Well.
I loved this movie. Saw it five times, actually. After reading this thread, it is apparent that I am to War of the Worlds what other people are to AI or to Showgirls - a lonely voice crying “But you don’t understand!”
That’s a lot of work though - not too sure if I care to get into a pissing match against this crowd, especially as it won’t accomplish anything and can go on for days. But I would like to make a few comments about some common complaints:
“It Doesn’t Have A Plot!” Of course not, silly. As opposed to nearly every other movie on the planet, WOTW has a main character who does nothing but react. He’s not drving the plot, he’s not going to solve the problem, he’s not going to meet exposition guy who will Explain Everything, he’s just some shmoe whose world suddenly, without warning or explanation, goes all to hell. Unlike Jeff Goldblum, this guy isn’t going to drive to the White House to Demand an Explanation. He’s going to run like hell and see if he can get anything on the radio dial.
The “plotlessness” of WOTW ties in with common complaint #2:
“The Invasion Plan Made No Sense!” What invasion plan? Where did we hear details about the aliens actual invasion plans? I must have missed that scene.
All we know is this:
- There were no aliens or machines in the ground when the sewers were planted.
- Lightning strikes the same place repeatedly (19 times?)
- About 15 minutes to a half-hour later, terrible machines rise up to raise hell.
That’s it. That’s all we know. And for most of the movie, it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that 19 lightning strikes transported advanced alien nanotechnology that formed the machines. Or that the machines, buried 50,000 feet down, moved into place just hours, days before the invasion. But what happens is that a character who knows no more than Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, myself, or floating body #27 speculates that the machines have been sitting under the streets for a million years…
and the audience takes it as Gospel truth. :rolleyes:
The point is you don’t know. That’s why it “makes no sense”, because you’re not given any information that clarifies what is happening. Aliens come down, destroy everything they look at, and they never bothered to tell you why: and that’s purposeful, to make the audience feel the confusion that Ray is feeling.
“His son lives! No way!” Really? Why shouldn’t he have lived? Because he was in a battlefield? Other people were on the same battlefield and lived - why not the kid? Yeah, the odds were against him but they weren’t 1:1 for his death, not even close.
But the thing that really bothers people is that they feel that Spielberg is, again, pulling his punches for the happy ending. Killing his characters to tug hearts is not what Spielberg is about, the moral crisis’ of his movies don’t deal with basic, easy to understand “awww, somebody died. Just like Bambi’s mom” issues, but with the consequences of his characters decisions.
In War of the Worlds, the moment in which Ray’s life and perception of himself shifts is when he chooses to murder Harlan (Tim Robbins). He lost his son, he was about to lose his daughter when he realized that she could not safely co-exist with Harlan. So he purposefully kills him, an action Ray would’ve considered himself incapable of just days earlier. Not “in the heat of the moment, to protect the kid”: he weighed his odds, realized what he had to do, warned Harlan, and then did it when Harlan ignored the warning.
Murdered him. With his 12 year-old daughter in the next room, fully knowing what Daddy is doing.
After that, he was a different Ray. This Ray, had he been around a few weeks earlier, would not have lost his son.
Robby might as well lived - whether or not he died wasn’t the issue. (There’s another argument that states that Robby had to live, to show Ray that proactively dealing with the aliens is as effective than running away, but that’s another post).
I don’t think the message was as strong as that in SPR (another movie bizarrely bashed for “pulling punches”), where Private Ryan lived his life knowing that men died so that he could go home and comfort his mother. The burden that he carried through the decades weighed heavily - to make his life worth the multiple lives expended to save him. This isn’t a theme often explored in film, and it makes SPR a far more subtle war movie than one that focuses solely upon the individual deaths of the “group” (which SPR does too, of course).
WOTW largely follows the same blueprint. It’s not about who lives and who dies, it’s about life and death decisions.
“There are bizarre coincidences! The car can drive down the highway at 100mph, missing the perfectly-aligned “stalls”! The plane can crash into the garage with no damage to the van! Her parents went through the same crap 50+ years ago - why didn’t they tell anybody! ( Actually, that’s my explanation as to why they look so fresh - alien invasions are old hat to them and they know how to dress accordingly*. 
)”
I didn’t say the movie was a perfect exploration of aliens inhumanity to man, just that it’s better than a lot of y’all are saying.
*If this little parenthetical makes no sense, her parents, who were seen only at the very end of the movie, were played by the two leads in the 1953 version).