Trapped in Falken's Maze (k3nshi)

I finally got round to re-watching Wargames on DVD last night. Talk about a blast from the past. This film was a huge influence on me. I remember when I first saw it how amazed I was by some of the concepts depicted in the film: the internet, multiplayer online games, speech synthesis, artificial intelligence - and all of this available to a 17 year old kid (Matthew Broderick). Almost unthinkable stuff at the time!

Wargames wasn't the only influence of course, I grew up watching things like: Knight Rider, Automan, Airwolf and Tron. All of them impressed upon me the amazing possibilities that computer technology could enable.

Some of my favourite scenes in Wargames revolve around how the main character, David (Broderick) manages to hack into the military computer system he wants to play games on. The actual scene where you see David's many attempts to find a way into the system is the best depiction of hacking I've ever seen in a film, and a real credit to the director. Trying to depict a very cerebral, tedious and yet compulsive process in the cinematic form certainly isn't easy. Similar scenes in Swordfish and other films are a complete joke.

But before David can even begin to hack the military system, he needs to turn to some of his older, more experienced friends for help. David doesn't know where to start in the process of hacking the military system, but one of the nerds certainly does:

"The first game on the list - go right through's Falken's Maze!"

This leads David onto an obsessive path of discovery as tries to learn how to bend the system to his will. I guess I know how he feels.