WarGames with Paul McDonald and Mike Bogue

Written By Paul McDonald

Coming up on the Men at the Movies podcast, we talk about WarGames. Even though it’s forty years old, we find familiar themes with the threat of nuclear war and the use of artificial intelligence. We’ve all had nuclear bombs hit our lives, devastating moments that can give rise to futility. As a result, we can become gun shy, seeing bombs where they don’t exist, listening to computer driven hallucinations. Join us as we discover God’s truth in this movie.

Quotes

  • Many of us live lives of futility, waiting for the bomb to drop.

  • Our lives will eventually be hit by a nuclear bomb. Something devastating will hit.

  • Don’t freak out til you find out.

  • We see bombs that exist that aren’t really there.

  • Sometimes the only way to win is to not play.

  • We put our faith in a system that is broken.

 Themes

  • Predates themes in our movies today:

    • Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One: “Whoever controls the entity, the AI, controls the truth.”

    • Oppenheimer: wrestling over the ethics of making the atomic bomb.

  • Draw of nuclear war movies: threat of extinction level weapons, spectacular vision of the explosions, how would nuclear war change our lives, how would we live in the aftermath

  • The movie tries to balance the playfulness of a teen movie with the terror of the threat of the nuclear war.

  • Threat of AI: What they are reacting to isn’t real, but just on a screen.

  • Threat of Nuclear events: The tension between being ordered to launch while knowing that 20 million people will die if you turn the key.

  • Falken had a nuclear event occur in his life when his wife and son died in a car wreck. He responded with a sense of futility about the future—what’s the point? He had to deal with the horrors of surviving.

Resources

Questions

  • What’s your favorite nuclear war movie?

  • What would an apocalyptic life be like?

  • How would you respond if a nuclear war, or apocalyptic event occurred?

  • How can you maintain a sense of morality and ethics in a post-apocalyptic world?

  • What happens to a society when cultural norms are reset?

  • What things do you sometimes have to dissociate from?

  • What decisions do you trust to computers? What would you leave in the hands of humans?

  • What nuclear bomb has exploded in your life? Did you respond with futility or did you fight?

  • How have dealt with the horrors of surviving the explosions in your life?

  • When have you reacted to something that wasn’t real, but seemed like it?

More info

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Edited and mixed by Grayson Foster

Logo and episode templates by Ian Johnston

Audio quotes performed by Britt Mooney, Paul McDonald, and Tim Willard, taken from Epic (written by John Eldredge) and Song of Albion (written by Stephen Lawhead).

Southerly Change performed by Zane Dickinson, used under license from Shutterstock.

Links:

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