My wife and I want to see it; but we’re going to wait a while. Holy Cow was I ever glad I decided to NOT see it on opening night. Last night we went to the movies to see Captain America; and saw about a zillion teens dressed either in green paint makeup or wearing cowboy hats. They were all yelling and screaming. I’m glad I wasn’t in a theater full of all that attention seeking behavior.
As a side note; I’m so freaking tired of people thinking it’s OK to text on their cell phones during a movie. It’s STILL A DISTRACTION you imbecile! It’s like turning on a flash light in the theater. I decided to fight fire with fire. I said to her rather loudly “Would you please turn that off! It’s very distracting!” I was probably lucky it didn’t turn into her shouting something back at me, but at least it worked this time.
The really funny thing about War of the Worlds is that the aliens didn’t really outclass us by all that much. A direct hit by artillery takes out one of the tripods, and the Thunderchild (which incidentally is the most badass warship name ever) managed to account for two. If the Martians had waited, say, thirty years longer, it’d have been a fair fight.
I just got back from C&As. It is so bad it is good! The first half of the movie was just a pretty standard good guy/bad guy cowboy movie. However, once the indians showed up (and I swear I could hear the director saying “cue the indians”) I couldn’t stop laughing. It was just one cowboy/indian cliche after another! I laughed so hard I thought I was going to have to leave the theater when they figured out how to get Daniel Craig’s memory back.
Overall, it was worth the price of admission, if nothing else, I got to see DC in chaps for two hours!
I liked it! I am not a big fan of Westerns but frankly, even the western elements had me interested. I think I would have enjoyed a movie about this town and these characters that didn’t have any aliens in it.
Weirdest thing is what it reminded me of the most was the Worldwar series of books. If you haven’t read them, that is a series of novels where aliens invade Earth in the middle of WWII forcing all the warring nations to unite against them. Here you have all the tropes of a Western uniting to fight off these aliens. I realize they are very very different stories but for some reason that was what the movie had me thinking of.
The movie won’t change the world but there are worse ways to spend two hours in a theater.
In Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series a race of reptilian aliens drop into the middle of World War II. Their last robot probe had been in the 12th century and in all the other races they had conquered – and themselves – technological progress was very slow, so they were quite surprised to find themselves fighting mechanized armies rather than knights on horseback. The Wiki article says they had equipment only “marginally ahead of 21st century Earth technology” but – except for star-faring spaceships – my estimate was more like mid-eighties for the war machines. Even so, after 10,000 years’ refinement the machines were very well designed. I remember one scene where a tank man exploring one of the few aliens tanks they’d managed to knock out marveled at how everything fit well even though he wasn’t the size it was built for. Even with the finite resources they’d brought with them, the aliens won but it took them a lot longer than they had figured on.
To get back on topic, I found it a serviceable movie, a classic Exactly What It Says on the Tin. I’m still deciding whether to list it as six or seven stars, a lot better than Thor. I mean, it’s got Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, a naked Olivia Wilde, horrific aliens, and direction by Jon Favreau? What’s not to like. I saw the midnight showing and the theater was about half full, nobody in costumes or the like, and reasonably well behaved. One young miss remarked as she was leaving, "Now I wanna see Firefly again. The exact locale was never mentioned in the movie, but they spoke of taking prisoners to Santa Fe. I was looking at the scenery and guessing central New Mexico. When the Indians showed up they were termed Chiricahua, probably because of their reputation of being the last band to be subdued, but I was thinking they ought to be Mescalero. I felt vindicated when in the music credits the “Mescalero tribe” was credited with their War Song.
I went looking for a mindless action film and that is what I got. I had fun with it.
I am embarrassed to admit that it took me almost a half hour to recognize Boyd Crowder (from Justified) I knew I knew him, I just couldn’t place from *where *I knew him.
Don’t feel too bad: due to this thread, I had to look up who Clancy Brown was <Kurgen!> and even then, I didn’t recognize him. Spent the whole movie wondering ‘Ok, where the hell is he?’
And for me, the funny thing is as soon as I saw Clancy Brown’s name in the credits, I said to myself that “He must be playing the town’s preacher.” Sure enough…
I guess it was entertaining enough but overall I’d have to say we both were expecting a bit more. Daniel Craig was his usual engaging self but Harrison kinda stunk it up. I couldn’t think of where I’d seen the Apache leader for the longest time and then it hit me, he was the bowed up badass in Apocalypto, Raoul Trujillo.
Like abbeytxs said above, it ended up relying on one exhausted chiche after another. It could have been better, way better.
Before somebody runs out to see this based on Desert Dog’s description, please understand that this is a teasing soft-focus obstructed view naked Olivia Wilde, not a ‘holy cow tits and ass!’ naked Olivia Wilde. Caveat emptor.
I saw it yesterday, and my reaction was the above, plus it was just boring.
I was really trying to go with it up until they set out in the posse. Then it just got tedious. Some of the scenes seemed written to do nothing more than give their actors some lines to say (like the scene where Harrison Ford’s character describes his experience as a 10 year old to the little boy).
After that, it was really, really hard to suspend disbelief. For instance:In the final battle, why did the aliens decide to all just run out in the open to fight, essentially naked? At one point, one of them is on a mounted laser weapon, but I guess he decided that instead of picking off the attacking cowboys and indians from the comfort of his defensive position, he should run out naked to bite them. Why didn’t any of them at least take one of their wrist weapons with them?
