Cult-Movie Review: Brainstorm (1983)

Although deemed “provocative” and at least somewhat “redeemed by its special effects” (according to a review by Hal Goodman in Psychology Today), Douglas Trumball’s Brainstorm is nonetheless one of those genre films that never quite gets its due. 

In part, this lack of widespread appreciation may result from the fact that the 1983 movie seems to defy easy categorization.

Is Brainstorm a science fiction film? A horror movie? Or is it fantasy? 

Like Altered States (1980), and Dreamscape (1984), Brainstorm seems to straddle all those genres. There’s even a “head film” aspect to its trippy visions of the after-life, and the movie’s final moments of cosmic transcendence.

Secondly, Brainstorm is the final film of beloved actress Natalie Wood, who died in unfortunate circumstances before the movie was completed. And the film’s very subject matter -- regarding the death experience – seems distinctly uncomfortable in light of the real life tragedy.

Watching the film today, it’s difficult not to think about what happened to Wood.

And yet despite such concerns, Brainstorm is indeed a provocative and meticulously-crafted work of art. With intelligence and dedication, the Trumball film imagines what might happen once scientists develop a machine that blows “communication as we know it right out of the water.”

In the year1983, that colorful-sounding achievement probably felt rather remote and woefully futuristic. 

Yet in 2014, we reckon with -- on nearly a daily basis, too -- the myriad ways that new communication technologies change how human beings relate to one another. 

In the span since Trumball made his film, we have seen the rise of cell-phones, social media, the Internet, and even the first steps towards virtual reality.

This sense of a rapidly-shifting communications landscape wasn’t always clear to audiences in the context of Brainstorm’s original release in the early eighties. However, time seems to have at last caught up with the forward-thinking film. Viewed now, it is plain that Brainstorm gazes meaningfully at the ways that a revolutionary communications device (one that records and transmits brain impulses…) impacts every aspect of human relationships, and even our belief systems. 

Commendably, the film is even-handed and judicious in its musings. Unlike WarGames, Blue Thunder Superman III, Never Say Never Again or Nightmares, which all worried about a future of computerization and increasingly inhuman technology, Brainstorm suggests and visualizes the idea that new technology can actually repair relationships, or bring peace of mind about our ultimate dread: death itself. The yang to that yin is that such technology can also be used to hurt people, albeit sometimes inadvertently.

Seen in light of everything that has come down in the pike in the world of “communication” since the Trumball film premiered, we might today regard Brainstorm not just as provocative, but actually revelatory.

“We blew it, didn’t we?”

Scientists Lillian Reynolds (Louise Fletcher) and Michael Brace (Christopher Walken) have developed a revolutionary new technology. They have created a special helmet-like device that can read and record the impulses of one human brain, and then make those impulses available (on a copper-like tape…) for other humans to view. 

But it’s not strictly a matter of viewing the world through another person’s eyes. While experiencing a pre-recorded tape, a percipient also feels everything that happened during the recording. They can see, hear, taste, smell, and feel those experiences.

Lillian and Michael’s boss, Terson (Cliff Robertson) is determined to get this new device on the market as quickly as possible, but also invites the U.S. Government to participate in the research. This act spurs a flat-out revolt on Lillian’s part.  She is certain the device will be applied to purposes of spying and war. A new weapon is the last thing she wants or desires.

Meanwhile, Michael learns that the machine is helpful in another way. He and his wife, PR expert Karen (Wood) have been on the verge of separation and divorce. But the new machine allows them each to “see” one another in a new light.  The invention saves -- and renews -- their romantic, intimate relationship.

When Lillian suffers a devastating heart attack in the laboratory, she puts on the helmet and records the death experience itself.

Afterwards, Michael becomes desperate to screen her last tape, but again, the U.S. military stands in the way.

“There’s more to it than just practical application and packaging.”

In Brainstorm, Douglas Trumball utilizes the brain impulse device as a vehicle for exploring human relationships, and the way that advancing technology in the field of communication can affect those relationships.  If the film seems somewhat episodic (and occasionally incoherent…) it is because, primarily, the screenplay charts the device’s impact on several different aspects of life, and upon several different characters or groups.

For example, the U.S. government sees the device as something that can be used in war, to torture prisoners.

At one point in the film, Michael learns that the military has recorded a mental patient’s experience of a “psychotic break,” and that this tape can drive a man or woman to the brink of madness. Michael’s own son accidentally views the tape, and goes insane.

For a moment, just imagine being able to impose a psychotic break on a political enemy, or rival. Such an assault would appear to outsiders as a natural problem, not as an external attack.  Today, our country has debated about what constitutes “torture,” and Brainstorm seems to understand the terrible danger of a device that can destroy the mind, or cause terrible physical suffering, but leave no physical marks.

But in terms of communication specifically, our government has also entered into clandestine relationships with commercial giants like Verizon and Google so that it can access their data and learn more about their customer base…us.  This very brand of government-business alliance is forecast here, as the military is given total access to the privately-constructed communications device and Michael’s laboratory. The military’s intent is to weaponize the brain impulse device, and possibly even use it against the public. The point, however, is that in a world of governments launching cyber-attacks on other governments, this idea hardly seems far-fetched anymore.

One of the other scientists on Michael’s and Lillian’s team sees the device in another way. He watches a tape of a fellow scientist engaging in sexual intercourse, but then cuts the tape so it is a repeating loop of the moment of orgasm.

Like a drug addict, this scientist eventually loses all interest in life, his job, and his family, and simply re-plays the tape, experiencing moment of ecstasy after moment of ecstasy. Nothing else matters.

This subplot is no doubt Brainstorm’s spikiest and most outré application of technology, but we know today that it is also not terribly far-fetched. A generation has grown up watching readily-available Internet porn.  In other words, Brainstorm forecasts the ease and speed at which a communications device, like the Internet, can deliver sexual imagery. Today, we often read of people being addicted to “Internet porn,” or Internet porn ruining a marriage. In Brainstorm, an intervention is necessary when a new brand of porn is invented, and it becomes irresistible to the “user.”

The aspect of Brainstorm that I admire most, perhaps, is its consideration of a new communications technology as a tool for psychological therapy; for generating empathy. At one juncture, Michael experiences life through his wife’s eyes, and is suddenly granted a view of himself that no one has ever been afforded in real life. 

Suddenly, he understands what it is like to live with himself; with a man who is obsessed with his work, emotionally distant, and sometimes even emotionally absent. The key to empathy is being able to put yourself in the mind-set of another person, and the machine permits that. It is the ultimate in role-playing. You don’t have to imagine your partner’s feelings anymore, you can actually experience them. Brainstorm thus suggests that this machine could change the nature of our most basic relationships; that it could be a useful and productive tool for therapy.

There are long sections of Brainstorm that concern Michael and Karen’s relationship, but the strife is resolved when they can really understand each other’s point of view for the first time.  I don’t know about you, but my wife says she often wonders what I’m thinking (!).  Perhaps all couple relationships could be improved if we could feel what our spouse or significant other feels.

In its denouement, Brainstorm goes big…and trippy.

Lillian’s death tape is played, and Trumball escorts viewers to the very edge of creation, and beyond.  The death tape reveals Lillian having an OBE (out of body experience), looking down at herself from outside her own eyes. Then the imagery resolves to a series of tear drop-like bubbles. Each one seems to represent an isolated but accessible moment from Lillian’s life.

Once this imagery is left behind, the film cuts to a brief view of humans trapped -- and writhing -- in fleshy-outgrowths like organic prison cells. This composition symbolizes not merely the possibility of Hell, but the fear that comes with being separated from the material or physical universe.  We go through our lives trapped in our bodies, and physically separated from one another, the imagery suggests.

Finally, we follow Lillian’s disembodied soul on a journey through galactic space. We see her soul join a million butterfly-like -- or angel-like -- organisms (more souls) as they move gently and slowly into a warm and welcoming light.  This is what comes at the end of life, finally: a new interconnectedness, a new togetherness not fully possible in our mortal, separate, individual form.

What I find most fascinating about this view of the afterlife, is that it is, simply, an augmentation of what Lillian and Michael’s machine already accomplishes. 

Their “revolutionary” form of communication allows a different brand of togetherness. It permits empathy, as opposed to physical (or energetic, I guess…) connection. But that empathy, that understanding, is a real step closer to the cosmic union portrayed in the film’s final phantasm. In this case, a communications technology allows us to “reach out and touch someone” in a way previously unimaginable

In the end, Brainstorm suggests that Heaven is not a place. Instead, it is the accumulated light of our all our souls together, shining as one. And the communications breakthrough wrought by the film’s scientists not only reveals this truth, but in some senses mimics aspects of that togetherness. 

As I noted above, Brainstorm moves in episodic fits and starts. Yet, at the same time, it is never anything less than wildly cinematic.  There’s an incredible P.O.V. journey on a rollercoaster (and through a water slide…), for instance, and other visual wonders here. 

Accordingly, one can’t help but wonder if Trumball is suggesting that the communal experience of movie-watching (another form of communications technology) is the real antecedent to the machine depicted in the film. We see through the eyes of several characters in the film, including Lillian as she faces her own death.  Given this first-person or POV perspective, the idea of feeling their emotions hardly seems out of the realm of possibility.

Brainstorm is, perhaps, a good deal better than its reputation suggests. Louise Fletcher delivers a brilliant performance, particularly during her heart attack scene, and the film ends on a cosmic high-note, explicitly comparing (with its North Carolina locations…) the Wright Bros. achievement of flight with Lillian and Michael’s discovery of what exists beyond the boundary of death. The only place the 1983 film creaks is during an extended action sequence at a manufacturing plant, where an assembly line goes comically -- and interminably -- haywire.

Other than that low point, Brainstorm lives up to its device’s PR/advertising pitch. The Trumball movie plays (commendably) like “research for a better tomorrow.”

Movie Trailer: Brainstorm (1983)

The Films of 1983: Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

At the height of the early-1980s 3-D craze and not even a full week before the highly-anticipated release of George Lucas's Return of the Jedi (1983), American movie-going audiences were introduced to Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, a space-age pastiche of Old West cliches, post-apocalyptic designs, and desert planet tropes. 

The Lamont Johnson-directed film stars Peter Strauss as a space-going cowboy and gun-for-hire, Wolff, and a very young, very scruffy Molly Ringwald as Niki, a "scav" (scavenger) girl from distant "Terra 11."  These unlikely partners team up to rescue three female refugees from a damaged luxury liner who have fallen into the (prosthetic) grip of a planetary despot, "Overdog" (Michael Ironside).

I still remember seeing this low-budget film with my parents (at the tender of age 13, I guess...) and thinking that Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone was pretty godawful.  It didn't fit any of my pre-conceived expectations for a space adventure at that time (which today, I realize, is not necessarily a bad thing.)

And yet, simultaneously -- even as a kid -- I was highly intrigued by the film and the unusual "garbage"-punk-styled world it presented with such dedication and flamboyance.  To my young mind, the movie also somehow felt dangerous and decorum-shattering in a way that bigger budget films clearly did not.  There was a overwhelming and unsettling feeling that the Spacehunter story-line might head in some...unsavory directions.

When I screened the film again last night -- without 3-D, obviously -- I enjoyed Spacehunter much more than I had in the past, and I was able to process some of the reasons for my initial reaction all those years (and decades...) ago.   The strengths of the film involve two thematic ingredients, in particular. 

First, Spacehunter is actually a kind of forward-thinking, early cyberpunk effort in shape and scope; and secondly, the film gets a lot of mileage out of its post-modern references to the history of science fiction; particularly what might be affectionately termed "pulp" fiction.

"They've come a long way since Monday Night Football..."

Unlikely partners: Niki (Ringwald) and Wolff (Strauss).

Spacehunter's narrative commences when Wolff and his sexy android companion, Chalmers (Andrea Marcovicci) receive a "Bullet-text" message that three women have survived a disaster in space, and crash-landed on a quarantine planet, Terra 11.  In hopes of earning the "mega-credit" reward for their rescue, Wolff sets course for the planet and lands on the arid, inhospitable world.

Unfortunately, Chalmers is killed -- or rendered inoperable -- during Wolff's first engagement on the planet.  He attempts to intercept the three marooned passengers on a kind of sail train, but forces of the local dictator, Overdog, intercept them.

In his all-terrain vehicle, "The Scrambler," Wolff navigates "the Zone" in search of his quarry.  Unexpectedly, he is assisted by Niki, a young girl with a tough exterior who longs for friendship.  An able "tracker," Nicki leads Wolff through deadly adventures with the Zone's residents, including obese bat creatures (!) and sexy Amazon women  seeking robust breeding stock.

Also on the planet is a soldier-of-fortune named Washington (Ernie Hudson), who once served in the military with Wolff and is also hoping to collect the reward for the safe return of the three women.  Together, Wolff, Washington and Niki infiltrate Overdog's headquarters, where he is conducting gladiatorial games, and attempt to complete the mission.

"Why can't anything be simple, anymore?" Spacehunter as Cyberpunk



On Terra 11, the forces of Overdog lay siege to a sail barge/train.

First, I believe it's fair to state that Spacehunter is, at least marginally, an early "cyberpunk"-styled film.  If you consider the essential  requirements of that sub-genre, it usually features loners functioning in a near future, dystopian setting. 

Here, the screenplay actually describes Wolff as a loner, the setting is the mid-22nd (maybe a hundred years from now), and the dystopian setting is not a failed state; but a failed planet.  Terra 11 has fallen into chaos and become a "Quarantine Restricted Planet" after the "PSI Plague" hit in 2021.  

Additionally, Spacehunter deals with such cyber punk issues as artificial intelligence: Chalmers is an android, an engineer and apparently a sex-bot too.  Also, in keeping with the cyber-punk format, prosthetics (artificial enhancements of missing human limbs) play a role in the story.  Overdog, like Darth Vader before him, seems more machine than man.

According to a good, general definition at Wikipedia, cyberpunk fiction and film are often-described as "high tech" and "low life" and Spacehunter doesn't precisely fit that bill.  It's got the low-life part down, all right, and outside of Terra 11 there are some examples of high tech.  But on the broken world of Terra 11, there is no real "high" anything (except as provided by the "mood-enhancers" of the plague-ridden villain called "The Chemist.")

Although the Internet and computer world do not play a meaningful role in Spacehunter either, there is at least, through bullet-text updates, the suggestion of an inter-connected universe.  And how that advanced technology is utilized certainly suggests the low-life.  For instance, a message at the beginning of the film reports to Wolff that he is wanted in association with failing to pay over a hundred parking tickets; and that he ran out paying on his ex-wife's alimony.  This is exactly the seedy vibe of some cyberpunk efforts or what author and scholar Paul Meehan might term "tech noir."

From the film's very first shot -- a view of rusted metal plate lined with rivets, subsequently smashed by the film's title card -- Spacehunter seems legitimately about breaking things open in the genre.  Blasting through the past, and creating -- in the best and most vivid terms it can -- a broken down future world.   To me, that seems very cyber punk-ish.

"I Love Your Planet:" Spacehunter as Pulp Science Fiction

Wanted: Breeding Stock.  Meet the Amazon Women of Terra 11...

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone features android sex-bots, cannibalistic mutants, life-force draining machines, Amazon women in search of breeding stock and other touches that, as long time sci-fi fans, we should all recognize as being of distinctly "pulp" origins.

That means, essentially, the film appeals not just to the imagination and futurist in us...but to our glands.  This is the element I believe I picked up on as a teenager; the sense of lurid sexuality on display during two interludes in the film.

In the first instance, the evil Overdog instructs a guard to "undress" one of his captive women "...slowly."  The guard does so -- before our eyes -- and it's weird and disturbing.  Overdog is more machine than man, as I noted above, so what physical "interest" is he satisfying here?  Just looking?  Or does he have prostheses the audience hasn't seen?  Regardless, the implication is of a most abnormal and perverse appetite.

In the second instance, Wolff and Niki drive the Scrambler into a high-techcavern populated by scantily-clad, voluptuous Amazon women.  These sexy women surface from beneath the water, ogle Peter Strauss and decide that he is good "breeding stock."   In the film's funniest moment, one of the Amazon women wagers he would "not survive" the breeding process.

"I'll take that bet," Wolff replies, without missing a beat...

Yeah, it's sleazy and sexist, I suppose, but these scenes arise from a real and common tradition in the pulp magazinesof the 1950s; a tradition which frequently sees scantily clad damsels in distress held unconscious in the arms of a monster or an alien, to be used -- ostensibly -- for some unspeakable, inhuman pleasure. 

I can't argue that's nice or high-brow, or even inoffensive, but Spacehunter undeniably pay tribute to long-standing pulp tradition at the same time it looks forward to the next iteration of the genre: cyberpunk.

 "Us loners got to stick together."

Overdog (Michael Ironside)

A little sleaze goes a long way when a film features a sturdy and charming sense of humor, and that's the case with Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. 

I admire how the film creates its own "future language" and how the screenplay allows the barely-educated Niki to mangle the King's English more than any dramatic character since Mrs. Malaprop. 

I also got a kick out of Overdog's smiling admission that he is a liar, after promising to let Nicki go should she escape the gladiatorial maze.  It's a funny moment.

The dialogue in Spacehunter is quippy, creative and kind of funny, and the visualizations of the dystopic world prove stunning at points.   These images feature some nice, unexpected details too.  For instance, when Wolff boards the sail barge during a battle, down on the deck we see, briefly, cages filled with livestock.  The cages are uncommented on, but provide evidence that a production designer was imagining a larger world; one where food (and the transport of food) had to be accounted for.

So yes, this movie is low-budget, low-brow, lurid, action-packed and much more fun than I gave it credit for being some twenty-seven years ago.  There's a strong aura of a danger throughout, a great villain, and plenty of guffaws (not to mention a closing act cameo by television's favorite rock formation, Vasquez Rocks). 

For all its brazen political incorrectness, Spacehunter boasts "a very enviable life force," to quote Overdog.   I don't know that I can defend the film on many high-brow intellectual terms, but I also don't know that I need to.

The movie scavenges the new genre of cybyerpunk and the old traditions of the pulp sci-fi magazine in a manner that, on retrospect, seems pleasing and diverting.  In the final analysis, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone is assembled -- like Overdog himself -- out of a lot of interesting spare parts. .

Movie Trailer: Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)

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.