This smells like a bad idea. Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess… or would that now be Minecraft?
This is what cutting edge computing (and hair) looked like in 1983.
Has it finally moved beyond a cliché to say that Hollywood’s entirely and absolutely out of ideas? Deadline reports that MGM’s hired a scriptwriter to have a fresh crack at 1983’s WarGames, a film that should be near to the heart of geeks of a certain age. Yeah, I’m one of them.
WarGames has been reformatted a couple of times over the years — there was a moderately decent Playstation game, as well as a sequel, WarGames: The Dead Code. The less said about that, the better. But the original is rather solidly a product of its age, when the concept of hooking up a computer via a chunky accoustic coupler was seen as futuristic computer wizardry to a large part of its audience, and the spectre of nuclear war felt very real. In the Internet age, are we really all that scared of computers any more?
Now that I think about it, it can’t have moved beyond a cliché, because then it’d wrap around the other side and become fresh and interesting. Call me jaded, but I don’t think the word “fresh” applies here.
Leo
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 11:21 AMI think a Fresh approach would be to have an AI computer hack into a games server to play Battlefield 3 or Modern Warfare and troll kids. It could also trash some real life places so the Gamers realize it is happening for real when they hear it on the news. The computer could then virtualise some maps in their neighborhood and send in the marines to take out the gamers and cover its tracks.
Luke
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 11:31 AMOh dear god no… wont somebody please think of the children.
AntiRemake
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 6:30 PMOh dear god no… won’t someone please think of my childhood!
Penmonicus
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 11:42 AMI’m sure this will be something that will wind up sharing little other than the name of the original.
And maybe a Matthew Broderick cameo.
The Gremlin
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 12:11 PMPlaying the part of Falken!
rekuhs
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 12:42 PMFFS leave it alone!
Daz
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 12:44 PMJust goes to prove that all originality has gone from Hollywood.
Sixoffour
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 1:00 PMThis is going to be as bad as when they remade Rollerball.
glennc
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 at 3:36 PManother pointless remake like conan