{"id":99,"date":"2008-06-18T00:01:04","date_gmt":"2008-06-18T07:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=99"},"modified":"2008-06-17T22:50:55","modified_gmt":"2008-06-18T05:50:55","slug":"great-computer-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=99","title":{"rendered":"Great Computer Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

While it may not be the star of any one film, the computer has played a leading role in many Hollywood movies. Let me review for you my favorite computer films.
\n
\n2001: A Space Oddyssey.<\/strong><\/a> What computer on the planet can ever compete with HAL, the psycho that runs amok on the trip to Jupiter? HAL wasn’t really a computer because he spoke and thought and was more like a human character. But I would be remiss in not mentioning 2001<\/em> as one of the great computer movies.<\/p>\n

Wargames.<\/strong><\/a> This is the big one, confirming that kids with modems can indeed start World War III. The technology was more-or-less based on real stuff. The film spawned a whole legion of kids using the name “Joshua” on their computers. It sold a lot of modems. It made Matthew Broderick a star! And it clued me into what the clunkly old Imsai could be with thousands of dollars of upgrades.<\/p>\n

TRON.<\/strong><\/a> One of the first films to extensively use computer graphics, TRON is still well-liked today. My kids even liked it when I showed them the DVD. The technology is hokey. The names are even hokier: TRON<\/code> is a silly BASIC keyword. A character named “ROM”? Oh, please! But it was fun to watch and I enjoyed the music. Forget that it took hours to render a single frame. It was fun stuff!<\/p>\n

Sidebar.<\/strong> The first film to use computer animation was actually WestWorld<\/a> in 1973. Some of the images the bad robot sees were early computer graphics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Colossus: The Forbin Project.<\/strong><\/a> Chilling. It would seem old hat today: the computer Colossus takes over the defense of the United States and then begins a casual chat with its Soviet-counterpart named Guardian. Then it decides who the real enemy is!<\/p>\n

I could think of a few more, but as computers become part of the mainstream, having films specifically starring them becomes rare. What are your favorite computer movies?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While it may not be the star of any one film, the computer has played a leading role in many Hollywood movies. Let me review for you my favorite computer films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}