War of the Worlds: Meh...(no spoilers)

Okay, it's kind of fun to watch, but it doesn't quite work.

Problem #1 is Spielberg's decision to dink with the way Wells set up the alien fleet arrival. I don't think it introduces a mini-spoiler to say that, rather than having the tripods arrive via meteor showers, the alien army activates resources deployed on a prehistoric visit. Hence the tagline "They're already here..."

This immediately raises the most annoying contrivance in the film (and there are others, but I won't talk about them)...why not just set up shop on the first visit, when humanity's idea of a Doomsday Device was the atl-atl?

Problem #2 is, surprisingly, the too-updated look. The fatal miscalculation which undoes the alien fleet works well when the audience has bought into retro sensibilities. But when the bad guys are strolling around the mountains in tripods that look like a Lexus engineer's wet dream, it's suddenly a little much to believe that such a slick civilization could have blithely skated past some fairly broad avenues of scientific inquiry.

Really *dons asbestos suit* the most watchable part of the film is Cruise's performace. Given what he has to work with, he does a pretty decent job of playing an average Joe who comes very suddenly and very completely unglued, and then has to put himself back together for his kids when he really just wants to curl up under the coffee table and suck his thumb. Oh, and I will give Spielberg this: the sense of immediacy in the battle scenes, especially the initial attack, is pretty gripping.

I understand a small UK studio is planning to unwrap a competing version of the film later this year...a period piece that's truer to the details of Wells' book. I think that one could be a lot more fun to watch, and I hope it makes it into US distribution.

-- jj

Given I was forcibly given a ticket to this one, I saw it last night.

I feel, for better or worse, that this is continuing a trend of "all action no plot" in Hollywood. The graphics, acting, and experience are all compelling, but given as well-traveled a plot as War of the Worlds, I guess I hoped for something a little more compelling from Spielberg.

That said, it was a fun watch.

However, I seriously expect the makers of Half-life 2 may try to sue, or vice-versa. Also continuing a trend in Hollywood, the tripods (especially the sounds used) struck me as very borrowed from the "Striders" Gordon Freeman faced in his latest game outing.

That ruined it a little for me. I half expected to see Barnie pop up at any moment.

Bruce Campbell, in a Q&A session before the 11:00pm premier of "Man With The Screaming Brain" at the Angelika Theater, NYC:

"Don't you see that all A movies are really B movies?"

I thought it was good.

Some of the scenes of chaos and destruction are really quite chilling.

I made a poll /120/7d/52148/1.html

I thought the movie was great science fiction. (Emphasis on fiction)

Buster

This movie kicks ass. There were a few stupid things about the plot that could be changed but over all it rocked.

Oh, yeah.

That scene with the {edited} is extraordinarily haunting.

And the little vignette at the {edited} is horrific.

*zips lips*

== danny d.

Edit: On second thought, I think I said too much. These two scenes really need to sneak up on the audience.

Okay, WOTW is an old enough story that I think it's safe to discuss how it ends without spoiling anything. Everyone knows the aliens die of disease, right? I mean we all read the book in middle school, we've all heard the infamous radio show, and we've all seen one if not both of the previous movies, right?

Okay, so in this version of it, if they've been "planning this for a million years," as Tim Robins put it (this was in the trailer, no spoiler) and their sophisticated machinery has been here the whole time, why the hell did they fail to notice that more than 2/3 of all life on this planet is bacterial, and that bacteria causes infectuous disease? Okay, so maybe there are no microbes on their planet so it didn't occur to them that there would be microbes here, which was a plausible explanation in the original story because in the original they'd only just arrived, but in this version they've been here before. Wouldn't somebody in the course of all that time that they were watching us "with envious eyes" have said, "Wait a second, these Earth creatures sure do seem to end up with their share of ailments from time to time. I wonder why that is."?

I guess as the great Joe Bob Briggs would say, this one featured "no plot to get in the way of the story."

Putting that aside though (if such a thing is possible), it did have superb acting, some truly intense moments, good effects (of course), and accaptable if not great character dynamics. That little girl is phenominal. I loved her in Taken, and she was at least as good in this. Here's hoping she doesn't turn out like some of Speiburg's previous prodigies.

The 'competing' version was Pendragon studios version by Timothy Hines - it never made it to theatrical release but has recently been released on DVD in the USA only, being as Paramount/Whoever runs the Spielberg 'Independence Day 2' version of the film are giving them a hard time over worldwide distribution rights.

I actually have a copy on order from Amazon US, in transit to the UK as I write. Hopefully my multi-region DVD player will handle it.

The Pendragon film is apparently rather low budget with some quirky old-style type special effects so I hear, 3 hours long and follows the book almost exactly as a victorian period piece. I love the book so am really looking forward to this.

I've seen some very mixed reviews, but it sounds more of a creepy and thought provoking horror film (as the book) rather than the Spielberg version which sounds suspiciously like a 'no-relation to the book CGI-fest blockbuster'. Maybe a future cult classic ?

At the moment though I have not been able to see either film, so these are just my anticipatory feelings Been waiting eagerly for both of these films for sooo long !

Oh yes, Jeff Wayne also has a musical CGI film version in the works based on the '70's album he made with the accompanying artwork - due 2007- that too will be interesting.....

Indeed. Some great images in general, actually.

I was pleasantly surprised, and I was very vocal prior to seeing it about how much I figured it would suck.

I agree that it doesn't work as well now as it did back wayback when... And I didn't like the whole "burried for thousands of years" thing... But complaining about the aliens not noticing the virus just doesn't make sense to me, I guess. That's sorta the entire thrust of the story. Dinking with that is what WOULD have ruined it for me.

I saw this movie yesterday, this movie was amazing and left me at the edge of my seat lol Tom cruise was superb in this film, i can't tell you how many times i jumped from my seat LOL i give this movie 5 thumbs up

hah! That would be great if he just ran in and took Tom Cruise to some "safehouse" in the middle of the scene, only to give Tom something important to do while he goes back out to "take care" of some mindless task. thus killing 10 mins of movie time.

I felt the ending forced, no tie in at all with the first hours of plot. It was abrupt.
and the coduct of the invading army was never explained..I mean why humans in baskets? Why the bloodsucking freaks, and what's with the spray string everywhere?

all in all the earlier version was better.

I do look forward o seeing the period piece

Question 1:

Is it an hour-and-a-half whine about the Bush administration (like Land of the Dead)?

Not that I'm a big pro-bush person, It's that I tend to like movies to entertain...not whine or preach, and I like to make my own political decisions....and I'm just a wee bit sick to my stomach politically these days already.


Question 2: I'm not familiar with Scientology at all, but in a recent news report I saw an interview with an ex-scientologist who was explaining their beliefs. One belief that stuck out (to me anyway) was that they believe in aliens, and believe that the aliens visited the Earth long ago and settled in volcanoes and somehow infected the human race with...um...spores? midicloreans? socialist ideologies? ..and only through Scientologist teachings can you protect yourself. Is this true (whether they believe this, I'm pretty sure as "true history" it's dinosaur crap...like most beliefs)?

I have to agree with you there..i was sorta baffled, it wasn't string they where spraying, it was blood i would have liked to have seen more on how they where being exterminated at first i thought the crows had something to do with it..the special effects where amazing, i was spooked lol

Nope.





Aside from Tom Cruise being in the movie, there are no references to Scientology whatsoever. The story does a very nice job of following H.G. Wells' story in a modern setting.

If you gotta choose between this and batman..go see batman.

You never know it could happen to this planet in the distant future..who knows it sure got me thinking we to could be harvested for food lol

LMAO

Well, I sat through all three hours of the 'period piece' Tim Hines version of War of the Worlds last night.....

Hmmm, mmmmm :-/

On the negative side, even allowing for low budget and the way it was filmed, some of the visual effects were truly appalling, such as filming in daylight then fiddling with the levels to 'simulate' darkness resulting in obvious sunshine at night, in the early part of the film, and sadly the Thunderchild sequence was laughable to watch in terms of dramatic effect and the crude modelling - it almost looked like a rough storyboard sequence hastily pasted in. There are a lot of too obviously superimposed effects. Even the 1953 George Pal film has better effects if you want to look at it from that point of view, however...

On the positive side, it followed the book very accurately, which, yes, resulted in a certain slowness of pace, but it did represent the inexorable progress of the martians and captures that feeling of disbelief turning to the horror and fear of being hunted by the seemingly unstoppable unknown as a proud/arrogant/complacent english victorian civilisation falls. It's much more like an old fashioned horror/sci-fi B movie. There are some genuinely chilling sequences at certain points in the film and the visualisation of the martians and their machines is actually quite well done and is very close indeed to Well's descriptions. They may appear a little corny to modern cinema going eyes - but this was his victorian imagining after all and did make me feel like I was 'inside' the book.

I think maybe the idea was to represent the film almost as a (hypothetical) victorian film-making industry might have made it - if so it backfires a little in that the strangeness of the production does sometimes just seem cheap/bad, but it's a testament to Wells that the story comes across well, as I did turn in for the night feeling quite disturbed ( well, more so than usual ), and also, before now I've given up and switched off more modern films with good effects for lack of story - but this film did indeed hold my attention for the full three hours. I think it will, in time, be a cult classic. It's quirky as hell but I liked it.

So I'll be off to see Spielberg's re-hashing of the tale fairly soon, it'll make an interesting comparison

I would love to see the three-hour one! We saw the Spielberg movie last night, and we all enjoyed it a lot.

Having said that, what bothered me immediately was:

1. As the original poster said, why bury the machines a million years ago then come back to inhabit them later, via the lightening? There could be a reason; I could make one up - so why didn't they?

2. When the first machine was bursting out of the earth, what was wrong with those people? Virtually ALL of them hung around. Admittedly, curiosity is a huge motivator for human beings, but come on! Most of those people would be high-tailing it out of there, figuring they could watch it on TV later to satisfy their curiosity, lol.

Ditto moms (and even dad Cruise) hanging out in their back yards with their children and babies with lightening THAT drastic anywhere in the area.

3. The string/blood thing - never explained, really. Course, I'm bad at following plots, so maybe I just didn't get this.

4. The ending, yes - too abrupt.

5. The mother looked too young to be the mother of the teenage boy.

On the good side:

1. The little girl. Really, really a good little actress!

2. Tom Cruise: Did the best possible job I can imagine anyone doing with this role. Conclusion: He will survive his current PR stupidity and in-love insanity.

3. Tim Robbins: Good. I wish we had SEEN his demise, though. Why not show it anyway?

4. Good scenery, good blasted look, all of that.

5. I thought there WAS enough characterization and human type plotline, particularly considering this was a horror movie.

Another quibble: I would have liked to see more of the monsters. I liked the scene where they were passing around photographs. Wanted more.

But hey - a fun movie, fun for the whole family, if the whole family is teenage and above, as mine are.

coco

Lisa Ann Walter did a good job too - though I assume she had some scenes cut, as she came out of nowhere and was Cruise's best friend all of a sudden, and on imdb.com she's credited as "bartender". Probably from cut scenes as the movie didn't explain how she knew him at all.