Collectible of the Week: Electroman (Ideal)

In the mid-1970s, post-Watergate, post-Vietnam, post-Energy Crisis, America was looking for a few good, nostalgic superheroes; ones who could wash away the national blues with the time-honored principles of truth, justice, and the American way. On television, The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman spoke meaningfully to that urgent desire, racking up high ratings and meeting with tremendous audience popularity.

On toy shelves, it was much the same story, The Six Million Dollar Man line from Kenner was big business, and left the other toy companies scrambling to compete. Mattel came up with Pulsar: The Ultimate Man of Adventure (a man in a black-and-red jogging suit with a transparent torso). Hasbro re-fitted G.I. Joe as the futuristic Super Joe. And Ideal came up with perhaps the most bizarre superhero toy of them all, the 16 inch-tall Electroman!

Described as "Ideal's amazing electronic sentinel, Electromanwears a bright red, black and yellow uniform with a dazzling "E" (for Electroman, we presume…) emblazoned on his barrel-sized torso. He also wears tall black boots and a yellow cape.

The hero's oddest fashion statement, however, remains his elaborate helmet, a clunky red affair that shoots laser beams (really just a flashlight). By adjusting a knob on the base of Electroman's neck, you can change the settings of the laser ray from Stun, to Radar, to Guard.

Toy catalogs described the settings this way: "Electroman's computer brain can detect the slightest movement and sound a warning...In radar position, he sends out flickering light that changes to a steady beam when he finds an enemy position."

Electroman's nemesis was sold separately, a brown hulking monster ("half man/half monster") with red eyes, white fangs and a reflector embedded in his head.  This villain was called  "Zogg The Terrible" and described on his black box as "A Creature so awesome only Electroman or you can defeat him."

Zogg also came with a black and red laser gun which you could use to zap him, if you didn't want to summon Electroman and his strange head gear. When hit with Electroman's laser ray, Zogg would topple over.Mission accomplished.

An odd historical footnote: Electroman actually shared his colorful costume (but not his helmet) with Black Magic Crissy, a tall African-American woman in white platform shoes. She came with five different hair attachments, but I'm not sure what her superpowers were.

From the Archive: Catfish (2010 )

Given the importance of "cat-fishing" in the current news cycle, I thought it might be interesting to feature this documentary review from the archive today.

Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman's documentary Catfish is a cautionary tale for the Internet Age, a compelling and yet surprisingly emotional reminder to not always believe everything you see online. 

The controversial 2010 film is also a testament to how important the online or electronic experience has become to our society and our relationships in the twenty-first century, an epoch when you "sext" your prospective partner without ever having met her face-to-face, and when photos on Facebook are readily accepted as truthful identification of strangers.

Catfish depicts a strange and unnerving chapter in the life of successful New York photographer Yaniv Schulman, whose work was recently published in a prominent magazine. 

Following that publication, Yaniv  is contacted by 8-year old Abby Faccio, a child prodigy who produces a startling and life-like painting of his photo, and who, after that introduction, keeps sending him further gifts.  Each package has a new painting in it, and more: T-shirts and the like.

As Yaniv's brother and friend -- the film's directors -- record him in his studio responding to Abby's unusual artistry, Yaniv is drawn deeper and deeper into her world.  For instance, he learns of her beautiful and eccentric mother, Angela, and their home in Michigan.  One day, a snowstorm there topples their 150-year old maple tree, and it has to be bulldozed.  Yaniv reflects that their life sounds great "...at least from Facebook."

And then, finally, Yaniv starts to develop a long-distance relationship with Megan, Abby's 19-year old sister.  Megan, I should add, is a gorgeous ballet dancer who plays the cello and guitar, and rides horses on her farm.

Recognize this face?  It's Megan Faccio, or is it?

Soon, Yaniv is head-over-heels in love with a woman he has never met, and Catfish portrays this budding romance in totally electronic terms, with a dazzling flurry of images and posts on Facebook, with IM chats, music downloads, and even some establishing shot imagery that purposefully suggests the layout of Google Maps. 

YouTube makes an important appearance in the film too.  We get extreme close-ups of Internet transmission buttons reading "Send" and "Confirm."  The impression is instant connection, not to mention instant gratification.

But Yaniv's keyboard love life comes into question unexpectedly when he learns that the songs Megan has downloaded on Facebook and represented as her own work are actually already on YouTube; the recordings of other artists. 

Appropriately, the photographer begins to suspect that there is much more going on than meets the eye, and commences a road trip to Michigan (with his filmmaker friends, naturally...) to meet Megan, Angela and Abby face-to-face.  He wants to know if he's been lied to.    He wants to know if the Faccios are "complete psychopaths."

To tell you anything further about Catfish would probably ruin the effect of the film's heartfelt, even devastating third act.  But suffice it to say, before you learn the "secret" of Megan, Angela and Abby Faccio, these documentarians wring significant anxiety and mystery out of their cautionary tale. 

A 2:00 am, thick-of-the-night stop at an apparently abandoned horse farm supposedly belonging to Megan will have you on the edge of your seat, simply because you have no idea what to expect.  And once it is established that dishonesty is involved with the Facebook profiles, the movie makes the most with very little in terms of budget and location, causing you to wonder how strange, diabolical, or weird the journey's destination and resolution might be.  This is a brilliant feint, especially given the film's valedictory moments.

I wrote above that Catfish is controversial, and that's because many people (including some critics) don't believe it is a legitimate documentary.  Rather, they believe that elements of the film (particularly how things are set-up in the first half) are deliberately staged. 

I will state, unequivocally, that there is no way that anything that occurs in the third act could possibly be staged, or faked.  

Rather, it is one of the most unexpected, heart-rending twists you could rightly imagine, and no conventional Hollywood narrative would have dared taken this distinctly un-glamorous direction. The person who is the subject of this third act, in that Michigan house, does not give a movie performance; but delivers - staggeringly - the entirety of a real personality; of an individual life.  She presents everything that Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter can't, even at their pinnacle.   This human portrait that ends the film is so powerful it takes the breath away.

Whether any part of Catfish is faked may be of great interest for the historical record, but ultimately it doesn't matter in terms of how well the movie works. 

In this case, the idea that a documentary may not be exactly what it claims simply mirrors the subject matter; the idea that Facebook and other social networks aren't venues of strict truth.  As readers here well know, I  steadfastly believe that cinema reaches an apex of  quality when form echoes content, and so -- even if artificial to some extent -- Catfish passes that test.  The film's ultimately questionable form echoes the questionable content of Megan, Angela, and Abby's online, electronic lives.

Romance via Photoshop.

What's the take-away from Catfish? Perhaps only that human beings are strange, multi-faceted creatures, and that our Internet avatars are alter-egos that may represent many things, but not the totality of that human equation.  Those online "lives" may represent fragments of a personality.  Or projections of who we are...or would like to be.  They can be manifestations of fantasy, desire, or, at times, of a need to escape unpleasant reality.  But they, can't, finally, be the full person.

I've rarely seen a movie get at this relatively thoughtful and deep notion better than Catfish.  To quote Yaniv, this movie may really "freak you out," or it may, unexpectedly, rouse in you deep feelings of...sympathy.  

And the caution in the cautionary tale?  The Internet is life all right, only it is life Photo-shopped.

The Films of 1983 John Badham Double Feature: Blue Thunder

John Badham had a banner year in 1983 as the director of two blockbuster techno-thrillers: War Games and Blue Thunder. 

Both films involve the bugaboo of advanced computer technology, which was, generally speaking, the broad theme of many genre films in 1983.  Films from Superman III and Never Say Never Again to the anthology Nightmares circled around the frightening notion that our technology might run amok, or at the very least fall into the wrong hands. 

Blue Thunder is among the most entertaining of this 1983 techno-bunch, and it pushes the pedal hard on action and spectacular fireworks. Although some of the character dialogue is undeniably clunky, the movie nonetheless accurately forecasts the rise of the modern surveillance state, one fact that makes the film relevant in 2012.  Today, however, the helicopter prototype’s spying capability looks positively quaint.

Certainly, Blue Thunder owes some creative debt to 1982’s Firefox, another film concerning a deadly hi-tech aircraft and a protagonist battling PTSD following the Vietnam War.  Yet the action here is so rousing that it is easy to gloss over the film’s occasionally contrived plot mechanisms or its transparent debt to other cinematic thrillers.

In fact, Blue Thunder was so well-received by audiences of the day that it spawned a TV spin-off (also titled Blue Thunder), a terrific TV knock-off (Airwolf), and a model kit of the titular vehicle, which I owned, built…and cherished.  Wish I still had it…

Although this film is nearly thirty years old, Blue Thunder’s visceral obsession with state-of-the-art aerial combat (over a modern American city, Los Angeles, no less), permits it to hold up much better than WarGames.  Also, the film remains relevant in part because of the strongly enunciated social commentary about man and his machines. 

In short, machines don’t yet boast the capacity for morality, and so man must decide how to use his new toys.  In Frank Murphy -- a veteran who witnessed immorality among men in Vietnam -- the audience gets a hero who represents mankind’s inherent struggle against entrenched power, and power unconcerned with the good of the many, but rather the riches of a few.  Yet despite being outnumbered and outgunned, Murphy won’t let the machine take over, even if that outcome is precisely what big government and big business apparently desire.

In gazing intently at conspiracy and corruption (not to mention the nexus of government and big business government contractors), Blue Thunder in some fashion feels like a product of the 1970s, the great age of conspiracy movies.  But the strong focus on computers and technology also gives it the Video Game Age sheen of the early 1980s. 

In whatever way one chooses to parse the film, Blue Thunder remains a hell of a lot of fun.

“I love morals, and the moral of this story is: If you're walkin' on eggs, don't hop.”

Cop Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider) and his rookie co-pilot Lymangood (Daniel Stern) of Los Angeles Air Support test fly a new urban pacification helicopter nicknamed “Blue Thunder,” over the city streets, and while on surveillance or “whisper” mode, learn of a wide-ranging conspiracy involving corruption and murder. 

The makers of Blue Thunder prototype have been making trouble in L.A.’s barrio so the city will requisition more copters to manage the crime problem before the upcoming 1984 Olympics.  This top secret project to create urban mayhem is called Project T.H.O.R. (Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response).  Worse, Murphy’s old nemesis from the Vietnam War, Colonel Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell) is one of the key conspirators behind the scenes.

Murphy and Lymangood -- or JAFO (Just Another F’ing Observer) -- secretly videotape a conversation about T.H.O.R. from the cockpit of Blue Thunder but soon become fugitives from the police and City Hall.  When Lymangood is murdered by Cochrane’s goons, Murphy steals Blue Thunder and asks his girlfriend, Kate (Candy Clark) to deliver the incriminating videotape to a local news station.

While Kate eludes the police on the ground, Blue Thunder and Murphy are called upon to battle police helicopters, state-of-the-art Air force jets (armed with heat-seeking missiles), and Cochrane’s gun ship…

“You're really riding with the angels, sweetheart.”

The Blue Thunder screenplay by the late Dan O’Bannon and Don Jakoby certainly sets up some amazing action sequences, but it’s also clumsy and contrived at crucial points. 

For instance, McDowell utters his character’s catchphrase -- “Catch you later!” -- a whopping three times in the first forty five minutes of the film, thus paving the way for a triumphant turnaround from Murphy at the denouement.  When Murphy blows up Cochrane’s gunship, he says, inevitably, “Catch you later!”  The laborious repetition of the phrase is so contrived and stupid that it’s easy to see the punch line coming.  That established, the audience I saw the film with in the theater in 1983 absolutely loved it, so who am I to complain?

Similarly, there’s a weird scene early in the film wherein Kate, Murphy’s girlfriend, takes a wrong turn on the way to a Sunday family outing with Frank and her son.  She recklessly drives her car into oncoming traffic to get back on course, and, well, let’s just say it’s an egregiously hazardous act, especially with a child on board.  But, of course, Kate’s slightly-crazy nature (not to mention demolition-derby driving skills…) are important ingredients in the film’s climax, so again, we’re seeing a laborious and somewhat clumsy set-up.

You could probably make the same point about all the exposition regarding Murphy’s aerodynamically-impossible “loop” in a chopper.  It gets brought up so many times before the film’s end that we just know there’s going to be a “pay off.”  

Certainly, Blue Thunder is not alone in harvesting seeds like this early in the film, for cropping at the climax. It’s just that the set-ups here are so brazenly transparent.

Yet here’s the thing.  You absolutely will not care.

The film’s final thirty minutes feature jaw-dropping stunt after jaw-dropping stunt, both on the ground and in the air.  And Blue Thunder vets this material with almost no fakery, which is incredible.  As an adrenaline ride, then, Blue Thunder succeeds wildly.  This film also made me realize just how long it’s been since we’ve seen an action movie like this one; one that doesn’t rely, to some unhealthy extent, on digital effects.  The car chase, in particular, is riveting. 

It may not be politically-correct to write this, but there’s a thrill that comes from knowing that movie stuntmen and stunt pilots really performed the actions in question.  Here, some of the helicopter stunts near the ground, and weaving in and around a sewer and bridge system, are downright stunning (and terrifying). As a result, you leave a viewing of the movie feeling exhilarated.

Blue Thunder in action.

And again...

To its credit, Blue Thunder also finds a perfect metaphor for the relationship between man and machine. Murphy wears a clunky-looking wrist-watch that can count up to a minute, or sixty seconds.

As it does so, it displays a very 1980s-style, spiro-graph-looking graphic of a circle moving towards completion.  Murphy utilizes this stop-watch function to test his sanity….several times-a-day.  If he can still tell time, or possess a “feeling” about the reality of time, he’s sure he isn’t going insane. 

In terms of psychology, this timed “sanity test” might be considered a little bit hokey.  In terms of metaphor, it’s actually pretty good.  The watch, like Blue Thunder itself, is a machine that humans can control…if they choose to do so.  

Technology too is a test, then, to be mastered, not something that should be allowed to oppress or control mankind. Murphy understands this fact of life.  He masters his life (represented by the watch) and uses that same determination to master the helicopter, and, finally, make an ethical final decision about it.  If he can master terrifying memories (represented by the Vietnam flashbacks), then certainly Murphy and others can master machines and computers.

Mastering self; mastering the machine.

At its heart, Blue Thunder concerns this idea, that man must rein in and manage his machines, and not vice-versa, or humanity will pay the price.  In addition, however, the film worries about new technologies which could diminish privacy and create a Big Brother-type world where no one’s secrets are safe. 

At one point, Murphy and Lymangood track a motorcycle cop to an assignation with a bored housewife.  They listen in on him making love to her, and then, afterwards, erase the tape, realizing that it is a horrible invasion of privacy.  Again, Murphy acts as the film’s moral barometer.  That motorcycle cop may be a laughing stock, and he may be engaged in a morally-questionable act, but, as Murphy concludes, people deserve to have their “quickies” in peace.  

That’s a silly example, perhaps, of what’s at stake in the modern surveillance society, but like the stop-watch metaphor, it concisely makes an important point.  If we are to remain free, we must have some surveillance free zones where we can simply be….human.  We must have some places to let down and simply be ourselves, without fear of being observed, or worse, blackmailed.

What happens when machines are everywhere, and they see and hear everything?

From an amazingly graphic scene of naked calisthenics (!) early-on to a great supporting performance by Warren Oates as Murphy’s put-upon superior at Air Support, Blue Thunder flies by with almost no wasted energy, and a surfeit of good humor, intrigue and action.  If I had to select one film today, I’d probably choose Blue Thunder over WarGames, in terms of Badham’s oeuvre, in part because of the performances, in part because of the rousing action, and in part because of that gorgeous helicopter, which even today looks like absolute poetry in motion. 

The film’s final scene, which sees Murphy pulp Blue Thunder in a final act of defiance to City Hall, makes perfect sense in terms of the film’s theme and story line.  But I still hate to see the old girl go up in a fireball.  

Of course, It’s the right climactic move for a movie about conspiracies and about concerns over privacy.  But the thirteen year old kid who first saw Blue Thunder just knew there should have been further adventures, with Murphy again mastering the (wonderful) machine.

The Films of 1983, John Badham Double Feature: WarGames

The genre films of 1983 focused largely on two subjects.  The first was computers and computer video games.  And the second was nuclear war with the Soviet Union.  

And in some rare instances -- such as WarGames (1983) -- the two topics aligned perfectly.

The year 1983 saw Richard Pryor’s super-computer menace the Man of Steel in Superman III, and Sean Connery’s James Bond back in action in Never Say Never Again to battle Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer) over a video game of (nuclear) “Global Domination.”

Meanwhile, in the horror anthology Nightmares, Emilio Estevez got zapped into an arcade game to combat the artificial intelligence called “The Bishop of Battle.” 

In terms of nuclear war, 1983 was the year of the terrifying Nicholas Meyer TV-movie The Day After.   That unforgettable film showcased the gruesome effects of a nuclear war on Americans in Kansas.  Another affecting film of 1983 concerning nuclear war was Testament, starring Jane Alexander.

Why the Hollywood obsession with both computerized games and nuclear war in 1983? 

On the former front, Atari, Intellivision, the Commodore Vic20 and other technological platforms had altered the American landscape permanently in terms of home media gaming and computing.  Suddenly, computers were making the move into every middle-class home in the nation.  The “future” was here.

On the latter front, President Ronald Reagan had been swept into office in 1980 on a platform of economic recovery, but he was also, at least initially, a hawk regarding nuclear war.  In fact, his administration was a strong proponent for a concept called winnable nuclear war, as the historical record clearly demonstrates.

President Reagan’s adviser, Richard Pipes, in 1982, for instance, noted the “probability of nuclear war is forty percent….and our strategy is winnable nuclear war.” 

Meanwhile, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense, T.K. Jones remarked in 1981 that “The United States could recover from an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union in just two to four years…Nuclear war is not nearly as devastating as we have been led to believe.  If there are enough shovels to go around, everybody’s going to make it.  Dig a hole in the ground, cover it up with a couple of doors, and then cover the doors with three feet of dirt…”

In 1981 President Reagan himself noted that there could (safely) be a “limited nuclear war in Europe.” His vice-president, George H.W. Bush, in 1980 even described how to prove victorious in the nuclear war scenario:  “You have a survivability of command and control, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of your citizens, and you have the capability that inflicts more damage on the opposition than it can inflict upon you.  That’s the way you have a winner.”

Meanwhile, on February 5, 1981, future Secretary of the Interior James Watt noted to Congress that there might not be "many future generations...before the Lord returns."  

When one couples the pervasive rah-rah attitude about waging winnable nuclear war with the apocalyptic Christianist visions of many Administration officials, including Reagan himself -- as was reported in People Magazine in December 1983 (where he explained that the eighties represented the first time in history that so many Biblical prophecies were coming true...) -- one can understand why many Americans, especially young ones, felt very afraid about the future

Some have credited his viewing of The Day After (1983) as the very thing that turned Ronald Reagan from an ardent warrior in the winnable-nuclear war sweepstakes to a staunch proponent for peace with the Soviet Union. He had to face down the more right-wing elements of his own party -- including Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (who wrote a letter to the Washington Post urging the president not to give up the nuclear store) -- to wage that fight

Today, we can be grateful for President Reagan’s change of heart, and for his persistence at Geneva and Reykjavik in the mid-to-late 1980s, but WarGames -- released in 1983 -- very clearly obsesses on the inherent madness of the “winnable” nuclear war scenario; the very attitude still prevalent in our national defense establishment in 1982.

Specifically, WarGames sees advanced computers as bringing man one step closer to all-out nuclear Armageddon, primarily because machines don’t boast any sense of morality. 

If men can't act according to human decency and conscience, what are the chances their machines will? 

For a movie about the end of the world, however, WarGames is surprisingly sweet and gentle in its prognosis. The “villainous” computer that nearly initiates World War III is treated with humanity by the film's protagonist, and eventually taught the error of its ways. It is “schooled” by the best of the human race -- kids -- so that it understands that the only way to win a nuclear war is simply not to play. 

Interestingly, the case the humans make in the film is not one explicitly about morality (which a machine can’t fathom, I suppose), but about futility, as empirically demonstrated by numbers..  The computer runs through a nearly-infinite series of test war simulations in a matter of seconds and determines that, in every conceivable permutation of thermonuclear war, there is no winner.  

Why engage in a game in which there is no victor?

Nearly thirty years after it premiered, WarGames remains a lot of fun, even if it is not as powerful as it once was.  In particular, the John Badham film features some deft visuals and certainly has a lot of heart.  Of course, the threat of nuclear apocalypse no longer hangs over the world and so it is easier, in some sense, to dismiss the film and its eighties era fears as fantasies, or relics of a time long gone.  

Robbed of its timely currency, WarGames loses some impact in 2012 and even seems dull at spots.  It’s a good film, to be certain, but I remember seeing it in 1983 and thinking how terribly plausible it all seemed.  Watching it this weekend, I was struck by pleasant feelings of nostalgia, but not consumed with excitement or fear.

 “Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War.”

Hoping to preview a new exciting game from a company called Protovision, high-school student and computer whiz David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) accidentally hacks into a computer at NORAD, the W.O.P.R. (War Operations Plan Response).  

David engages the machine in a game of Global Thermonuclear War, unaware that the game could have catastrophic real life ramifications.

After David is arrested by officials at NORAD, he learns that the machine is still playing the war game, and that only some know-how insight from its creator, Dr. Falken (John Wood) can stop W.O.P.R., or “Joshua.”  David escapes from custody and with his girlfriend, Jennifer (Ally Sheedy), sets out to find Falken, now a recluse following the death of his family.

At first, Falken is unwilling to help, believing that “extinction is part of the natural order,” but David and Jennifer soon persuade him to help them stop the countdown to nuclear Armageddon. 

“People sometimes make mistakes.”

WarGames opens with a frightening scenario. Two military men in a bunker are given the order to launch nuclear missiles and, in essence, destroy 20 million lives.  

One man can’t do it.  One man can. But without both men on the same page, the missiles don’t fire. 

Upon audit of this event, the Army and Administration officials are very upset.

If the President wants to launch a nuclear attack, he can’t have a 22% failure rate because his soldiers have an outbreak of morality over causing mass murder, can he?

Instead of honoring human morality, the Armed Forces and Administration decide that the way to remedy this situation is to remove mankind from the loop entirely; to take men out of those launch stations and replace them with computer relays that operate automatically, and are connected to a machine called W.O.P.R.

In other words, it is better to double down on the concept of winnable nuclear war than to question if global self-destruction and mass murder are actually rational courses of action.

This opening sequence remains one of WarGames' finest.  It is tense, well-acted, and it immediately sets the stakes.  We quickly sympathize with the soldiers tasked with destroying the world, and gasp at how stupid the bureaucrats are.  They want to have their nuclear war no matter what, and are not going to let a little thing like individual conscience stop them.  By stumbling down this particularly repugnant path (and never looking back…), they nearly doom the entire human race to extinction.

On a much more human and intimate level, WarGames also proves intriguing today because it understands that the future of human race involves, largely, people gazing at screens.  

In this movie, there are big screens, little screens, arcade game screens, home computer screens, and wall-sized screens displaying Missile Command-like graphics, not to mention Tic-Tac-Toe playing boards.  

Plainly, the idea here is that man has crossed a threshold into a new world, one where computers are at the center of every facet of life, whether it is playing games, booking airline tickets, or waging war.  And yes, this observation is prophetic in terms of 1983's understanding of the future.  Today, we do all those things by computer on a regular basis, and many of us spend eight-hours a day, five days a week gazing at monitor screens.

Screens, screens everywhere...

Would you like to play a game?

Accordingly, several times throughout WarGames, director Badham cuts to images of these myriad screens, and we detect a human face reflected upon them.  This image could be considered a visual way of “boxing in” the characters’ usable space in the composition, positioning them in a frame-within-a-frame, and thus revealing their entrapment or enslavement by the machine.   

Or it could be, perhaps more trenchantly, a way of suggesting a shared world.  People like David are seen, literally, inside the confines of the computer screens, via their reflections.  Have we built "children" that will one day be our equals?

The question this brand of composition raises is simple: Are we a reflection of our computers?  Or are they a reflection of us?  If we fail to teach our machines our morality, how can they accurately reflect us, their masters and "parents"?  

Contrarily, we could ask: do the computers we stare at all day succeed, instead, in “de-humanizing” us, turning matters of life and death into exercises in statistics, percentages and other equations?

What happens to mankind when life-and-death decisions are reduced to math?  In examining that question, WarGames is a cautionary tale about handing over too much authority, and ceding too much humanity, to computers.

The frequent compositions in WarGames that reveal computer screens, and human reflections “locked” inside them, suggest in uncomfortable ways, a fear of computers and technology, but also a fear of deeper symbiosis with our tools and instrumentation.   If the world were destroyed in the scenario presented by this film, it would be because we failed to make our machines a real reflection of our hopes and dreams, it seems.  It will be because we have failed as parents.

Are we reflections of our creations?

Or are they reflections of us?

In some oblique way, WarGames also implies that self-annihilation is in our very nature.  Falken suggests that “nature knows when to give up,” and seems to believe that man has reached that threshold because he has constructed machines -- computerized sons and daughters, essentially -- who lack our conscience and capacity to care.   Only when W.O.P.R. creates a “computer enhanced hallucination” of the end of the world do people readily detect how they are gambling with the world’s future, and humanity’s future by handing over control of our weaponry to the machines.

One quality I have always admired about the film involves the solution to this problem.  There isn’t some all-out effort to destroy or unplug W.O.P.R. in WarGames.  Instead, David runs the seemingly-curious machine through the rounds of Tic-Tac-Toe so it can understand futility; how two sides of equal strength can fight to a draw…but  no better. 

This solution suggests that machines are not really such bad sorts after all, if they can -- like us -- gain practical experience.  Fortunately, W.O.P.R. can play a few thousand simulations of Tic-Tac-Toe and Global Thermonuclear War in a few minutes and arrive at the conclusion that there is no winning strategy.   He just needs to be taught, and humanity needs to teach him.

In the character of Falken, we very much see this idea of a “father” figure.  He has even named W.O.P.R. “Joshua” after his dead son.  But because W.O.P.R. is a machine, Falken has been able to walk away from his creation both physically and emotionally, and become a kind of absentee parent.  When David communicates with W.O.P.R. as Dr. Falken by using his password, there even seems to be a longing on the machine’s part for his father’s presence.  He seems to have missed him, after a fashion.  

In many ways, that idea of being “responsible parents” to our technology is more timely today than the nuclear countdown or thriller aspects of WarGames.  The technology is different in 2012, but the problem, perhaps, hasn't really changed.

I remember first seeing WarGames in 1983 and being absolutely terrified by it.  Today, that emotional response seems a little silly, given the film’s abundant sense of humor and the jokey scenes involving Broderick and Sheedy as they hack into NORAD and evade capture. 

But what’s impossible to convey if you didn’t live through the eighties is just how pervasive the fear of nuclear war was, circa 1980 – 1983.  I remember going to sleep almost every night and worrying about nuclear war.  

Where would we go to survive?  How would we live?  What if it happened when I was away at college, and I couldn't re-connect with my family?  

These were not remote, intellectual issues for cerebral or dispassionate debate.  

As a thirteen year old, these were the thoughts that I ended each day with as I fell into slumber. These thoughts were never far from consciousness, and certainly many films of the era, from the Mad Max trilogy to Dreamscape (1984), from Night of the Comet (1984) to WarGames tapped into this pervasive apocalypse mentality.

But today, divorced from its original context, WarGames almost seems gentle or quaint compared to our modern entertainment.  It hasn't aged terrifically well.  

Still, I can assure you, when I was thirteen years old this John Badham movie had me on the edge of my seat throughout, and I wondered -- and worried -- if today could be doomsday.   I'm very grateful that in 2012 my son has no such thing to worry about, and that his sleep is untroubled by the specter of idiocies like "winnable" nuclear war. 

The Films of 1983: Never Say Never Again

While watching Skyfall (2012) a few weeks back, I was struck by all the quips about James Bond's (Daniel Craig's) advancing age, and the film's reckoning with powerful idea that "time has passed." The new 007 film clearly recognizes that time waits for no man, and preserves no man.   This thematic strand reminded me that another film in the franchise (at least unofficially) also played with those very ideas once upon a time.

Of course, that film is Never Say Never Again (1983), the return of Sean Connery to the 007 role after an absence of a dozen years.  The film came out during the very year that many media outlets dubbed "The Battle of the Bonds" because Roger Moore's Octopussy (1983) was also released.

In Never Say Never Again, the audience encounters an older, slower -- but still lethal -- agent 007 as he faces both Blofeld's SPECTRE and also the specter of looming retirement.  More than that, Bond must deal with the idea that he is outmoded...a "dinosaur."  And indeed, we get words to that effect in Skyfall as well.  But in NSNA, Bond must recognize that he is, finally, getting old.

At least that's according to the new "M' (Edward Fox), who -- in a great reaction shot -- physically recoils after seeing Bond head-butt an opponent during a training exercise (the pre-title sequence which opens the film.)  He has no taste for such messiness; such brutal improvisation. 

The world has changed...and apparently passed Bond by in the process.  But, as Bond reminds us, in reference to his beloved Bentley, he may be old, but he's still "in pretty good shape."

Perhaps the quality I most admire about Never Say Never Again is its ability to pit an older, but still in good-shape Bond, against a buttoned-down era that seems, well,  drained of life  As Bond's over-worked, under-paid gadgeteer, Algy (Alec McEwen) comments mid-way through Never Say Never Again: "Bureaucrats running the old place.  Everything done by the book.  Can't make a decision unless the computer gives you the go ahead.  Now you're here.  I hope we're going to have some gratuitous sex and violence..." 

This amusing comment may serve a double, subversive purpose.  First, Q's comment works contextually, regarding the "re-activation" of the 00s (and Bond) in the narrative of Never Say Never Again, particularly against the backdrop of the new era of the corporate, computerized 1980s. 

But metaphorically, the line also serves as a pointed jab at the official EON James Bond film line, which had -- during the reign of Roger Moore as Bond -- adopted the apparently official stance that James Bond represents Disney-fied violence; or "violence for the family."

The re-activation of Connery's original, craftier Bond in Never Say Never Again is therefore not merely a breath of fresh air in terms of the movie's PC world; but in terms of a real-life world where the aging James Bond feature film franchise was no longer considered legitimately dangerous or cutting edge. 

After all, audiences at this point had seen Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Alien, Dirty Harry...and more was to come.  The Terminator, Lethal Weapon, Batman and Die Hard franchises were just on the horizon.

Accordingly, Never Say Never Again feels like the most dangerous, edgy, unpredictable Bond film in ages (particularly after the toothless and farcical -- if absolutely enjoyable -- Moonraker [1979]). 

Where the Bond films had long ago reduced main characters to off-the-shelf, familiar types like the General Villain (Goldfinger, Scaramanga, Stromberg, Drax, etc.) and the Soldier Villain (Odd Job, Nick Nack, Jaws, etc), Connery's return film largely restores the humanity and individuality -- and therefore the unpredictability -- to these familiar cliches and stock types.

Spectacular (if fantasy-based) stunt-work is also largely eschewed in Irvin Kershner's Never Say Never Again, in favor of the aforementioned head-butt and a concentration on more grounded, macho and personal fisticuffs (a hallmark of Connery's early, grittier era, back in the 1960s). 

So nobody is dangling from blimps-in-flight over The Golden Gate Bridge here, if you get my drift. Not that there's anything wrong, inherently, with the other approach. It's just a matter of preference, about how you like your 007.

There is also a deliberate, overt focus on sex in Never Say Never Again (particularly in Bond's coupling with the evil Fatima Blush [Barbara Carrera].)  Bond beds no less than four women in the course of the movie, actually.  Again, this is an approach that the official Bond series reversed by the late 1980s, making Timothy Dalton's Bond a one-lady-kind-of-guy (to accommodate in the culture the emergence of AIDS).

In short, Never Say Never Again feels a bit more passionate, a bit more human, and a lot less rote, less predictable, than some of the 1970s Bonds...even though it is loosely a remake of 1965's Thunderball.  

Your Reputation Has Preceded You; Or You Were a Very Good Secret Agent.  Really.

In matters of death, SPECTRE is strictly impartial...

Never Say Never Again tells the story of a wicked gambit on the part of Blofeld (Max Von Sydow) and SPECTRE. 

Using a heroin-addicted American air force officer, Jack Petachi (Gavin O'Herlihy), a villain named Largo (Klaus Maria Brandauer) and Fatima Blush, or Agent 12 (Carrera), steal two American W80 thermo-nuclear warheads during a routine training exercise centered at Swadley's Air Force Base. 

Blofeld blackmails the West (NATO, in particular): pay an exorbitant fee or see the bombs detonated in two days time. 

As one anxious diplomat describes the plot, it is "the ultimate nightmare," this nuclear blackmail. And ironically, this story of loose nukes seems more timely and relevant in the 1980s -- a span when the hawkish, Peace-Through-Strength Reagan decried the "Evil Empire" and jokingly announced that "bombing begins in five minutes," -- than it did in the 1960s, when Thunderball premiered.

Agent James Bond (Connery), 007 -- who has spent most of his time in recent years teaching --  is re-activated and sent out by the officious M to recover the bombs. 

Following a stint at the health farm, Shrublands, Bond heads to the Bahamas, where Largo's yacht, the Flying Saucer, may be carrying at least one of the warheads.  There, Largo executes SPECTRE's plot, code-named "The Tears of Allah," all while deceiving his beautiful girlfriend, dancer Domino Petachi (Kim Basinger), about the death of her brother, Jack.

Now Bond must outwit and outfight Fatima with the help of his CIA buddy, Felix Leiter (Bernie Casey) and discover where the jealous Largo is hiding those warheads.  In doing so, he will require Domino's help...

Shaken but not stirred.

Behind-the-scenes, Never Say Never Again represents Sean Connery's return to the iconic role that made him a star following a dozen-year absence. 

It's an unofficial Bond film as well, one born from producer Kevin McClory's (1926-2006) early efforts with Ian Fleming to first bring James Bond to the cinema in 1959. 

A lawsuit awarded McClory the rights to produce a remake of Thunderball, a story that he initiated, and which was known, over the years as both Warhead and James Bond of the Secret Service.   But because the film Never Say Never Again was unofficial at the time of its successful theatrical release, it could not make use of such official Bond film touches as Monty Norman's world-famous theme song, and the trademark gun barrel opening. 

For some, this is enough to disqualify the effort from serious consideration as a great Bond film.

The title of Never Say Never Again itself arises not from Ian Fleming, but from Connery, who -- after 1971's Diamonds are Forever -- declared that he would never again don the tuxedo, order dry martinis, and carry a license to kill.  So the movie title -- much like Algy's line quoted above -- plays on two amusing levels; both as Bond's declaration to Domino that he intends to retire; and as an in-joke aimed at Connery who, despite protestation, is back as Bond one more time.

Just One More Game for the Rest of the World...

Domination, video game style.

Today, at least one scene in Never Say Never Again stands out as being a legitimate Bond classic. 

At approximately the hour-point of the narrative, James Bond tricks his way into Largo's casino in Nice, France. 

But rather than engage his wily opponent in high-stakes poker, or the oft-seen Baccarat (Chemin de Fer), Bond duels Largo in...a video game.

And it is no average video game, either. 

Rather, Largo has designed and constructed "Domination," a video game battle for ownership of the world itself.  The objective, Largo states, is "power."  Two players battle for territory, for land, while racking up dollars on the big screen.  The left-hand joystick controls two nuclear missiles that can be launched against an opponent; and the right-hand joystick controls missile shields which can block the W80 thermo-nuclear warheads. 

Players target with their lasers small geometric territories that light up on their screens.  The player that hits the territory first is the winner and owner of said territory.

Armchair general...

And Largo -- being a super-villain -- has wired his elaborate video game to deliver electric shocks to the players every time one's defenses are breached, or the enemy gets ahead. 

"Unlike armchair generals," suggests Largo, players of this game will "share" the pain of soldiers in the field. 

This is an important distinction in the world of Never Say Never Again.  Bond is one of those aforementioned soldiers in the field; and knows all too well about physical pain.  But the world of the 1980s apparently has little use for James Bond and his skill-set post-Detente, and the men who deploy him in the field  (armchair generals like "M") have no idea how -- as he states early in the film --  "adrenaline" (another word for pain) provides him an edge in the heat of the moment.

And that's how Bond beats Largo, literally, at his own game here.  

Largo may know better the game he created, of course.  He's holding all the cards (as he's also holding the missing nuclear weapons...) but Bond still has his "edge" in the field to rely upon.  The pain of the electric shocks gives him just the kick he needs to get back in the game (come out of retirement) and fight back for "just one more game...for the rest of the world."

...versus a soldier in the field...

This tense, brilliantly-executed sequence with the Domination video game is the most significant one in the film for a number of reasons.

First, it again reveals Bond out-of-his element in the modern, high-tech world.  This older, slower James Bond  is not part of the video game generation.  We are used to seeing him play and excel at cards, not manage a joystick.  So the game is a metaphor for Bond being out-of-step with the modern world.

Yet 007 soundly beats Largo here -- at the video game -- for the same reasons he ultimately defeats him in the larger narrative: because of his "edge," because the pain (delivered by the electric shocks, in this case) activates his adrenaline.

There's something about being a "soldier in the field" -- some combination of instincts and experience -- that takes over in Bond and refuses to "lose."  Largo -- for all his intelligence and savvy -- doesn't have that same sense of experience, and the game sequence makes this point.

Two video game monsters, side-by-side.

In one truly great and telling visual composition, Kershner even reminds us that Largo is a creature of today -- or the film's day in 1983 --  a video-game villain.  He stands perched beside an old arcade game on which a fantasy-styled monster has been painted, and the point is made by putting the two "creatures" in close-proximity. 

Even Largo's command center -- where Largo spends much of his time -- is highly computerized, consisting of a wall of screens and keyboards.  Largo also has a secret window (another form of viewing screen...) through which he can peek illicitly into Domino's dancing studio. 

Again, he's a watcher, not a doer -- an armchair general rather than a soldier in the field -- and that quality proves his undoing.  He doesn't understand what physical pain and danger can drive a man to do; what they can drive Bond to do.

The idea of video-games and computers taking over the world is one of the "big" ideas of the cinema of 1983, as we have seen from War Games, Superman III, and even the horror anthology, Nightmares.   

The overwhelming fear expressed in these films is that our technology will run amok, and challenge human civilization.  Never Say Never Again is "one of the pack" and it updates Bond for the video game age as much as Skyfall updates Bond for the Drone War Age.

They Don't Make Them Like This Anymore...

In shades of black and white, Bond's space in the frame is squeezed out.

Pretty clearly, Never Say Never Again is a special Bond film for one reason primarily: it acknowledges that Bond is actually a human being who ages, and not an unflappable superhero in a white dinner jacket.   This 1983 film thus allows James Bond to age and evolve -- something the canon Bonds did not permit of this particular hero until the reboots with Daniel Craig. 

This idea of Bond aging (both gracefully and not so gracefully...) adds a layer of real human interest to the narrative.  Bond still has his edge; but it is it sharp enough -- in his mid 50s -- to get the job done?  

That's the movie's big question, and Connery is great here at playing the same man we love and remember, but some distance down the too-short road towards mortality; when he has more yesterdays than tomorrows ahead of him.

And secondly but of equal importance, director Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back [1980] has executed a clever tactic in the visual presentation of Never Say Never Again.  To put it bluntly, James Bond no longer owns the frame.  

Rather, he intrudes into it and his space is intruded upon constantly.

Between a rock and hard place? More limited visual space for 007.

I always say that the medium of film reaches its apex when visual form echoes, reflects or augments film content, and that's precisely what Never Say Never Again accomplishes with tremendous flair.  

Remember, the overriding idea here is that Bond is a man out of step with the "new," high-tech but bloodless world of the 1980s.  He is not the swaggering, cocksure, center-of-the-frame hero of the 1960s.

It's a more dangerous world for the older, less-physically imposing Bond, and so he has to fight for a foothold in it every second.  Accordingly, Kershner provides the audience these moments of tremendous spontaneity and danger, during which Bond must put his instincts (and that adrenaline; that edge...) to the test.  

In other words, Bond is not blocked and framed in Never Say Never Again as he is in the canon Bond films.  He is not an impervious figure of power.  Rather, he's visually jeopardized and threatened, almost constantly.

During a fight, Bond flees...into a slamming door.

For instance, during a deadly, extended fight at Shrublands -- which goes from a weight room, down a flight of stairs and into a working kitchen -- Bond attempts to escape his opponent by hiding, first, and then running away, escaping. 

In a great and laugh-out-loud moment, a female chef flees the tight kitchen as the nemeses fight...and Bond tries to run after her...but the door slams in his face and he has a moment where -- using that edge -- he must improvise.  You can almost visualize Connery's Bond thinking, "thanks a lot, lady..." and then getting on with it.

Again and again, Kershner positions 007 in this unconventional and amusing fashion.  Emerging from behind a tree, even...skulking about.  Or in a tight shot of stark black-and-white shading inside his modern French villa; Bond's available space in the wide-frame "cut off" by the off-screen but nonetheless considerable threat of Fatima Blush.

I noted above that Never Say Never Again is an edgier, more dangerous style of Bond film, and that feeling suffuses the film, thanks to the manner in which Kershner perpetually frames the iconic character.   Bond is a man who is imperiled and affected by what is happening around him in the frame, and must -- by power of his instincts and edge -- forge his own positive outcome.

Furthermore, Kershner contrasts his visual depiction of Bond (fighting for survival and placement in the frame) with his depiction of the colorful, even flamboyant, highly idiosyncratic villains. 

Effortless, dangerous power in the foreground.

Fatima Blush, for instance, is often filmed from a low angle (atop staircases, or looming over Bond, right before her demise), giving the impression of tremendous power and constancy. 

When she detonates a bomb in Bond's hotel in the Bahamas, Fatima does so without even a casual look over a shoulder, and Kershner's gorgeous framing again suggests a villain in total, effortless control of the environs.  

Again, look at that careful, beautiful framing and placement above for just a second.  What you see there is raw, well-established power dominating the foreground of the frame, while chaos reigns -- unimportant -- behind her.

Kershner also permits seemingly spontaneous, apparently unplanned moments from Klaus Maria Brandauer play out for maximum impact.  This villain is a dangerous character, and the actor virtually steals every second he can get in the limelight...and perhaps more too.  This Largo is a power-hungry grabber, a drama queen, a man who solicits attention, and Brandauer goes nuts with the role.

Swapping spit with Largo.

Whether it's delicately blowing a soothing kiss on his electrically-shocked hands after losing to Bond  in Domination, or kissing Domino for so long -- and so passionately -- that a line of spit visibly connects their lips, Largo "dominates" the frame too.

Again, Kershner's patience and unique approach to the performances (particularly with the quirky Branduer) make Never Say Never Again feel more dangerous, spontaneous, edgy and immediate than many official Bond films of roughly the same era.  Where they rigorously adhere to a specific formula and template, Never Say Never Again attempts to explode the formula, presenting a vulnerable, mature Bond who must, again and again, really fight (and improvise) for his life. 

In my book, Brandauer is the most deadly threat to Bond since Goldfinger; an amused sociopath who is drunk with power, and this Bond -- going back to Ian Fleming's literary vision -- seems the most human (at least until Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig came along...) 

Never Say Never Again suffers a bit from a weak, anti-climactic finale (Domino spears Largo and the whole affair is over...), but otherwise the film must rank as one of the best of all the Bond films.  It showcases another side of the hero, and in defining Bond's "edge" helps us to understand -- finally, after twenty years and a dozen films -- what makes this hero tick; what makes him thrive.

Just as the Bond character was growing stale and old, and distinctly non-edgy, a fifty year old Connery (and a brilliantly-stylish Kershner) provide the hero just what he (and the audience...) needed:  a healthy dose of gratuitous sex and violence...shaken, not stirred.   Skyfall features many callbacks to the Bonds of yesteryear, but it owes the most, in my opinion, to Never Say Never Again.

Valedictory head-butts for everyone...