80’s Techno Thriller Double Feature: The Manhattan Project (1986) and WarGames (1983)

nThe 80’s were a fun decade for me; I lived through the whole Breakdance craze of the 80’s, with b-boys and girls breakin’ on the streets, I witnessed many a dance battle during my lunch break in school, I lived for collecting comic books (still do actually), I played street football, I watched ‘V’ and ‘Knight Rider’ religiously on television, and though I was having a blast, I wasn’t fully aware that the 80’s was also a decade were people lived “under the shadow of a mushroom cloud” meaning that nuclear holocaust loomed heavy on everyone’s mind. Dying in a nuclear attack was a very real possibility on peoples’ minds back in those days. Those were the days of the Cold War, when the Americans and the Russians had the whole world frightened with their nuclear possibilities. Though neither of the countries ever engaged in actual war, they had the nuclear capabilities to erase themselves from the planet, all they had to was press a button and we’d vanished in a matter of seconds, turned to cinders by political madmen.

nDuring the 50’s, people were very afraid of the Atomic Bomb,nthis fear seeped into popular culturenand movies (as fears commonly do) and as a result we got a lot of movies aboutngiant animals who mutated due to radiation exposure. Films like Godzilla (1954),nTarantula (1955) and Them! (1954) appearednas a direct result of this Atomic Fear. nThe Cold War, which supposedly ended in 1991 spawned its own nuclearnthemed series of films: The China Syndrome (1979), The Atomic Café (1982),nSilkwood (1983), Testament (1983) and the two films I’ll be talking aboutntoday: WarGames (1983) and The Manhattan Project (1986), among other films madenfor television. I decided to talk about both of these films together becausenthey are both about whiz kids who figure out a way to mess with nuclear weaponsnand the governments defense systems.

nIn John Badham’s WarGames we meet David (played by a very youngnMatthew Broderick) a computer whiz kid whose figured out a way to use computersnand the internet in his favor. He hacks into airlines and reserves flights tonParis for him and his friends. With a few keystrokes, he both changes hisngrades and breaks into a video game manufacturers’ data banks to steal theirnlatest video games. Funny thing is how out dated all the technology in thisnfilm is! I mean floppy disks where the size of vinyl records for crying out loud!nTo use the internet they had to hook up a real phone to a machine…it was funnynto see all this old technology that at the time must have seemed like cuttingnedge stuff. Yet it’s still cool to see David hack his way through anything,neven if he is using ancient technology, it’s the principal that counts. The guyncan get away with bloody murder with a few keystrokes! How cool!

nFor David, problems arrive one day when he accidentally hacksninto a government computer that simulates nuclear war scenarios. David innocentlyndecides to play with the computer, thinking it’s just a game, but suddenly, thengame turns real as the computer decides to really activate the nation’s nuclearnarsenal. Things get pretty intense, because the fate of the human race rests innthe hands of this kid and ‘Joshua’ the governments computer. This film remindednme a lot of all of those movies where computers go bad and want to destroyneverything. Films like Stanly Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in whichnHAL, the computer that flies a spaceship goes rogue and decides to turn againstnits creators. It also reminded me of Eagle Eye (2008) starring Shia LaBeouf,nyet another film that presents us with the idea of a computer that startsnthinking on its own and decides to kill everyone in government because accordingnto it, they are not doing a good job of running the country. This also happensnin John Carpenter’s Dark Star (1974), where an astronaut has to actually reasonnwith a computer (by philosophizing with it) in order to make it understand thatnearth doesn’t have to be blown up with a nuclear device. In WarGames we have ancomputer named ‘Joshua’. Will Joshuanlearn that with nuclear war nobody wins?

nWarGames is all about how no one really wants to blow eachnother up to smithereens, not even the guys who are supposed to press the buttonnwant to do it. I liked how WarGames explored that idea; if the time came tonpush a button that would result in the death of 20 million people, would you donit? Would you press that button? Would you want to be the one responsible fornthat much death? The film helps us see that no one wants to have that in their conscience;nthat everybody is that much happier when the bombs don’t go off. It’s the ideanthat nuclear power is simply too much power in the hands of us bumbling,nidiotic, mistake making humans. In the words of one of the characters in thenfilm: “Your defense system sucks!”

nThere’s lots of tension in those scenes when the computer isnjust about to blow us all to hell, and I have to hand it to director JohnnBadham for playing with the visuals during those last scenes in the war room. Duringnthose scenes, Badham expertly plays with sound, music and editing as if he wasndirecting a philharmonic orchestra, great stuff. WarGames wasn’t the only technologyngone bad movie Badham did, he also directed Blue Thunder (1983) where an ultranmodern helicopter built for surveillance is taken by its pilot, who has ancrisis of conscience as to the helicopters real purpose. He also directed ShortnCircuit (1986), a film in which a robot designed for military purposes becomesnconscious of itself and decides that he doesn’t want to kill, he’d rather dancenwith Ally Sheedy and chase grass hoppers. So I’d say that this anti-military,nanti-war message has been a constant in many of Badham’s films.

nIn WarGames, David accidentally hacks into the governmentsncomputer and thinks he is playing a game called “Global Thermonuclear War” withnthe governments computer, but when he realizes what he’s done, he does his bestnto stop the computer from starting World War III, which makes him the hero ofnthe film. This is not the case with The Manhattan Project (1986), whichnportrays the whiz kid as more of a threat because it puts the power of thenatomic bomb in the hands of a high school whiz kid named Paul, who thinks itnwould be a good idea to steal plutonium from a government laboratory that’s innhis neighborhood; in order to make his own home made atomic bomb and expose thenmilitaries secret nuclear experiments. Apparently,nnobody knows that in this facility the military experimenting with plutoniumnand nuclear power. Paul thinks the people of his town have a right to know this,nso he plans on building a bomb and submitting it as a project for his highnschool science project.

nThe whole thing starts when one of the scientists working innthe military facility wants to date Paul’s mom. In order to get the kid to likenhim, the scientist (played by John Lithgow) decides to give Paul a tour of thenlab. Paul is thrilled to get a tour of the place, because he is a geeky geniusnand he loves all that techno stuff. But he soon realizes that these scientistsnare playing with plutonium. He then decides to steal some of it to create hisnown bomb.

nAfter that, it’s a game of “let’s chase the whiz kid beforenhe blows us all up” type of deal. Again, same as in WarGames, there are somenvery tense moments when everyone is afraid to be blow to bits. That whole scenenwhere they are attempting to disarm the bomb, was all played very well, thenfilm ends up being entertaining; the difference between WarGames and ThenManhattan Project is that The Manhattan Project gets a little more philosophicalnwith its ideas; it has scenes of the scientist and the kid reasoning out thingsnabout the nature of nuclear weapons and the reason for their existence, I guess in a way it has more of an edge to it.

nAnother difference between these two films is the way theirnmain characters are handled. While David in WarGames comes off as a hero, thensame cannot be said for Paul in The Manhattan Project. Some people find thencharacter of Paul controversial because he contradicts himself. He wants to exposenthe “evil government lab” but creating a nuclear bomb himself, and putsneveryone around him in peril. Doesn’t Paul think he’s exposing himself, hisnfamily and friends, not to mention his town and hell, a couple of states to thendangers of nuclear holocaust? These questions are definitely worth considering,nbecause when we get down to it, he is actually a terrorist. I guess one couldnargue that he’s trying to make a point in a very extreme way, or that the kidnis simply a confused, messed up product of the times. He is scared of dying inna nuclear attack, but then again, Paul is never portrayed that way. Had theynportrayed him as a kid who is up to date with world news, and worried aboutnnuclear attacks, maybe it would have made more sense. Still, I get what theynwere trying to say with the film, and it’s an interesting premise, also, at onenpoint Paul finds a four leaf clover and he thinks this is a mutation that comesnas a result of the secret experiments, so that motivates him to do something, Inguess he just went about it the wrong way. My only gripe with the film is that Paul’snactions defy logic and reason, and him being a whiz kid and all, he could havencome up with something better. His actions come off as arrogant, he might wantnto expose the military, but it also seems he simply wants to have the glory ofnbeing the first kid to create a nuclear bomb in his own house, I just think they could havendeveloped the character a bit further.

nI personally liked WarGames a bit more because it’s morenexciting, more cinematic. The Manhattan Project has a television movie feel tonit. It does have the excellent John Lithgow to liven things up though; and I’venalways enjoyed his performances, in my book he is a solid actor that shouldnhave had a bigger career. In the end, I don’t think The Manhattan Project is anbad film, it does take its anti-war message across, it just does so in anstrange way. The main character doesn’t come off as likable at all. In the end,nhe comes off as a crazy kid who could have killed a hell of a lot of people. Hencertainly could have found different ways to expose the military base, likenmaybe a protest? But I guess then we wouldn’t have a movie. In the end, what Inlike about both of these films is the message they want to give us: blowingnpeople up with nuclear weapons is just not cool, pass it on.

nRating WarGames (1983): 4 out of 5

n Rating The ManhattannProject (1986): 3 ½ out of 5