Finally watched this movie on DVD.
What could have possessed the producers to make a movie in this way?
Compare ‘Independence day’ with ‘War of the Worlds’. Both movies are not classics. But ID4 had some coherence as a movie.
In WOFTW, we see 15 minutes of intro about Tom and his work and job and family. This has absolutley no relevance to the story. Surely some executive would ask “…why did you make such a big deal of Tom being a crane operator if you are not going to use that as a plot point?”
Is this a new way for Hollywood to make a movie?
Holy crap, I never thought of it that way.
Independence Day is actually better than another movie. Wow, my mind has been blown.
The reason why there’s fifteen minutes of work and family at the beginning of the movie is because the Spielberg War of the Worlds is at its heart a disaster film. It’s about taking a normal guy and putting him in the middle of a fantastic situation where all he can do is run for his life. To do this you first have to establish him as normal. Hence the fifteen minutes of mundane things where you get to know the characters and see their lives. The relevance to the movie is how Cruise’s character grows from the flighty laze-about to someone who is taking action.
You can argue if it was effective or not, and quite frankly I didn’t like how the movie changed toward the end to give Cruise some action hero moments, but the sequence at the beginning was vital for the story Spielberg wanted to tell.
Spielberg’s films are mostly about families, and they have to end with the family put back together. Spielberg introduces this theme even into stories where it doesn’t appear in the source at all. This is why, for instance, the subplot about Cruise’s character searching for the murderer of his son was added to Minority Report, even though it doesn’t appear in the Philip K. Dick story that’s the source for the film.
On a different note, may I ask a question that is not related to the OP but is about the movie?
Thank you.
Does the book end the same way as the movie? I know I could hie on down to the library and see for myself but this seems much easier.
I won’t reveal the ending of the movie other than to say that I thought it was incredibly lame-o. Along the lines of me imagining the script writers asking themselves, “So how do we end this thing?” and another replying, “Let’s just stop writing!” Then Speilberg chiming in with “We gave them two-plus hours of dazzling FX, that should be enough!”
Actually maybe I am giving away the ending.
But if the book ends the same way, I’ll dummy up and concede the point.
Yeah the book ends the same way. I read it when i was like 8 years old and i thought it was incredibly lame.
In a sense the book ends the same way, but in the book it actually works (or at least to me it did.) Spielburg had to throw in action sequences, which meant that Tom Cruise had to win against the aliens.
In the book, the humans have no chance and it is portrayed as such, so the ending is a lot more satisfying.
I don’t personally think that Spielburg has made a successful film, from a story aspect, since Schindlers List. Since then he’s mostly glided by on special effects and individual well-shot scenes that seem to be enough for most people. And partly I think that he just doesn’t have much dark in him. He just really doesn’t naturally do well with dark and serious topics (though of course his work on Schindlers List was as good as it gets, joined really only by Graveyard of the Fireflies.)
All the major characters in ID have families. A large part of the movie is given over to interacting with family, rescuing family members, etc. It didn’t seem as convoluted in ID as it did in WOTW. And boy, was it convoluted in ID!
The only saving graces for Spielberg’s WOTW are the tripods themselves; and Dakota Fanning’s excellent portrayal of a little girl trapped by events too big for her to control, trying to escape a nefarious plot doomed for failure.
The problem with the book isn’t that it’s bad, per se, but that it’s a wee bit outdated. When the story was originally written, it was pretty cutting edge. Sadly, no genre dates itself quite like Science Fiction.
I’d like to add Empire of the Sun to that list. A lot of people didn’t like it, but I thought it was well-made, had some beautifully-filmed parts, and was plenty dark.
Though when compared to Graveyard of the Fireflies, it’s a Tom Lehrer song.
Because that would have been horribly cliched?
I don’t recall a “big deal,” I recall the camera panning in on him operating the crane, then him arguing with his boss as he’s leaving for the day. Took up maybe 4 minutes of screentime.
I think HG Wells wanted to put some religion in to the book.
So a preacher offers the hand of friendship to the aliens, then ‘some of the smallest creatures on God’s Earth’ win the day.
Agreed. I was pleasantly surprised that there was NOT a scene where Tom Cruise was able to jump into a crane that happened to be sitting there and somehow taking out a tripod with it.
For the scene in question, he was just an ordinary guy leaving work.
What, you don’t like that something that didn’t tie directly to the plot was portrayed in a movie? Oh, the horror!
I think the crane was a visual foreshadowing of the tripods.
Also, I think Tom-in-the-crane was intended as a metaphor. Tom in the beginning of the film is above and apart from the world, keeping his distance from it.
I didn’t think the movie worked. I thought it started well, but when they went into Tim Robbins’s basement and the Martians started spraying blood everywhere, I got annoyed with it and lost interest. The global terrorism metaphors got very heavy-handed.
A few notes…
I’m not going to use spoiler boxes on a movie this old…
There is an old maxim on film-making: “Show it, don’t say it.” The early bits of the film establish Cruise’s character as a workaday screwup with an ex-wife who traded up to a non-loser mate. It also sets the pre-invasion family dynamic. This is important, as the baseline characteristics give some coherence in what to expect from these characters.
Additionally, the early bits of the film needed to evoke pre-invasion normalcy, and the early battle bits balanced small-scale human suffering and loss against CGI-gee-whiz special effects.
So, we have a disconnected dad who begrudges his kids, partly because he’s resentful of his ex-wife’s shiny new family, and partly because he’s a loser, and a self-absorbed loser at that. The kids don’t take him seriously, and why should they?
Then everything goes to Hell, and Dad grows up, blah blah blah.
As for HG Wells’ stuff being dated, remember that HG Wells wrote his famous stuff before 1900. He was, in his time, a futurist up there with Jules Verne.
The beginning was supposed to make you forget major movie star in role and identify with him as being a normal everyday guy. Fanning made the movie . She was even better than Cruise .Can you imagine that. So far 3 makings of the War of the Worlds and I have seen them all several times. I like SCI Fi . I have seen much worse.
It’s all done so that we care more about the characters. And they had to spend a lot more time, since nobody gives a rats ass about Tom Cruise.
Okay, almost certainly the 1957 one with hovering war machines; and the Tom Cruise one; but what’s your third? The Timothy Hinds one? (in which case you must stark staring mad to watch it more than once 
) Or the C. Thomas Howell one?
Eh, this isn’t so late a thread. If it were about the Orson Wells radio version, then OK, that would be very late…