Video Games a Popular Movie Subject

Written by Kirk Baird

Wreck-It Ralph is the story of a video game villain’s quest to be good. Given the success of Wreck-It Ralph in its first weekend – nearly $50 million, a record opening for a Disney animated film -- here are a few other movies with video game-centered plots.

WarGames (1983): A high school computer hacker (Matthew Broderick) nearly starts World War III after gaining access to a military super computer while trying to play a game of Global Thermonuclear War in this John Badham drama.

Tron (1982): Ground-breaking effects highlight this video game-inspired movie starring Jeff Bridges as a brilliant game designer named Flynn who gets sucked into a computer world where he must join forces with user programs to defeat the evil Master Control.

Tron: Legacy (2010): In this sequel to Tron, Flynn has been missing for more than a decade, and his son Sam goes looking for him, only to get sucked into the same video game world of Tron. There he finds his father trapped by a sinister new program of Flynn’s own making.

The Last Starfighter (1984): An alien named Centauri (Robert Preston in one of his last roles) recruits a teenage video game ace to man the weapons of a special spacecraft created to defeat an evil invading force and save the galaxy.

The Wizard (1989): Fred Savage of TV’s The Wonder Years stars as the older brother of an autistic boy who happens to be a wizard at playing video games. The two boys, with the help of a young girl, make their way cross country to compete in a national video game championship.

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007): In this funny and occasionally stirring documentary by Seth Gordon, pereinal second-place finisher Steve Wiebe sets out to be the greatest Donkey Kong player in the world, but must contend with the current champion and rival Billy Mitchell.