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The original “Fail Safe” is a great movie btw, if you’ve never seen it. As mentioned in the article, that and “Dr Strangelove” were based on the same book, with
by gdubs 7y ago
The original “Fail Safe” is a great movie btw, if you’ve never seen it. As mentioned in the article, that and “Dr Strangelove” were based on the same book, with “Fail Safe” being the more sober interpretation. Amazing cast, and Lumet (“Dog Day Afternoon”, “Network”, “Twelve Angry Men”) is a legendary director.
- rospaya 7y agoIf I recall correctly there's also a remake, made in the same style.
- scrumper 7y agoYou're referring to the George Clooney, er, teleplay (correct word?) right? It was filmed and broadcast live, if I remember correctly. It was excellent - and I say that as a big fan of the 1964 original.
- cwmma 7y agoFail Safe is was based on a book called 'Fail Safe' while Dr Strangelove was based on one called 'Red Alert'. It's an easy mistake to make as they have incredibly similar plots which really hurt Fail Safe (which I agree is a great movie)
- gdubs 7y agoAh, thanks for that — I’ve held that mistaken view for over a decade now. So in essence it was more of “A Bugs Life” / “Antz” situation.
- kn0where 7y agoExcept Dreamworks did Antz specifically because they found out Pixar was going to do A Bugs Life, and they were taking every opportunity they had to stick it to Disney.
- jhbadger 7y agoOne key difference is that Red Alert/Dr. Strangelove has a mad general start the war. Fail Safe has the war caused by error, which is in a way scarier.
- sneak 7y agoI also think “Colossus: The Forbin Project” is ridiculously underrated/unknown in this genre, too, if a bit more toward the Blade Runner side of things. I remain surprised more computer people don’t know about it.
- jhbadger 7y agoParticularly because the Terminator series took the same basic formula (military computer realizes it can rule humanity rather than serve it) and was very successful (well, the first two movies at any rate).
- cafard 7y agoI saw it the summer before college and found it impressive. During the first quarter of school, I would turn up at the computer center and find the mainframe down quite often. The failures were not at all correlated with the due dates of my assignments (Fortran IV, thanks), but it felt that way. The Forbin Project seemed steadily less plausible.