Review: War Of The Worlds
War Of The Worlds. The big budget, Hollywood version featuring two heavyweight players: Steven Speilberg in the director’s chair and Tom Cruise in the lead role. A translation of a literary classic.
What the hell went wrong?
The movie starts out excellently, quickly establishing the main characters. Cruise plays Ray Ferrier, a regular fella who’s looking after his estranged children for the weekend. And no sooner has the ex-wife gone out the door, but the wee lad steals Ray’s car and things start to go downhill for humanity from there….
The special effects are outstanding as the alien antagonists start to emerge and ruthlessly annihilate humans left, right and center. By the time Cruise had got himself to safety, I found myself letting out a sign of relief!
And the movie continues in that vein as Cruise and his estranged children attempt to outrun the extraterrestrial attackers while developing poignantbonds along the way. Until the boy decides to confront the big alien death machines. Causes conflict in Cruise as he has to choose between children, eventually abandoning the boy, who goes missing-presumed-squished.
No complaints so far, until Cruise and wee daughter end up in a basement with a deranged dude. Suddenly, the whole movie turns boring. The tension is still there, but this part lasts way too long. Eventually Cruise slips off with their freaky host and stoves the man’s head in with a shovel. Well, you would too if aliens were vaporizing your neightbours and you were stuck in a basement with a lunatic…..
No sooner has the Tomster put the loony in a shallow grave, but the aliens start coughing and spluttering. Guess what? They can’t survive in our environment! Ha ha, forgot to do your research before the big invasion, did you E.T.?
How likely is that? Damned aliens have been observing the planet for thousands of years and when they decide to invade they conveniently ‘forget’ to pack their allergy tablets? Plonkers.
What it looks like (not just to me - I’ve asked around) is that the basement scene drove most of the test audience to suicide and Speilberg decided to wrap things up pretty quickly afterwards. Whatever, the movie ends abruptly after the basement. Aliens drop dead in the streets, Cruise and daughter find the mother (and new husband, and new in-laws) alive and well in the middle of a city. Didn’t the aliens start the annihilation in the cities? Not the safest place to be hiding out then?
Oh, and even better - the teenage son has mysteriously survived and managed to beat Cruise back to the family home. And Cruise immediately welcomes him back with open arms. No “How the f**k did you survive the bad aliens and then race across country ahead of us?”. No signs of remorse for killing the dude in the basement. And what about the ex-wife - are the doors open for a reunion? Do you care?
At the end of the day, War Of The Worlds is a great action/sci-fi movie. I was genuinely disturbed by the alien invasion scenes, up until the basement hell. The ending is abrupt, poorly executed and leaves a ton of questions unanswered. I can only assume the Director’s Cut will have a ton of extra material to fill in the blanks…
Phew! Got this far without a single comparison to Independence Day…
I didn’t have a problem with the aliens dying of the cold, because I’ve read the book, and that is pretty much what happens there.
But the rest of the film. Yes the special effects were great, and the attacks from the aliens were tension filled, but because this was a Spielberg film with Tom Cruise as the star I never really worried about the character of Ray. Or indeed of his family. I was sure they’d all end up safe and sound, and sure enough, they did.
Yep, that’s about the measure of it, Fence. I really must read that book someday….
It sucked, to say the least. I came out of the cinema and went straight into a bookshop to get the book. To be fair, it ends in a fairly abrupt way also. But the film ended as if they’d run out of money.
I just couldn’t ever find myself caring if Cruise’s character would make it, and I wanted to smack that squealing brat of his.
I also found the obvious product placement very irritating - and did you notice that, at the start, the video camera continued to work even though every other car/gadget/thing in the world had fused?
Sandra: I watched Minority Report the other day too and it was ten times worse for advertising. Anything set in the future is an excuse for gratuitous marketing.
You are so right, Mr. L! In a reverse of that, though, have you seen the petition to have Nike make the trainers (or guttees where we come from) that Marty McFly wears in Back To The Future II?
http://www.petitiononline.com/future2/
I loved minority report! not that i’ve seen it for 3 or 4 years. Gotta say though, I enjoyed war of the worlds right through the basement scene, but was utterly disappointed by the ending. Only other criticism is that guy in basement turned siniser remarkably quickly and inexplicably.
Jeff Waynes musical version is classic, Richard Burton narrates…the opening words “No-one would have believed…..” makes my 7 yo screeam lol