May I introduce you to the wonder that is VILLAGE OF THE GIANTS!
Starring Tommy Kirk, little Ronny Howard, Beau Bridges, Suzanne Sommers AND Toni (Hey Mickey) Basil!
I saw it last night. I was . . . disappointed.
And I’ve got a lot of spoilers. Sorry about that, but even though I’ve read most of the thread, I don’t want to give away anything (just in case).
Pros:
Pretty good special effects! As horrifying as it is to think of people being vaporized by death rays, I was. . . horrified!
Fairly thorough in the storyline, WRT small details: The EMP pulse knocks out everything (except for that one camcorder . . . which still confuses me). And I did like the point how angry, panic-stricken mobs would inevitably arise. Nice touch, that I think is unfortunately left out of most horror flicks.
Cons:
Tom Cruise. While he did an okay job, I think I unfortunately fell into the media’s anti-Tom thing while watching the movie. Regardless, I think they could have found someone a little more believable to begin with. 'Specially in the Tim Robbins scenes. It was like watching Andre the Giant fight Hervé Villechaize Besides, I’m supposed to imagine that a guy who can’t even keep his fridge stocked is going to safely escort his kids on a 6 hour hike through a battlefront, all the way to Boston? C’mon . . .
Too much special effects. As scary as the tripods are, they weren’t sneaky or sinister like the aliens from . . . Aliens. You knew where the tripods were, so you ran away (sometimes being vaporized in the process). Give me something that can sneak up on me.
[spoiler]Too simple of a plot. Maybe it’s because I like them political thrillers, but here’s the plot:
Aliens invade, and we’re all pretty much toast. Save kids by getting 'em back to Mom.
That’s it? :rolleyes: No scenes of the effort to find a weakness? I don’t know, maybe I’ve been kinda been spoiled by the “Humanity can adapt, overcome and kick ass” alien movies. USA! USA![/spoiler]
A couple of other points:
[ul]
[li]I totally missed the significance of the birds and the shields when I saw the movie. Thanks for pointing that out.[/li][li]The real monster of this movie is the Pulaski Skyway (the elevated highway behind Tommy’s house). That thing is a monstrosity of engineering, and I’m glad that got toasted.[/li][/ul]
Now, three questions:
- What was the point of the empty airliner? I think I’m missing something. . .
- What were the red vines/plants? What were they there for?
- When the people got sucked up into the machine, what were they being sucked up into . . . the machine’s anus?
Trip’s Pick: C+ / One thumb up, one thumb down / 2 1/2 stars.
This movie did it’s job: to keep me mildly entertainted for two hours. Note the italicized “mildly”. I say the movie “did it’s job” in that it saved me money. Where I could have gone to a bar and played some cards, losing $40 in the same amount of time, instead, I spend $5.50 and saw the movie. This movie was a decent alternative to having my arse handed to me by a constant stream of other player’s flushes and straights.
Tripler
. . . and as I typed this post, I think I realized that I’ve been groomed/grown accustomed to certain flicks.
- A plane crashed into the house they were sheltering in. Just a bit of random destruction, like the flaming train.
- Terraforming.
- Sphincters are nature’s natural way to close off the end of a tube. I do think it’s plausible that aliens might use them to seal off ports like that that open and close often.
I was a bit ambivalent when I left the theatre but the more I think about it, the more I liked it. Tripods are frigging cool!
I visited IMDB last night and note that the user comments so far appear to be overwhelmingly negative, to the point whether I wonder if we all saw the same movie. Most of the criticisms seem to fall into the category of a) Dakota screams way too much; b) I hate Tom Cruise so his latest film suxs; c) I never read the book so since I have no idea that most of the major plot points follow those in the novel, I don’t have a clue why the film is structured the way it is; d) it’s not upbeat enough (huh?!?)
Ok, I’m not being entirely fair, but many of the crits do seem to be on those lines. I’ll agree that the science is generally ludicrous, some of the situations that move the story forward are contrived, and there are clear signs of the film’s absurdly rushed development process, but I still contend that Speilberg appears to have gotten what he wanted to get onto the screen, and that it is interesting and good.
I look at it as basically as a deliberate attempt to strip a film down to pure peril, with the same sort of emphasis on story through image as the best silent films. Hey, maybe I’m being pretentious here; if so, I accept the charge.
Ahh! I didn’t put the two and two together. Thanks!
But they seemed to be alive. . . that they eventually declined into nothing but dust by the end of the show. Living terraforming? Hrm . . .
Which leads me to believe that the machines were alive too: Living pilot driving a living machine.
Tripler
I thought the train was scarier than the empty airliner. Everyone saw the flaming “ghost train”.
The red vines were in the original story that H.G. Wells wrote. From the Project Gutenberg edition.
Another thing from the book was the Martians drinking blood through the metal pipettes. Another quote: “Let it suffice to say, blood obtained from a still living animal, in most cases from a human being, was run directly by means of a little pipette into the recipient canal [of the Martian]”
Tripler, with regard to the simplicity of the plot, that’s the part of the movie that’s totally faithful to H.G. Wells. It’s pretty much the whole point of the the story.
In the novel, it’s never clear whether the weeds were being sown for a purpose or if the seeds were accidentally transferred from Mars. They’re mainly there for foreshadowing.It’s extremely invasive, and chokes out all native flora as it quickly and easily takes over the landscape. Then it just as quickly dies off.
Hell with the still working camera, I want to know why Tom cruises charachters old mustang died on his son. I am not a mustang expert but that looks like a 68 mustang. That should have breaker/point ignition and should not have been fried by EMP. One of my first thoughts when the EMP thing came up in the movie was that they would have a functioning car to help them escape.
Archergal, Larry, I thank you guys!
I didn’t see the 1953 version, but I thought there was something “deeper” to the vines. I think I was just reading into 'em a little too much.
Thanks!
Tripler
Now I’m not sure whether to hate the Martians or Communists more. . .
The EMP was a huge macguffin. AFAIK, it doesn’t fry electronics, though it can render them useless for quite a while. But then, in many ways the aliens were a huge macguffin.
Great movie. Truly frightening.
I just got back. Basically, I’m abivalent.
Cool effects, great direction, good acting. However, I felt that the paper-thin plot meandered, the attempted balancing of large-scale disaster with intimate character moments didn’t always work, the ending seemed hurried and abrupt, and I disliked the typically Spielbergian appeal to cheap sentiment in the final scene. And of course, Cruise played his patented “cocky asshole who learns a life lesson and becomes a better father/brother/lawyer/pool player/fighter pilot in the end.” He does it well but, damn, it’s getting old.
I know I’m going to get shot down for this but Signs, with all it’s myriad plot holes and credibility stretching contrivances, was a better movie than WoW. I found it far more suspenseful (esp. in the basement scene as compared to the one in WoW which ruined the suspense by dragging on far too long) and the characters much better developed and believable.
Great Summer Movie! Nothing too deep, nothing overly sentimental (notwithstanding the dumb ending, which I’ll go into more detail in a bit). But solid action, great FX, terrifying, plausible (within reason). Went into it expecting, to be honest, to be disappointed, but for most of the movie was on the edge of my seat.
So I loved it (for a summer movie). Except, of course, for the ending:
It’s one thing to have him walk up to the grandparents’ townhouse. But did anyone notice that there was no destruction there? In the middle of Boston? Lame.
I knew the son was dead, and had accepted it. Dumb dumb DUMB decision by Spielberg to have the son be alive at the end. Why does this family come through unscathed?
Ok. Now a couple of questions that I had during the movie that I need help with:
So the machines were buried millions of years ago, before there were humans. Yet the aliens need human - or at least mammalian - blood (although I’m assuming human blood; otherwise, why not attack when there were great herds of buffalo and such across North America?). Anyway, how on earth - no pun intended - would the aliens know that evolution was going to happen the way it did? Unless they happen to bury machines on every life-bearing planet they come across.
So they need human blood. Why vaporize everyone in the beginning then? Seems a waste of viable fertilizer.
Anyway - what a fun movie. And I wholeheartedly agree - do not wait for the DVD unless you have a 60" home theater system at your house. It will not be the same.
rexnervous, I think the buried ships was just a plot device so they could have some cool sfx. You start looking too closely at that plot line, and it falls apart in your hands.
True that. There’s the whole “you mean not one oil exploration or archaeological dig or guy-with-metal-detector has seen these?” 
I guess I’m just one who does want some semblance of scientific validity to my sci-fi movies.
But disregarding that, it was still a great example of action/explosion/suspense film-making.
I really enjoyed the movie, and I haven’t seen anything positive mentioned in this thread yet that I disagree with. I think Tom Cruise did a better than adequate job, as the entire movie was told from his POV, essentially. The man is in every single scene. Even a great actor can have a hard time pulling that off, and I cound Cruise believeable most of the time.
I thought Dakota was fantastic, one of the best acting jobs I’ve ever seen from someone barely into double digits, agewise. I loved Tim Robbins; he made me more nervous than the actual aliens did.
Special effects and sound were fantastic, most of the scary scenes had me gripped, and at around the 1:40 mark I started to believe this might be the greatest disaster film of all time. The last 15 minutes were a bit deflating to me, and clearly there are some plot holes, but nothing egregious, in my opinion.
I thought the ferry scene was the highlight, and all in all I think this was one of the best disaster films ever made.
Most of all I echo the sentiment: see it on the big screen!!!
Personally, I think one of the strengths of the movie is that very little is explained. We really don’t know how the tripods got there. Were they buried millions of years ago or a thousand? We don’t know. And the blood and red vines? Yes it might be terra forming or maybe it is just that the aliens are just plain mean.
I felt that the first tripods up were the destroyers. They vaporized people and buildings. They also acted like the first wolves to go after the caribou. The heard starts to stampede to safety and the harvester pods are there waiting for them.
I also really liked that the movie is basically about one family. I’m tired of the disaster films that have 10 different plot lines of different types of people reacting to ‘thing’. I think if we cut to the president or the war room it would not be as good a movie. There is also very little comic relief.
One strange thing I find though is that there is a big quotable quote from the movie.
On Mars, gerbil stuffs you
I’ve been interested in going. My neices, ages 11 and 13 want to go. Would they be able to handle it?
I enjoyed the flick. It combined elements of the Wells novel and the 1953 movie. (Note: H.G. Wells. Orson Welles.) For instance, the Wells tripods with the 1953 force fields. Tim Robbins’ character was adapted from the Artilleryman in the novel. It was nice to see the Red Weed. Spielberg is great at using a camera to communicate emotion and explicate action. Just keep him away from the script.
Cruise was okay; he’s actually a decent actor, and was excellent in Collateral, even if he is a nut. But y’know whom I would have cast? John C. Reilly.
It’s true that the actions of the aliens don’t seem to make a lot of sense. Also, the idea of machine being buried for millions of years seems ludicrous. I’m tempted to go out on a limb and posit that it’s not the case – that is, that we don’t know that the machines were already buried, and that it’s just sheer speculation on the part of the characters, and maybe there’s a different explanation… except that the posters for the movie say “They’re Already Here”. So screw it.
Just for fun: there are actually four (4) current or coming-soon versions of Wells’ novel for us to consider.
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The Timothy Hines period piece that apparently has gone straight to video and is a piece of crap.
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Another updated version, directed by David Michael Latt, that may actually be decent.
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Just possibly, an animated version based on the concept album “Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of the War of the Worlds”, which I’m sure many of you remember fondly, and which has just been reissued on CD. (What the Hell happened to my original copy? Must have lost it in the house fire of 1986.)
I’d say no. The only reason that it got a PG 13 is that most of the deaths are by disintegration and so there’s no blood. But it’s a really horrific movie, and I think I would have been shit scared had I seen it at that age.