# Good Lord! Speilberg's "War of the Worlds" with Tom Cruise was an awful movie! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 22, 2006, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780 "2006-04-22T19:44:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/21 "2006-04-22T23:28:23Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > Another Spielberg movie: _Saving Private Ryan_ had Tom Hank’s character get killed. He was arguably the main character since Ryan doesn’t show up until the last act. Well, just to pick nits, Ryan is in the opening scene. ---
**Author:** ![Mrs\_Johnson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7cd45c/32.png) [@Mrs\_Johnson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mrs_Johnson)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/22 "2006-04-22T23:29:06Z")
When I watched it I’d just had knee surgery and was uh, not myself due to painkillers. I sat there the entire time wanting to strangle that little girl or throw something at the tv. I was so pissed off. I got up several times to try to calm myself down. I guess the Lortab increased my dislike for small children. Other than that, I thought the movie was a waste of time and the $4 I spent to rent it. ---
**Author:** ![SkipMagic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skipmagic/32/20706_2.png) [@SkipMagic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SkipMagic)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/23 "2006-04-22T23:35:42Z")
Just a reminder: when spoiling movies not the subject of the thread, it’s polite to put the spoilers in a spoiler box. I went ahead and added the spoiler boxes to the posts talking about _Saving Private Ryan_. ---
**Author:** ![Phantom\_Dennis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/51bf81/32.png) [@Phantom\_Dennis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phantom_Dennis)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/24 "2006-04-22T23:46:05Z")
The '53 version may have had a lot of hammy acting, but the special effects were awesome for the time, and they still work well by today’s standards. The design of the Martian machines (it’s hard to call them tripods) was beyond cool. I still get the creeps thinking about them. I can barely remember the Spielburg version. I don’t usually forget movies, but it was such a completely ineffective piece of crap that it just slipped out of my mind. Even the cheesy early-'90s TV show based on the '53 movie was more memorable. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/25 "2006-04-23T00:59:26Z")
I admit that the kids in this movie are obnoxious, but it’s a step in the right direction for Spielberg- at least they’re not little geniuses saving the day like _Jurassic Park_. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/26 "2006-04-23T04:51:23Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > I agree with you on this, but I think this was the best of the updated ones and I’m not sure we’re ever going to get a period version. > > Maybe the Jeff Wayne Version will be really cool, but I’m not holding my breath. Uhh… there was a period piece made which happened to be released almost at the same time as the Spielberg/Cruise WotW. imdb: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425638/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425638/) ---
**Author:** ![Israfel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/87869e/32.png) [@Israfel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Israfel)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/27 "2006-04-23T05:15:21Z")
I liked the film well enough, but I would _love_ to see a period adaptation. I really don’t get the Dakota Fanning backlash, though-not only in this film, but in general. I’ve seen her in three movies and I thought she was great in all of them. ---
**Author:** ![Israfel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/87869e/32.png) [@Israfel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Israfel)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/28 "2006-04-23T05:19:41Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > imdb: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425638/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425638/) Oh, well what do you know. I heard about that when it was in production but I didn’t realize it had been released. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/29 "2006-04-23T06:23:22Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Uhh… there was a period piece made which happened to be released almost at the same time as the Spielberg/Cruise WotW. > > imdb: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425638/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425638/) After I posted I remembered that. Okay, what I meant was: A period piece that isn’t a total piece of shit. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/30 "2006-04-23T06:29:36Z")
> [@garygnu](#): > > I vote for abyssmal. It’s possible for a movie’s bad parts to not ruin the good parts, but not here. (Yes, there were good parts.) > Can Stephen Spielberg _please_ make a movie where a main character is killed and/or things _don’t_ turn out all right in the end? > Cruise was fine. I think he’s a great actor. Not his best work, but he had nothing to do with the problems in this movie. Amen. Not Cruise’s best work to say the least. I thought he was great in Collateral. I felt that the ending was just the crap icing on a crap cake. Had it been a dream sequence, maybe I would have bought it. Poor Tim Robbins, horrible part in a horrible movie. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/31 "2006-04-23T06:36:29Z")
> [@HPL](#): > > After I posted I remembered that. Okay, what I meant was: A period piece that isn’t a total piece of shit. A-MEN, BROTHER!!! From someone who paid $9 for the DVD & has warned everyone about it since. Actually, it wouldn’t have been totally awful if an hour of the guy wandering aimlessly along the countryside had been edited out. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/32 "2006-04-23T06:44:01Z")
> [@FriarTed](#): > > A-MEN, BROTHER!!! > > From someone who paid $9 for the DVD & has warned everyone about it since. > > Actually, it wouldn’t have been totally awful if an hour of the guy wandering aimlessly along the countryside had been edited out. Maybe it could have been saved if they could have had some “Brown Bunny” action at the end of aimlessly wandering the countryside. Nah… never mind… it didn’t save the “Brown Bunny”. ---
**Author:** ![dnooman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/839c29/32.png) [@dnooman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dnooman)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/33 "2006-04-23T07:21:11Z")
If Chloë Sevigny couldn’t save Brown Bunny with a bj, nothing can. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/34 "2006-04-23T07:30:24Z")
The _only_ thing I liked about Cruisin’ the War of the Worlds was the sound the tripods made when they fired their heat ray (wish I could find a sample of that on the web). ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/35 "2006-04-23T09:19:44Z")
> [@Tuckerfan](#): > > The _only_ thing I liked about Cruisin’ the War of the Worlds was the sound the tripods made when they fired their heat ray (wish I could find a sample of that on the web). [Tripods call](http://forums.eveofthewar.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=lastcom&cat=-289) ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Clam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3bc359/32.png) [@Happy\_Clam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Clam)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/36 "2006-04-23T12:27:22Z")
I also quite enjoyed, although the sappy-ending-which-must-not-be-spoken-of was shite, and I got rather annoyed by the whole “they’re already here” thing. But for most of the time I was on the edge of my seat, which is all I require of a good action-thriller. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/37 "2006-04-23T18:02:05Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > what’s so special about a brownstone in Boston that escaped the terror. For some reason unknown to god or man, that final scene was shot in my Brooklyn neighborhood. Park Slope as a stand-in for Back Bay. You can see my place in the background as Cruise or his kid or his wife or his mother-in-law comes walking up the street (I’m not sure who; I was looking at my place in the background and waving). ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/38 "2006-04-23T18:47:20Z")
> [@astro](#): > > [Tripods call](http://forums.eveofthewar.com/photos/thumbnails.php?album=lastcom&cat=-289) That’s neat and all, but not the sound that I’m looking for. That’s just the tripods talking. I want the one of the heat ray. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/39 "2006-04-23T20:57:24Z")
IMO, there was a single, terminal problem with the film that made it difficult to forgive the sappyness and lame hystrionics. The relatively poor script might have been tolerable if the overall package wasn’t so deeply flawed. At any rate, I thought the actors did about as well as one could, given the material they had to work with. That terminal problem is, unfortunately, the entire premise of the ending. Maybe once, long ago, microbes were such a novel and mysterious concept to the layman one could easily accept the whole idea of these deadly aliens succumbing to terran pathogens. But these days we wash our dogs with antibacterial soap, for crying out loud. We’re supposed to believe for one second an invading force capable of interstellar travel and posessing weaponry of awesome power couldn’t figure out a hazmat suit? If you’re going to modernize the effects and the tech, you’ve got to update other elements critical to the story to make it wholly palatable to modern sensibilities. They made absolutely no effort to do so for this flick. Nostalgia doesn’t justify patently stupid resolutions. I thought the beginning got off swimmingly. Yeah, Cruise wasn’t terribly believable as a dockworker; he’s a bit too pretty for roughneck blue collar. Yeah, the son was a snot-nosed little shit who we’d like to see spat out of a tube for fertilizer. Yeah, Fanning is so cute you want to puke sometimes. But this is a disaster flick. All characterizations in disaster flicks are absurdly exaggerated so as to make us care excessively about ordinary schlubs who dangle over the maw of some monstrous catastrophe. It it was, in the beginning, a beautifully-rendered catastrophe, to me. Stuff was getting blowed up real good, civilization was collapsing, terrorized mobs, death and mayhem all around. That’s a great foundation. But the ending screws that attractive pooch so hard it devolves into a ridiculous waste of time and effort. The “scary” enemy just up and croaks! What kind of way to stop an Armageddon is that? If nerfing is a real sci-fi phenomenon, than this has to be one of the all-time greatest nerfs in the history of the genre. If the story needs revamping, revamp the damn thing, don’t just follow it blindly to its pathetic conclusion. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2006, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780/40 "2006-04-24T02:57:12Z")
Well, what resolution can you really make? The entire tension of the story came from the utter dominance of the tripods. Any resolution was ultimately going to be a disappointing deus ex machina. Better to have gone for the original and blamed HG Well rather than inventing a new one and have rabid but not particularly bright fans castigate you for what a lame ending it was and how they should have remained faithful to the book. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/good-lord-speilbergs-war-of-the-worlds-with-tom-cruise-was-an-awful-movie/353780.md?page=3)