on the Whopper and  Not much of a game.

It's yeah Simulation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's just a basic sim. It's like Minesweeper. And so  He picks to be Russia because he's just counterculture. Yeah, so he it's a game Yeah, and so he simulates Russia to launching nukes towards the u. s And then that  signals to I guess NORAD that missiles are being launched towards the United States, right?

And so that's when everyone starts freaking out. Yes thinking that they need to go into protection mode And we're more or less, ,  in time with figuring out that this isn't a game. Maybe we're like slightly ahead of realizing like, uh, this is, he's actually, this is  the real thing. Yeah. And so everyone is panicking.

We're getting a DEFCON 3 at this point. Like moving up the scale. Yeah. Cause they're trying to confirm that these missiles are launched. They have. You know planes in the air trying to like find them and they can't confirm it But  at this point well because these they're like we have x amount  of soviet planes on radar What do you see?

And they're like, we don't see anything. There's nothing out here. And then they come. What do you mean? There's nothing there's supposed to be 63 missiles in the air. I don't see anything We're not getting anything on radar and then some pencil pusher comes by like well I heard that the soviets have like invisible planes that you can't see for 600 miles and they're like, yeah That could be a possibility.

So, yeah, I know. And then we're doomed.  I know. I love that detail though. Just somebody walking by tells the top general and he's  like, what we're chasing shadows now. He's pulling out his red men. It's like you and like, and I was like, how much did they pay for that sponsorship?  Yeah.  They really played into that.

Cause you could even see his lower teeth. You're pretty, pretty nasty. This generals from like. Northern Alabama. I'm not buying that he's an Air Force General. I'm just gonna go ahead and say he doesn't look anywhere near educated enough to be a fucking Air Force General. Air Force, you gotta be like What gives you the idea? 

Air Force, you have to be pretty smart. Pretty intelligent. Very smart. It's called the Chair Force for a reason.  There's a reason they're made fun of by other branches. But you know, there's also a reason why they get most of the money from defense contracting and from, and are the ones that hold the secrets to, I don't know, uh, groom Lake and area One Area 51, yeah.

All that shit. Yeah. , I don't, I'm gonna go ahead and say , I don't think he's a, I don't think he's really portraying that, but at that time, nobody fucking gave a shit. People still don't give a shit about that. Oh, yeah. And they're also, I think they're trying to take a jab at the military too.

Oh yeah. The way that all these people are. complete idiots and running around like they don't have a clue.  It felt more political than certainly than we're just writing these characters. Like it, it felt over the top for a reason.

 But, one guy comes in eventually and is like, Hey, no, no, no, it's a simulation, it's a simulation, it's a simulation! And I find it really funny, because he's running during this like, Defcon moment where everyone's freaking out. He runs across the war room, and he's like, no, no, it's a simulation, simulation!

The general puts his hand on him and goes, Hey, don't run in here. Someone could get hurt.  That's well timed. Yeah, it was well timed. One of the, it was my favorite moment in the movie. And then he like goes through and says, , that nothing got launched.

And so at this time you flash forward and, ,  their dog knocks over the trash and his parents like come down here and clean this up now And so he pulls the plug on the computer basically so it turns the computer off and ends the game Or he thinks he thinks it is the game.

So while the computer's off, it's like learning more about the simulation it's going through, which is a big mistake. Or he's kicked it off in the, , I almost said burger.  Whopper. In the whopper.  And so the whopper, yes, the terminal is still going and he thinks, yeah, he shut it off. But, and he didn't realize, , because he was seeing, like, some of the Statistics it was printing out and he was like, oh shit like the gravity of the situation was starting to hit him, too It's slowly growing.

I think he's like sitting down for dinner and there's like a news broadcast about something about you know, nuclear war It's directly related to what is happening at it. Yeah, they were they were like, ,  Failed Something like they were saying it was a hack or whatever and he's like starting to realize like how much Holy shit, what'd I do?

Shit he's in and then now they're scrambling at NORAD. They're like who hacked it? Like somebody hacked it some dweeb hacked it and then instead of asking the question of like how was this easily hackable? Like maybe we should do something. That's why didn't they think about that? And of course they were like, he's working with the Russians.

That's 16 year old. He's, he's gotta be a Russian spy. They find out he's 16 year old after they had him and all of a sudden like, well, they I'm jumping ahead. Yeah. So they, and not a whole lot happens between then other than they know what happens next. Yeah. They, they track him down cause they're able to like,  cause you're hacking a military super system  and they're like, we gotta, we gotta hit it's in Seattle.

It's in Seattle, and so they like start like you can tell he's like trying to like be kind of I guess he was at a like a 7 eleven getting a big  Soft drink. Yeah, and he gets he gets taken in by some some FBI agents. Yeah, some really discreet ones  Ford Fairmont  They're driving on the wrong side of the road.

They read him his Miranda rights too. They did. Yeah. A very old version of the Miranda rights. Very outdated. Which I was like, if you said that to somebody now, you would, they would just be like. You have the right to be arrested. Yeah. Also, well, we'll get to that later. Interesting. I hadn't thought about that.

Yeah, they're very, I don't remember exactly what was said, but it was like. It was it just did not sound it was the Miranda rights, but it's definitely like an earlier version of Miranding Yeah, there's probably a reason why it was said that way then versus now because somebody was probably like well You didn't I hate to jump back to you, but I did write that this down, did anyone else notice?

So like during this whole chaos of like the news report and everything, and he changed his report card and he was showing his report card to his dad. His dad was like, Oh, good job, son. He just pulls out a random yo yo and starts doing a couple of tricks. I didn't notice that I might've looked away or like gone to the back.

I did notice that. And it would make sense if he had been playing with the yo yo earlier, but he was  the only time we saw the yo yo. He just like his dad starts looking at it and it was like, Oh, there's a, another sponsorship.  Yeah, he was like he did like this like we  And I was like what the fuck well, it's it it makes it where people yo yoing for crazy back in the 80s Yeah, I mean they were doing it in the early 90s when I was in school That was establishing him as a cool character or as like a regular teenager But he's not that at all.

No, he's in fact the opposite. He's a mixed bag of a whole bunch of shit So his character is you didn't grow up in the 80s. Andrew. You don't know. Yeah Shut up. Deductive reasoning, all right? Andrew, shut up. Hey, make me. Please shut up. Come and make me. All right, let's make out. Okay. All right.  So, John, what happens now that he gets taken to NORAD?

Right. So, he escapes, , several traps along the way , and then finally gets arrested and ,  he doesn't. He doesn't explain himself very well.  But they don't listen to him either. They don't listen to anything he says. They put him in an infirmary.  Yeah, that's right. Instead of a jail, it's just like the nurse's office that's like highly secure.

Yeah, super secure. Drywall in there. Yeah. And then, , great hack.  ,  I don't know if we want to spoil it, but he, ,  there's like a key code that he like record, he gets a dictaphone, like a little mini tape recorder, records the sound that it makes, , using forceps or hemostats.  And,  um, it's a pretty good, good thing possible.

Like I. Yeah.  Let's just say it is. I think it's within the realm of, of, yeah. Because remember, Hacking Men was like, I don't think there had been a Hollywood movie made about hacking yet because, about real hacking, because it was like freaking, P H R E E K I N G. That's right, freaky. Yeah, with P H R E E K I N G.

And that's like, mostly like the telephone stuff, like in the phone booth where he.  Uh, you know, gets a pop top and connects the, , the receiver  to a ground and sparks it and like hot wiring a car and, but that stuff is all based, you know, there was a real community of people doing that kind of stuff.

, and the whole time, like before he starts hacking too, , they're trying to talk to him. They're like, we have these, you're, who are you flying to Paris with? You're getting out of this country this week. So it's like, that comes back on him. He's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he's like, who are you working with?

It's two tickets. And , they're being dumb. They're not listening to him at all. And he's just like, he's just like, I just hacked your shitty system looking for games. It's Joshua. That's unbelievable. Like, and he's trying to warn them because he sees the printouts before he like got arrested, all these printouts of the computer and the computer came back on.

And told him that he, what's his next move, ,  believes he's the professor, , and  I guess what happens is they're, the computer is going to start  actually launching missiles as like a defense towards the Russians and he's like, estimated casualties was like 78 million , and it kept playing the simulation in real life.

So that wasn't going to stop. And then now that the Whopper has control over all the silos, it's going to counter launch everything, even though the Russian attack is a simulation. That's right. And he's trying to warn them of that, and they are not listening. Right. So what's happening in the NORAD headquarters is, yeah, the machine is Playing a game.

None of them know that. It just seems totally real. , this central, , computer that they're all relying on. Right. And just to be clear. Yeah. And everything that they see from Russia as a simulation and everything that they're going to do is going to be real.

So we're about to wipe Russia off the face of the earth and possibly every country around it. Well, that would be the end of the world. Yeah. If we, if we wipe out one, you might as well wipe out the rest. Cause that's essentially what would happen. Nuclear winter.  So, and, , he manages to escape, right?

Right, he manages to escape, , because there's a tour group during DEFCON 3. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, , which, , one of the, , military guys on the floor, uh, Pulls a prank on one of the tourists. Yeah, that's just heart stopping like oh you started a nuclear war just kidding lady  He already did that in the infirmary up there  super professional behavior, yeah ridiculous, so there's this tour group and , David, , is able to escape, , and then he comes through like a, , heating duct and he, , joins the tour group and gets on their bus as they're being escorted out.

Politely and slowly because for some reason , and so he's on this bus and he escapes  So easily scarily yeah,  because they brought him in so everybody saw what he looked like It's not like he put on like a fake mustache or changed his clothes or anything It's like walks out the front door You would think that a you know Highly classified military base would have like active cameras and security looking at every you know Maybe not back then but I feel like they would have had to if they would They had to have something.

Like closed circuit, closed circuit  security. Yeah, you had guys in like offices looking. But not only that, but they brought him in,  and the guards out front see him come in, and have to give clearance to  the FBI agents bringing him in. Also, the FBI wouldn't be bringing a suspect into NORAD.

No. That wouldn't make any  sense to do that.  Because if he was a Russian spy, let's take him into the most sensitive area that he'd love to get into anyways. That didn't even occur to me. Yeah, let's  usher him in. They were bringing him in like a dog that peed on the floor. Like, look at what you've done!

Like, it pees again.  I was,  I don't know. All I'll say is that we, our country is very good at a lot of things, but just like any country, there are multiple lapses in security at numerous times throughout our pre, at least last 70 years since we've been dealing with this shit. So yeah, it's a little scary.

I've been able to sneak alcohol into concerts for a very long time now. Shut the fuck up, Chase. Shut your mouth.  Indeed, no difference.  Idiot. So, uh, so he escapes and what's his next move, John? So his next move is to, , he's in the middle of nowhere. Or he is in Colorado, so he calls his new girlfriend Jennifer, and is like, , using the aforementioned phone hack 'cause he doesn't have a dime

And then he, , and with like a can top right that he just finds a bunch of gravel, like 10 feet from the phone booth miraculously, right. .  And so he's like, I just need you to send me money. Oh shit, I'm getting arrested.  , , and which he girlfriend would. Yes. And so instead of buying him a ticket.

To get him back to Seattle or to, , Salem, Oregon, Salem, Oregon.  Yes. She shows up at the airport. And, because she's, she really wants him, I guess. I, uh, she's a, she's nothing better than. She can make distances happen like that. Because I'm thinking about the distance between that corner of the nation to the center.

And I'm like, I just spent 24, 28 hours driving straight from Atlanta to Wyoming. There's no fucking way. She said it was a three hour drive.  What, what is crazy too, it's not a three hour flight. Seattle to Salem is three hours. I did Google that. But where, he was in Colorado. That's what I thought, unless I'm misreading something or I didn't notice.

They didn't explain it really well. So he ends up in, I guess he flew from Colorado to Salem. To Salem, which has a massive international airport.  I mean, Salem is the capital of Oregon. Let's give it a little more credit. There's probably like a little tiny airport there. That ticket probably cost a lot of money back then.

But she, she had it, you know, in her bank accounts at the time. Yeah, just ready to go. Yeah. He probably wired her the money through another hack or something. Yeah. Yeah, that was glossed over in classic Hollywood style. Like,  I know we're not really going out, but , can I borrow 3, 000 for this last minute ticket?

Which back then would be like, what, 10 grand now? Yeah. Something ridiculous. Ridiculous. What was What was crazy about all this, too, is, , I saw on the computer, because the computer has a countdown, basically, until it, like, makes its final move, and it said 27 hours when he was at NORAD, and now he's flown from Colorado to Oregon and met up with her.

I'm like, you've probably eaten a lot of that time. Right. Yeah, and so So he gets there and they're looking for falcon, right? Right. So , they discover in the course of being questioned and going back and forth with the general or with the, , the Dabney Coleman technocrat guy, , that, ,the inventor of the machine, as he learned, , by doing his own research, ,  he's not dead that they had him like change identities.

And so now he's got a little info and the only way he can save it is by appealing to the creator of this artificial intelligence computer. . So he's living under an assumed identity on a small island.  Northwest. Yeah. And it sounds like a, it sounds like a James Bond villain.

And then he has a, and what's crazy is like , they were walking up to this house, I guess they found the address. And then this like pterodactyl robotic, like flying machine. It's like flying around. You're like. What? Like, I was like staring. Is that like, I was like, that's a terra or is that an exotic bird?

Like what am I watching right now? Yeah, because it goes by in the background and you're like, was that a pterodactyl? it sure, sure was. And it turns out it's just this, , eccentric, um. Possibly enlightened guy,  gurus, , like just his toy, this is what he does now. That's the socially acceptable term, enlightened.

Um, so. Well, yeah, I'll get back to that later.  What's funny is like I was reading about this movie and I guess this movie had a long pre production life because they wanted John Lennon to play this role. I know. What?  Yeah, and they'd had it planned out because the The writers thought that John Lennon Was the closest thing to Stephen Hawking that they were gonna get for this movie.

What? And then he was like, in the writing and pre production of it, John Lennon was murdered. So they never obviously got to like, offer him the role. Wait, wait, wait. John Lennon died?  . Well, we'll talk about it later. How is John Lennon and Stephen Hawking, how are they similar? Like what is the  That's just, that's just what I, yeah, I, yeah, they thought he was like an enlightened creative and they thought he would have been a perfect fit for this role.

So weird. I, there's no way he was on board with that, right? I doubt it. I doubt it. Well, he's definitely wasn't on board at the time. Well, yeah,  I wondered about that too. I was like, John Lennon. Like, yeah, it wasn't, hadn't he been dead for two years? So yeah, it must've had a big, long pre production. Cause Lennon died in 80, right?

And so, yeah,, I thought that was very strange that, , I guess they were, they were seeing David Bowie all over the place and they were like, Hey, we could do John Lennon, you know? That's a good point. There was a thing in the eighties where, you know, you had Prince, you had Michael Jackson and all these like pop stars and music stars, like infiltrating acting, which is still a thing now.

Yeah. So it wouldn't, it's a really good point. It's in hindsight, we can think of it as being like very weird, but who knows what would have happened if. Yeah. Cause in the seventies, if you know, somebody told you that David Bowie would be in a kid's movie, a kid's fantasy movie, you'd be like, I don't know, he's not killing it. 

Yeah. So, yeah, and it could have like, it could have worked out. Like you never know. Right. So instead of John Lennon, , for the role they have, , John would. Who's somebody who is not a household name because none of us recognize him.  Nope. Still can't place him. And who's a, , like a, , Shakespearean British guy, like a Royal Shakespeare Society guy.

Probably the most well trained actor in the whole movie. Oh, 100%. , which is interesting because you think of someone from the stage, , as being, you know, having big, broad sort of acting styles and, , but he gets some, there's some closeups of some very subtle face facial changes of John Wood, a.

k. a. Professor Falcon, , that I was like, well, yeah, like.  I was like, yeah, it turns out this guy can act. Yeah, , he wasn't bad at all. And his, I don't think his character was written very well because all he does is take the kids inside and gives them a spiel on paleontology. It is a quick one 80.

, I wrote  down that , , his Dino speech is Steven Spielberg's pitch meeting for Jurassic Park. 100%.  And , he whips out, he's like, well, let me tell you kids. And then he whips out a 16 millimeter projector and starts projecting that Ray Harryhausen movie. 

One million years BC.  It's like claymation, , dinosaurs and he's like, you see kids at the beginning of time. Right.  Because.  I'd love to see his,  explanation of dinosaurs in a passing, , glance, because it was just not. Did you know that nothing over 50 pounds survived that wipeout event? 

Except for  crocodiles and alligators and  everything else that was over 50. Yeah His he was there was a tinge of nihilism in his presentation though Absolutely, like not tinge, but it was very nihilistic. There was a tinge of a lot of other things.  He was very eccentric in his like In the initial meeting, but his character just abruptly, like you said, takes a 180 and he changes, he has nothing to live for at this point, his family's dead, his name is wiped from the record books, he's living off the, you know, off the grid, and, you know, these two kids are coming to tell him that,  The world's gonna go into thermonuclear war and everyone's gonna die and he's like well just like the dinosaurs perished It's our time as well.

Nature has a cycle. Let's let it play out. . And he's like, I'm going to sleep Yeah,  I'm going to bed now. You guys can stay here and sleep on the floor if you would like  Like there's plenty of couches and chairs.  My guests sleep on the floor. I don't know if you have lice or bed bugs And, , he goes up to bed and, David and,  shit, what's her name?

Elizabeth?  Jennifer. Shit, Jennifer, excuse me. I'm falling into those sexist lines here. You really are.  They're like, we gotta get out of here. And  they have a a weird few moments outside. We find out David can't swim, and she's trying to like, I guess, teach him or something? Yeah, but she starts off the teaching by going, what kind of asshole doesn't know how to swim?

You grew up in Seattle. It's like, damn, you're really helping him out here. Yeah, that's probably not going to help his confidence at all.  What a terrifying thing, like, if you don't know how to swim. Here's the open ocean.  I thought in the dark it was probably filmed on the Puget Sound is what it looked like I mean, it's not the most swimmable.

Nope, that's miles wide Yeah, and also a lot of rip currents in there. Yeah, I'd be terrified to do that knowing how to swim Yeah, and Allie Sheedy starts like taking your shoes off. She's like come on two three miles We can do it and then you can see his breath People Puget Sound is like Like a very cold body of water.

Yes. Two or three miles, you are dying of hypothermia. And it's much wider than two or three miles.  Absolutely. They took a ferry. They missed the last ferry. So it's like that long.  But they have their little moment. I think they, they ended up like kissing at that point. And then this helicopter shows up.

And they're running from it. In circles. Yeah. They're acting stupid, like falling over. I  mean, they are blinded by the light, but  they act like buffoons running around. And then who is it that's, you know, is he operating it or is he the passenger? He's a passenger. He's a passenger. It's  John Lennon.

John Lennon. , Dr. Falcon. And he's like, Oh, it's okay. Right? I just gotta Get in! I just have to say that the, the whole helicopter, , I mean, God, Hollywood just loves helicopters, especially in the 70s and 80s, and , it's so un fantastic, like, there's a big scene, you know, just falling from the sky on the slow, like, landing.

And this scene that we're talking about where they're, they finally get to kiss and then suddenly the military's back after them or they, so they think, , it's so poorly staged, it's just this helicopter lights and it blows it out. , you can't see their faces, which is probably because they're doubles.

,  And yeah, and, , they're just running and stumbling like,  it didn't make any sense. Well, they could have made this easier just by like.  When they kiss, helicopter light on them, helicopter lands, and then they notice it's him. But instead, they have to do this two minute chase scene in circles. They go, like, all of 15 yards.

And it's just this blinding light and them going, Oh no! And this dramatic music around it. And then, finally, I guess he, did he, did we ever find out  what changed his mind? I was gonna say, what, what changed when he went up , to bed? John, do you know? I think he was bluffing at, like, at, He saw him kiss and he,  Yeah, I don't know.

I gotta get in the middle of this. I think we're just supposed to imagine that, , Matthew Broderick's,  , please, like, What would Joshua think?  And he's like, Joshua wouldn't think of anything. He's dead. Yeah. Wow. , yeah, it's like maybe these kids, we should give these kids a chance and not blow up the entire world.

I, yeah, I don't know. I don't think it's clear. I think we're just supposed to. Yeah, take their word for it. Yeah, he had a change of heart. So we're getting into  the climax of the movie now So now they head back to NORAD. It's a long helicopter ride. Yeah, so and remember 27 hours earlier  Bullshit on that there is no way unless they were stopping for fuel numerous times.

It happened It happened, but like Landis right there at the 7 eleven. I need snacks  Bugles, bugles and RC cars. They get there and  it's it's like morning You know like the the night had passed it's morning. That's right They get that shitty jeep or whatever and I think they're what Defcon 2 now or something like that Yeah, while while they're in the air   there's like 100 Russian submarines just in the US coastline bordering it and they're like, oh they're prepared to attack and now they're up to DEFCON 1 at this point like it's imminent that nuclear war is about to happen right because the system is triggered Whopper is about to send these nuclear Warheads out to Russia.

Yeah, and they're still they still haven't gotten confirmation. Like we don't see any subs in the water We don't see any missiles in the air We don't see any they have these two jets out trying to find these Russian fighter jets that are reported in the air US airspace Not just any jets to f 15 strike equals.

I knew  Those are those would have been  pretty new at that point, which is actually pretty impressive that they got those on camera I think they would have been in service from me less than ten years So they were very cutting edge. , they still are. So pretty, pretty cool. A little bit right there.

Yeah, definitely. It wasn't stock footage. They definitely got up on those. So it's a good point. Pretty cool. That's where all the 12 million budget went. Absolutely. That's where I would put it at. Pretty sexy. , that's how, that's why the helicopter scene is so slapdash.  They couldn't afford it. The F 15  had to happen.

Just have 'em run in circles. , that's just an a hospital emergency helicopter thing. Exactly. They called it, they called it an emergency in, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, when they get outta the helicopter and they're racing towards, , NORAD , in a jeep, , they drove through that fence. I'm, they almost wrecked.

I sorry. That was so like grand theft auto of them. It wasn't very  well done. It wasn't well done or realistic, but. Which car, you know, if you're driving,  if you're driving a Jeep at fast speeds at a military base What are the guards gonna do? They're gonna  kill you.  They're going to open fire on you if you don't stop when you're For Norad, I think that I don't think there would be a warning.

I think you'd just get fucking Yeah, and I don't think you would get that close. I think there's enough checkpoints in the way. Or if they didn't shoot you, you would've been hit. by the fence because it was an open ended Jeep. There wasn't like a hood or anything, like something would have like decapitated you or cut you up pretty badly.

So on the other hand, it's just chain link.  Yeah, of course.  The 12 million budget. It went into the strong chain link fence. Yeah, exactly. , yeah. Right. So , they rush in. So we have the inventor of the machine, the one guy who knows who's presumed to be dead, Matthew Broderick, , Ali Sheedy. And. They come into appeal at the very last possible second  to convince the general that this is all  a game to the computer and that none of it's really happening. 

Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. And the general finally starts kind of listening at this point. Right. , He puts his chew down, but he's still got a big mouthful of it. Tons. Yeah. We have to also, if we can for a second, I want to talk about Barry Corbin, the, , the actor, the character actor that plays the general.

Yeah. , did you guys ever watch Northern Exposure? No. Catch any episodes of that?  It's like a 90s TV show, , that he was in, , Who else was in that? , man.  No, you know, I'm not, I'm thinking of Due North with Brennan Frazier, I think. , it was kind of like a normie, hippie, Twin Peaks, maybe.

It was like around the same time.  But anyways, he's this stock character who, , I read that he, most of his lines in this were improvised, which I kind of believe. It seems like, yeah, it seems that way. Really? For sure. I mean, some of the quips and one offs were very comedically driven. I guarantee they give him free reign to just say whatever.

Yeah, because it's a lot like his characters in other movies. That's what made me think of it. And yeah, all these like down homey, , curse words. He was in an episode of Better Call Saul. Oh, really? Yes, I don't know if y'all are familiar with that, but there's an episode where this old man has a land dispute with a bank that Kim Wexler works for.

Oh, yes. And his home, , crosses the line, and he won't leave. , and if he does leave, then he surrenders, but him and, , Saul have, like, a one off where they try to get him out of his house. And he's very keen. Cantankerous  and vulgar and it's the same guy. Yeah, he looks the same. He's you know, 40 years older, but they're all same Yeah, same guy who is, you know smoking and spitting and saying a bunch of shit.

So right  Anyways, I appreciate him. Yes, and he's  Not a good guy, but he really carries a lot of the weight of this for sure the general character And he is right about certain things if we're being honest. Yeah, he's not wrong   his character is fighting against a AI  in this day and age.

He's a hero. Yeah Yeah, so he's like We can't eliminate the human element of this right because you find yourself pulling for the military Yeah against the technocrats and you're like, yeah, because this is what i'm nostalgic for right  You're like oh shit We've come full circle now exactly so, , last thing about , barry corbin the general has said I love when , He's, , the highest general and he says on the phone to Ronald Reagan, if we want to take that, we will be, he's taking that we see a portrait of Ronald Reagan.

We're going to assume that he's the unspoken real president.  But there's a part where he's walking and he's like, yes, Mr. President, I feel like we're going to have to.  what the hell is that he's like that's bullshit Jesus Christ yeah yeah I was I heard that I was like god damn that is like that's classic comedy right there yeah it was well done it was well done yeah it was yeah hilarious so  what happens next John 

so when everybody shows up  the two kids and the professor   who was the mentor of Dabney Coleman's character  You know so he has some gravitas and he's like wild and crazy and it's all not a big deal and he can just look and Suddenly he's like it's playing a game  And they can manage to convince him to, that it's, none of it's happening.

, and I think it's his British accent. That really wins the day. Yep, yep. Qualifies him. And so the military now understands that there's no Russian threat. So , he's convinced them that we're not under attack. That's right, and to not counter strike. But at that point they're like, well we would love to not counter strike but it's in the hands of the system.

So it's going to counter strike. So now they have to figure a way to turn it off and they can't access it. So, yeah, there's like a false ending of everyone celebrating that they had, , It's not real, it's not real. Oh shit, we can't log into the computer. It's locked us out. And so, here comes David.  Right.

Super genius. Not Falcon. Not the reason they brought him there. He's just, he just came there to tell him that's just a game goes in there, goes to the break room, get some coffee.  , and then it's over for his character. And then David like comes up and he's like, let me do it. And they're like, no.

And then he's like, let me do it. And he's like, all right,  twist my arm. Why don't you? And he's like, if it wants to play a game, let's play a game. So he like logs into the computer and he's able to play tic tac toe with it. Right. What happens there, John? Yeah, so he, they're going through and they're like, okay, it thinks it's a game.

How do we convince it to play another game, to learn another game that'll teach it futility? And so there's a call back to, , earlier when they, , the professor had talked about tic tac toe and he said, , did you ever play that game? Yeah, of course. Do you play it still? And, uh, he's like, no, of course not.

It's stupid. And he's like, yeah, you can't win it. So back to this moment, they're like,  He, they get it to play tic tac toe eventually, and it starts, , war gaming through that realizes that it's  no, there's no way to win and that it's all futile. And so the only right move is to not play at all.

That's right. So it withdraws.  Everything, which is kind of a cool ending. I thought it was pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty clever way to end it because it, again, it ties back into the mutually assured destruction thing. Exactly. I thought it was so perfect to use tic tac toe , and I think especially that, that was genuine, genuinely just like thrilling.

Yeah. . More so even than the nuclear, the real nuclear strike. And they made it very tense because it's showing on screen it playing all these tic tac toe games and the music starting to speed up and you see that the basically the death clock timer ticking down, you're down to seconds and it's still learning and still learning.

And then you're seeing everyone like sweating and looking in the war room like, Oh my God, is it going to learn in time? Yeah. And then it finally learns and doesn't launch the missiles.  And they're able, and then they celebrate by going to DEF CON 5.  Yeah,  exactly, but not before. Yeah. I love that, , that the monitors all seem to get brighter and brighter and the computers get louder and louder, the more dangerous the situation is. 

So they're all just like reflecting. And, another, , hacker movie , checkoff is, , that, , John Wood, , the professor is staring at the code as the computer is trying to, , come up with the nuclear codes when it's, , going full brute force attack. And he's looking at it and it's reflecting green on his face, you know, all computer is just like, all right.

And then when. The computer freaks out, we have, , exploding monitors, another, , hallmark of hacker movies. The computer just kills itself.  I mean, haven't you had that happen? Oh yeah. It happens all the time. It's, you need to fix it, honestly. Yeah. I've got some memory that's gone bad. Monitor blows up.  , and that, that's pretty much it, right?

That pretty much wraps up. War games, right? I gotta say thank god David didn't choose to be United States when he first initiated the game because think about it If he chose the United States, how do you think the russians would have, you know responded to this instantly? Yeah Yeah, we would have a movie obviously either that or all their missiles would have went up and straight back down because of their Something like that, right?

Yeah, they would have destroyed themselves and then who knows That's a good point though. One off chance.  He just  thought to be the Russians, but if it's United States, we may have been wiped out. So if you ever find, find yourself hacked into a government computer and choose, choose the opposing side. 

But yeah, the end is just undeniably thrilling. I feel like, yeah, I feel like those computers are still being used by Russia right now.  Okay, so actually here's the thing. I know we're shitting on Russia a lot, and I fucking can't stand when I say Russia. I mean Vladimir Putin and the oligarchs. Yes, but when We joke about that, but there is a there's been a long debate going on for the last  10 years about whether or not we in the United States need to redo our entire ballistic missile program because  They still run on floppy disks Oh sure.

Yeah, so like we, and it would be this entire, it would cost so much money to do it and they're having to do some real soul searching right now whether or not they want to fund that, which they need to fund, or fund a new NGAD, Next Generation Air Dominance Fighter program, or this, that, or the other because , it would cost an enormous amount of money that , Congress would probably not approve.

Sure. So it's becoming like this whole actual. Like big thing because  that to say that equipment is antiquated is   a little bit of an understatement Yeah,  I don't mean to jump the gun here, but I think what Kyle's trying to say is please support our show  Thank you war games for leading us to this point of discussion.

No, for sure  It's poignant. It's very poignant still and I would say it is yeah, it is poignant. It is definitely relevant Very relevant. It was probably before its time and in that sense for with the AI at least I would say very much so  yeah, we're gonna have to run this podcast in a virtual machine if you don't support  In a Game Boy Advanced So John let's start with you.

You've watched it now as an adult. Yes. , how does this compare to when you watched as a kid?   I felt like , I mean, obviously there's distance, , I'm very aware that I'm watching a 1983 Hollywood movie. , but I had not seen it since I was a kid ,  so, like,  the pit of the stomach, dread that I felt as a kid wasn't exactly there until the very end, until the TikTok.

, and then I thought,  oh, this is kind of like when he says, , The sort of existential moment. It doesn't seem to be landing on everyone that this is gonna be the end of humanity and life on earth  But his sort of when he's like, well, I don't know how to swim. Oh gosh. I really wish that I Had I really was gonna learn to swim  which is sort of the moment that we have between the two of them and  this time watching it, I thought, huh, there's no real chemistry with them or whatever.

But I remember as a kid thinking, that stuck with me though. Like I always wanted to learn to swim. It was like something as a 14-year-old, I could be like, wow, that would be so tragic. . So I have to say that maybe it wasn't as effective , as an adult the entire time, like it was when I was a kid.

But in the end, like, a net good,  it definitely had me at the end. I feel like the themes are still there. Yeah. But  I think we just know more now as a society. So the way that this threat was presented, even though this threat is still relevant and more relevant probably than ever. Yeah. Now, yeah.

In the last eight years. Absolutely. So it's a movie to watch for that realism of that threat. But again, because we know more, we know . You can't just go in and hack a computer through a phone number that easily. Like I'm sure people out there know how to hack stuff and get into government, , computers.

100 percent happens all the time.  Ask the Chinese. But there's a lot of fail safes to that. Like, you don't just get all the way through a system. You may get through the first line of defense. Into a hacking program, but like  it's in just to do it through a phone line in your house. Just randomly, .

And I know this is the early days of  hacking and computers  So  to me it was like, yeah, it was a little farcical but at the same time  it felt very relevant Yeah,  and I think it's always gonna be relevant as long as we have nuclear weapons movies like this Yeah, you can watch in 1983. Yeah, I'd be like, oh wow and scared a little bit And then now you're watching we're watching in 2025 being like, yeah, a lot of this is still relevant.

Oh, yeah it's still terrifying and the capabilities, you know still exists and  But as far as the hacking goes, did you guys read  that  Ronald Reagan ended up watching this movie And it led to the first, , presidential order for, , regarding computer security. Somebody showed this to him at Camp David, like  a few months after he gave his Star Wars speech, which was of course, widely ridiculed.

 Reagan saying that, , we needed a defense system. That'll be like something from Star Wars and everybody rolled their eyes. But then like three months later, they showed him this and he, , meeting with the joint chiefs of staff, he was like, Hey, is this really like possible?  And they're like, well, we'll, we'll look, sir.

Okay. And then they came back and they're like, actually, yeah.  We got to do something about that. Yeah. And that was the last time they addressed it. That's right. 1985 or 6 is I think was when Reagan, yeah, signed that, . Cool.  But it did have a, it did have a real. Now the new system is quarter pounder. 

That's right. Jesus Christ.  Fun stuff. The McRib.  It only comes back every now and every now and again. It's the only time they can update it is every other year  good stuff All right, so   let's start with John. Let's start with you. Does this movie hold up?  I'm gonna say yes.  Okay. I think it does hold up 

If you like, , Dabney Coleman, , smoking cigarettes, like Lloyd, , Bridges in Airplane, and, , getting his vector, if you like, , 80s movies in general, 80s teen movies, , absolutely. , and yeah, at its core, , besides all the fun stuff, it does, , lay out pretty plainly the few different angles of why mutual assured destruction as a policy is completely illogical , and stupid.

And it's, really makes an argument that  within the, you know, the realm of the movie, within the contained movie.  It's pretty airtight. Yeah. Yep. Andrew, what do you think? I mean, yeah. , you gotta look past some of the lazy writing and Some of the, . It's not the laziest writing we've seen. It's not the laziest, but , there, there are some moments where I was like, Yeah, they mailed that scene in kind of, .

Sure. It's not some like high art,  it doesn't have to be though to enjoy it. But you look past some of that, some of the clunkiness, some of the farcical elements that  you've talked about, you know. That's not really believable. , it does hold up. It's still incredibly relevant themes in terms of, you know.

Cyber security and nuclear warfare and artificial intelligence and existential fear and dread like that is all still relevant to this day and will be for years to come. And the supporting cast that you have with this movie is pretty solid. There's 80s tropes and certain comedic elements that  are there for everyone.

So yeah, it holds up.  It's worth the watch. , it's not like something, like I said, that you see you sit and feel like you wasted your time by any means. , it's worth the watch and I recommend it for all. Kyle, what about you?  It was a little tough for me because I, as y'all know,  I'm very much about when I watch this movie again, and when I'm thinking about it, does it hold up or not?

, and,  , it's tough, but I'm gonna be fair, as I usually am. , it does hold up because of the theme, and because of that, I do think that final scene is very well done for when it was made, and for what it was being asked to portray. And I don't think we can ask anything more of that. However, I don't think I would watch this again because  It, it does  fall flat in some areas where like character development and like in some other places that , it's just a little lacking,  but it's a tight movie.

It flows. There's not a lot of boring down moments in it. It is pretty fun to watch. , so yeah, I'm going to say it holds up. It does.  , I love what you said about it. It is an 80s. Trope movie. Yeah, and I think it is a lot of fun It's nowhere near as good as  some of my favorite 80s movies Like, you know if we throw back to the future in it's kind of whimsical like back to the future is , the themes are right on the hacking part of it does not really hold up just because  It's dated, but I don't think that's, yeah, that's kind of what it is from that point.

Exactly, yeah. That's what we believe it, exactly, if that's what it was back then, then that's what we believe it was. Right. And some movies live in that time period, and this movie is, lives in the 80s. And  I agree with you. If someone out there is like, man, I really love these like fun eighties movies to watch.

This is perfect. Like you can sit down and watch this and have a good time with it, laugh and just point out different things. Like we did. I think it does hold up because of the themes it does. And now I think it holds up more than ever because we're seeing AI infiltrate jobs now, and especially in the creative space, which. 

Horrifying to a lot of creatives out there. It will never replace creative creativity ever I mean it right it will augment but it will never be able to But in our lifetime, but it's becoming a thing and I think it is fighting AI Makes this movie a little bit more relevant now than maybe it was about 10 or 15 years ago Yeah, and so I think  it was an interesting look at something that comes through  and yeah I recommend everybody watch it once I probably wouldn't watch it multiple times in my life,  but for a You know quick watch it was good And I had a fun time with it.

That's fair. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean I should say like the context is again growing up in the suburbs in a very In a , very small bubble and having no culture  It's surprising , this is a like a big Hollywood movie. Would you say 12 millions 12 million budget? Yeah, and  It's very morally clear and all the shitty writing and Stupid tropes And, , over the top acting and really poorly staged stunts.

Yeah. Cannon level stunts are,  Yeah. So I think that's, it's a nice surprise that it actually has some like moral clarity and isn't, , boring about it. Not at all. So it's a qualified, yeah. This movie is entertaining. Yeah. At the bar none, it's entertaining. Yeah, definitely. And before we get out of here, John, I don't know if you're familiar, but we do like to try to do our own IMDB ratings. 

On this movie. , so Aaron brought up a good point. If you remember Aaron's episode, he said, if you, he looks at ratings as , if I give it like.  A 3. 6, I'm saying this movie is better than 36 percent of the movies out there. Oh, right. So, I thought that was an interesting take. Andrew didn't take on to that.

He's kind of giving it a letter grade, which I respect too. So however you want to interpret that, . What is the IMDB scale? It's just out of. Out of 10. Out of 10. It's usually like a decimal. It's usually not like a. Decimal, yeah. 8 or a 7, it's like a 6. 4 or  8. 3 or something like that. Can I give it a Pitchfork rating?

Yeah. Um, , But , we'll start off with you. What would you give this movie?   Man, that's tough.   I would say for the time, I guess six or seven,  but if we, what's the score on IMDB, you're looking at the aggregate score, people who hated it, people who loved it.

 So my, , my score would be more like a eight. Okay. Yeah. That's good. I was going to say like a,  I guess six point nine six point nine. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, what you got Kyle? I was gonna go six point four six point four.  I was at the six point seven range around that area Okay, I thought it was Pretty solid,  it could just because I wouldn't  watch it again Like I was like that drops it below cuz seven to me is something I would definitely catch again Yeah, sevens are gonna be like six point eight to like for me six point eight and above it's gonna be a Rick rewatchable and territory Andrew you want to go ahead and tell us what the seven point one.

So we were all within. Yeah, we're pretty close. So  Yeah,  and we talked about like to some of these movies get juiced the IMDb ratings because people go back and rate movies without Watching them again. So it's the whole point of our show is When you see a movie that like does it hold up and we're talking about this movie like it holds up But it's like it's not great like, you know, it's like a 5.

9 But then you go on to IMDb and you see these like high scores as people that rating these movies that they haven't seen in A long time. So that's why you listen to our show. We do the dirty work for you Right. And then you can go back and rate them appropriately. It's important to remember that when you listen to this show, that we are giving you our subjective opinions as an objective reality for you.

Yes. So whatever we think it  is now what you will believe it is. Yeah. And you're now a Def Con one.  Yes, we are.  So John,  do you want to tell the folks at home what you got going on, where they can find you, where they can learn more about any of the events that Videodrome's throwing on?

Yeah, so we, Videodrome, the, , video store that I work at, we, , do screenings at the Plaza Theater, , and at the Terra Theater once a month, and then some individual smaller things, like at, , Halfway Crooks, , Brewing, we show, , Been out to the Halfway Crooks things, those are a lot of fun. Oh, cool. Yeah.

, I always work that night and never make it. , at the Plaza, , , our next, ,  I guess by the time , this comes on, we will have just shown Love and Pop, the 1998 Japanese movie.

. And, , and then it, , The Terra, we do programs of three in a row, , around a theme like This American Life. And, , we just showed three Kurosawa movies, , his crime movies. And so, , the next, , series is going to be, , three 1980s, Obayashi movies, the director of house. Yeah.

, so yeah, we,  he's rocking the house shirt too. I don't, you can't see this at home everybody, but , I noticed it , when the hoodie went down, I was like, all right, my guy. , yeah, exactly. And so these other movies that are not. Not as crazy as house, but are like in that style. People always come in the store and want more of that stuff, and it hasn't been available in the US until now.

 So we're able to get three restored prints.  , if you haven't seen the movie house from 1977 by , NOCO, , Obayashi, you should grab a friend.  And watch it because it's completely insane. It's one of the most absurd movies I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, it's, but it's phenomenal.

Yeah. We're, so we're giving more of that.  So yeah, we're just every month there's new things the best way to find us is really Instagram That's where we where videodrome publishes most of our upcoming events and , you can follow Videodrome on Blue Sky.

Okay, cool, awesome.  That about wraps us up here today. , you know what we do now. We reach into your childhood nostalgia, pull the movies from your past out. Today we pulled out Wargames. And we found out, it holds up. So go catch it, go watch it.   Catch John at Videodrome. They are amazing over there. They got a lot of great events coming on. Support local theater. Support local film. We'll catch you guys next time.