WarGames Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I thought we'd already been through this... The initial rumors and first word of a WarGames sequel, the silence followed by the inevitable continuation of the project, and the ill-reviewed and mostly ignored result. But this is Hollywood, and at least they doggedly stick to their try and try again mentality, and this time, there's a good chance that this won't be an ignorable project.

While Production Weekly is subscriber-only, they have a Twitter feed that shares little morsels of news, like the following report: "Leonardo DiCaprio looking to reboot the 80's thriller "War Games" at MGM." Yes, move over Matt Lanter, Leo wants to to do his own take on WarGames. But this won't be a sequel, this will be one of those dreaded reboots. First Ralph Maccio gets replaced with Jaden Smith, now Matthew Broderick will be replaced with ... I shudder to think.

I'm not sure how WarGames re-dos fit into a professional life busy with acting gigs like Beat the Reaper and production gigs like Akira, but maybe this is only the first breaths of a project that will fall into development hell. Oh, how I hope. But how about you? Are you super-excited to see WarGames rebooted?

I posted earlier today on Joystiq that a new TV commercial for the role-playing game World of Warcraft hit the airwaves on Monday, which of course means it hit YouTube about .0815 seconds later. I'm waiting for the day that things come out on YouTube before they reach TV or the big screen. YouTube will become self-aware and telepathic and rule the world one day. You think Terminator was just a movie? SkyNet is YouTube, silly rabbit.

Oh, look ... we've veered back on-topic. This commercial features footage from Office Space with everyone's favorite cubicle-slacker Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) playing WoW while Bill Lundbergh (Gary Cole) tries to talk to him about TPS reports. Originally in the scene, Peter was playing Tetris, but they've stuck this footage in pretty seamlessly. Look how they've even littered his desk with the Warcraft box and game discs.

The ad works here because Office Space isn't generally considered a "classic", but how long until companies really screw up something that Cinemaniacs will cry sacrilege over? Come to think of it, it's already happened several times. We've had Gene Kelly selling Volkswagens, Steve McQueen pushing Mustangs, and Elton John plugging Diet Coke with Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, and Louis Armstrong. The recent Gap commercial starring Audrey Hepburn was funky and fun, but I found myself wondering what she'd think about it. It's hard to imagine that she would be thrilled. Will Apple use Citizen Kane to sell iPods? Matthew Broderick hawking new computers in WarGames? Okay, that last one probably wouldn't really bother me, but when does it end? At what point is too much just too much?


Check out these ads after the jump and let us know what you think.

This comes directly from the "WTF?" department (yes, we have one of those here at Cinematical). After I just got finished waxing nostalgic about the original War Games, word comes that the long-discussed sequel to the 1983 film is now going to me made for sure. For a long time, there were just rumors and some bits of info. Then, a script was written and a director attached. Next, there were a couple of title changes and a few other pieces of news that seemed to indicate the film would happen for sure. But then, not a word. During that time, I always held out hope that because of all the various machinations, and the fact that they never announced any cast, the film would eventually go away -- never to be heard from again.

Much to my disappointment, that doesn't appear to be the case because according to Production Weekly, War Games 2: The Dead Code now has a leading man -- Matt Lanter, of the TV show Heroes. To recap for those (like me) too stunned and disappointed to remember: Stuart Gillard will be directing the War Games sequel, from a script by Randall M. Badat, about a computer hacker (played by Lanter) who goes online to play a terrorist-attack simulation game against a government super-computer named Ripley (Ripley? Is nothing sacred?). Of course, once he starts playing the game he realizes he's way over his head because Riply is actually a paranoid artificially intelligent machine bent on saving the human race by imprisoning it. The hacker must then race against time to stop the super-computer and save humanity before it's too late.

So, let's get this straight: The sequel to one of the watershed films of the '80s is being directed by a guy who's biggest feature film credits are Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III and Rocket Man? Being written by a guy who's only feature film credits are Hear No Evil and Surf II and will star a guy that almost no one has ever heard of (I watch Heroes but even I couldn't pick Lanter out of a lineup)? Plus, the story sounds like something concocted after a weekend binge with a bottle of Tequila while watching Fox News Channel. Wow, this sounds like a movie that just has to be made.

Can you sense my extreme sarcasm here? I bet you can. I'm sure Gillard, Badat and Lanter are probably nice guys who were looking for a job, but I just have to say to them -- look elsewhere. This huge mistake begins shooting on November 20 in Montreal -- with arrival at your local Blockbuster soon afterward. Is anyone really interested in wasting 90 minutes of their lives on seeing this movie?