Nir Shelter:

>>>The mission of a logline is to describe a plot ? period.

I distinguish between means with ends.? The purpose — the objective goal — of a logline is to, as you say, “get a script read, sell a concept, attract an actor.” Describing a plot with the basic formula elements is usually the best means to that end.

>>’?You can have a logline that perfectly conforms to the standard formula, but if it doesn?t have a story hook?’ ? It means the concept is either flawed or not worth pursuing, either way, it?s not the structure of the logline that?s the problem rather the concept itself.

My point exactly!

I see a logline as a sales tool. And? in sales the proverbial saying is: “Don’t sell the steak — sell the sizzle”.? So while a correctly formulated logline is necessary, it isn’t? always sufficient. I believe that in addition to? describing the steak, a logline also needs to pitch some sizzle .? It needs a strong hook.? (I further believe that is the very 1st question a screenwriter needs to ask of his premise:? What’s the sizzle? What’s the story hook?)

>>>Years ago, I read the book War Games before seeing the film, so my take is based more on the novel

I only saw the movie, and as you well know, characters and plots can and do metamorphize in the process of adaptation.

>>>The computer at some point determines that the practice rounds it?s playing with the Mathew Broadrick character are real

From FADE IN to FADE OUT, the computer program doesn’t know the difference. At the start of the MPR (midpoint reversal) when David, the hacker, realizes that Joshua, the computer program, is still planning to launch missles, there is this exchange:

David: “Is this a game or is this for real?”
Joshua: “What’s the difference?”

Joshua never learns the difference. The only lesson Joshua (eventually) learns is that nuclear war is a lose-lose exercise. There is no way for it to achieve the objective for which it was created — to win the ultimate “war game”.?

[A lesson mere humans had learned by that time. It was well-established military doctrine that neither side could win a nuclear war.? The purpose of over-arming with nukes was to deter, not prevail.]

>>> In contrast, his hacking into the computer is an event of his own doing, under his control,

Not exactly. In “War Games, the inciting incident occurs in the 24th minute of the film, when the teenager reads an ad for a new video game in a computer magazine to be released for Christmas. It’s already been established that he is an avid video war game player– that’s how he’s introduced. The ad hooks into his passionate interest in video war games. He’s too eager, too impatient to wait for the game’s official release.? So he hacks into what he believes is the company computer with the new video game.? Only to finally realize…

That’s what a credible inciting incident does — it hooks into a psychological need or passion. It motivates (incites) the protagonist to respond. Respond in a way that overthrows his status quo with consequences he cannot anticipate or imagine. This is what we mean when we say there must be a a cause-and-effect relationship between the inciting incident and the resulting action.

(Yes, the film violates the rule that the inciting incident must occur in the 1st 15 minutes of the film. It does so because it has a lot of expositional pipe to lay before the plot is credible.? The plot premise doesn’t work as long as humans are in the execution loop at individual missile silos.? So the prologue, the 1st ten minutes, is devoted to cutting them out of the loop.)

>>he?s arrogant

Arrogance is not/has never been a feature of Matthew Broderick’s screen persona. In his two iconic roles (“War Games” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”), he plays a charming teenager with a mischievous streak. If the director wanted an arrogant protagonist, he cast the wrong actor.

If I must brand him with a flaw, then I would say it’s a penchant for mischief.? And not with malicious intent. He’s not hacking to harvest social security, credit card and bank account numbers for profit. He hacks systems because he can — for the sheer fun, the adventure, the dopamine hit. And in this film, he hacks because he wants to play a new war game.

Even if I accepted the characterization of arrogance, I think his cleverness is of greater dramatic interest and import because of the irony.? Because it is more relevant to how the plot unfolds. His character strength enables him to precipitate the dramatic problem in Act 1 — and solve it in Act 3.

Now then.? I firmly believe that in drama there needs to be a character arc.? But after considerable study and movie watching, I no longer subscribe to the rule that the protagonist — and only the protagonist? — can own the critical?character arc, the one on which the outcome of the plot hinges.? That to qualify as a protagonist, a character must have a character flaw, specifically a flaw that he — and only he — can and must overcome in order to solve the plot problem.

In most plots, that is the certainly the case.? BUT: rules are supposed to be tools. They are not inviolate commandments chiseled in immutable stone on Mt. Sinai. Paradigms are supposed to be guidelines, not arbitrary and inflexible Procrustean beds into which every protagonist must be forced to fit.

In “War Games”, the teenager regrets having unintentionally triggered a nuclear war. But his remorse changes nothing; it does not give rise to an insight, an epiphany, that solves the plot problem. The character who must arc, who must overcome a fatal flaw if there is to be a chance to stop the “war game” is Dr. Steven Falken, the “father” of “Joshua”.?

If Falken doesn’t arc,? doesn’t? flip-flop on his fatalism, the world is doomed.

So the film? seems to violate the rule that the protagonist must own the character arc as well as the action line.? In “War Games” the two are split between two characters:? the teenager owns the action line — but the computer scientist owns the character arc.

Consequently,? I see no need to conjure up a flaw — any dramatically significant flaw — to describe the protagonist in the logline.