Well, we just went to see “War of the Worlds” in the cheap theatre. Wow. That just…sucked. The special effects were great as usual, Tom Cruise was fairly solid if not stretched one tiny little bit, but the rest was just virtually unwatchable. As I mentioned to my husband while watching it, is it wrong of me to be hoping that the kids die painful deaths early on? The young daughter needed a gag, and the older son needed a shovel to the back of the head. Can somebody tell me why he was always trying to get into battle, or whatever the hell it was that he was trying to do?
Oh, my husband has this contribution - it was severely lacking in a little thing he likes to call “plot.” As for me, I think my biggest problem with it was the wanton use of movie clichés. I was actually sighing audibly at times, as the camera moved in for a tight focus on Tom Cruise clenching his jaw/tearing up manfully.
At the end it said "Based on the novel by H.G. Wells. I would have to say it was a lot closer to “Inspired by the novel by H.G. Wells,” or “Some people involved in this movie have heard of H.G. Wells.”
I thought it was an okay movie, but as you said, the young daughter was ANNOYING! If anything made the movie bad, it was her. Every time someone turned around she was screaming or whining or complaining and I was crossing my fingers that the heat-ray would get her.
My thought on a lot of Speilberg movies as of late pretty much mirrors what Terry Gilliam said about him, he can put together these fantastic scenes for a movie that just blow you away but seems to have lost interest in making entire movies.
I rather liked the new War of the Worlds, though it had a lot of “Hollywood scenes” Spielberg suprised me a lot. I really thought it was going to suck. Even Tom Cruise did a fairly good job, but then again, he was required to play a guy who had no real skills other then being good looking, so he just had to play himself.
Couple examples:
The tripods begin killing everyone on the street, and a big mass and cruise run from them. He dodges several by inches a couple times. Nice and exciting.
Then Cruise turns down a sidestreet, away from the crowd, but the death rays are still nearly hitting him. So, does he have a big bullseye on his back? I’d be shooting at the crowd and not the one guy running off by himself. You know, the whole “Do more damage that way” thing.
Though maybe the Aliens were pissed off over his stupid little remarks about certain medical fields.
“You don’t know the history of Death Rays; I Do!”
Tom cruise is driving down the highway, through big gaps in all the stalled cars that form a nice path. Yeah, sure. It’s not that fast at Rush Hour and those cars are working!
An airliner crashes into their house and takes most of it, but the van isn’t touched, despite being in the middle of a field of debris.
Why are all these people running towards the big battle with the aliens and the military? Common sense dicatates getting away from the battle, or finding a hole and jumping in it until the shooting stops.
Little girl. I know you’re scared, but if you don’t stop screaming, I’ll feed you to the aliens just to shut you up.
And I still don’t understand the whole “Bury our invasion force underground long ago instead of just taking over when they arrived” plot, or why nobody ever noticed these big metal things before now. Surely some subway line or mine had to bump into one of these by now. Or maybe a set off some big magnetic sensors or something.
But I like it better then the 1950’s version. I’d love to see Jeff Wayne get a version as well, but not holding my breath.
In many ways I feel like Speilberg stayed relatively true to the source material, but I was very disappointed that he skipped the part where the men from Mars . . .
. . . eat up bars where the people meet.
I was really looking forward to seeing that depicted on the big screen.
Probably just as well. It could never have lived up to how I had always imagined it.
I thought it was a pretty appalling exploitation of 9/11 imagery, which is nothing new for Spielberg after Schindler’s List, Amastad, and Saving Private Ryan. Any subject is easy pickins for a popcorn salesman like Spielberg.
Dude, it was practically an unbroken fabric of 9/11 imagery. The dust-covered people fleeing toward the camera? the daughter going, “Is it the terrorists?” I didn’t make a list, and I’m not gonna watch it again, but if you do, watch it with that in mind.
Spielberg has even said (the noive!) that it was a much different movie, having been made after 9/11, than he would’be made it before. He said it was “informed by the refugee experience” or some such crap.
Aaah, that explains a vibe I was getting from the movie. I didn’t pick up on the 9/11 thing (which makes perfect sense now that you point it out), but I definitely got an “AMERICAN ARMY! RAHRAHRAH!” vibe. Which is funny, cause every time they were shown, they were getting their asses kicked.
Hampshire, that hits the nail on the head. I described the movie to my husband later as a bunch of cool scenes strung together like beads on a long string of sucky.
My husband also says that the movie is extremely derivative of all of Spielberg’s other movies. Spielberg borrowed heavily from himself for this movie, unfortunately.
Nobody can dress a set like that guy. Real people’s houses look like real, lived-in people’s houses.
And, O, my sweet, sweet Og, the burning train rocketing through the crossing is an image I’ll carry with me to my grave.
But, Spielberg the movie-maker? Meh, he’s seen better days.
I really threw myself into War of the Worlds and went along for the ride for the action and suspense. (Even when it wasn’t there. The scene where they’re in the kitchen at the ex-wife’s house had me about to jump out of my skin because of the window above the sink. You couldn’t see out the window, because the lights were on in the room, and it was framed right in the middle of the whole scene, and I believed deep down in my soul that something was going to come through that goddamn window. But I was wrong.) But take away loud noises and the screaming and the running and there’s really not much there.
IMO, an honest end credit would read “Some people involved in this movie have heard of H.G. Wells. (He’s the guy who scared everybody half to death with that radio show, right?)”
At this point I think Spielburg is tacking on his signature, rudiculously happy endings just because he knows it pisses people off.
That said, I though this movie was pretty good, at least for a big-budget action flick. Beats anything we’re likely to see from Bruckheimer, anyway.
I thought he coulda done something a little more interesting with resolving the ending. The ending of the book was a Dues-ex Machina (almost literally), but it didn’t feel like one. The older version of the movie also handled it well. Here it felt sort of tacked on (“and then all the aliens died suddenly, yea”).
“Fantastic Four” was a fun, popcorn flick (which I quite enjoyed). “War of the Worlds” had pretensions of being something slightly more, and it fell completely short, in my opinion. The egregious use of threadbare clichés kept pulling me out of the movie (but I agree with you, Podkayne, that burning train scene was something to make the hair on your arms stand up.) Maybe that’s my biggest complaint; it was so damned uneven - an irritating mix of mind-blowing scenes and extremely tired clichés. But, you say, that is the hallmark of a mindless action movie. Okay, fair cop - this one just didn’t work for me.