War of the Worlds
Went with my friend Alex from work to see War of the Worlds on opening night. After it was out, he, two of his friends and I stood around for two hours b.s.ing about bad sequels planned for the future. Anyway, I guess I'll include my thoughts on the movie below. You already know that means spoilers, right? Reading is up to you.
Spielberg made some updates to the movie and included a significant new aspect, and I thought they were good choices. The aliens are no longer from Mars. Yes, the mystery of that planet has been dissipated, so the 1890's take wouldn't work again. Spielberg chose present day east coast America for the setting(I know it's actually the world, but we don't see anything unless it is seen by Tom Cruise's character). He said it was due to personal taste, as he hates the 19th century english look. Works for my personal taste as well, and perhaps everyone else on the globe. A period alien invasion piece might be interesting, but we all can relate much more to present day, right? And Spielberg centered the viewpoint to a father who is with his two children, instead of the nameless narrator of the book, or skipping from place to place and person to person like in the old movie. Well, I'll just get right to a list of pros and cons, aside from what I've already mentioned.
Pros:
1) The family thing. As with the original movie, we get the shock of global invasion from astoundingly strong opponents. But tagging along with a dad just trying to keep his two children safe, we get an even sharper picture of the horror, desperation and fear most of the humans feel during that time. I also think Cruise's acting for the part is decent, and the three characters we mostly see have good chemistry. I think Spielberg added the perfect layer to H.G. Welles' story, making it suitable for a movie.
2) Without saying, the special effects, as well as the flow of a scene. Perhaps I had an added advantage having only heard about the book's plot and seeing some of the movie. But throughout the picture, I was either gaping in awe, biting my proverbial nails in suspense, or both combined with being scared shitless for the people about to be turned into ash by a tripod. I mean, I'd never seen one of those tripod machines before. So when the first one's leg came out of the ground, I wondered if that was the whole enchilada(it looked fairly large on it's own). But no. Then the entire fucking thing slowly rose out of the ground, my eyes went wide and I'm thinking "Holllllly shit". The noise those things make is terrifying, because the 'size' of the sound matches the enormous presence of these tripods. And of course the other sound effects were gripping. The lightning strikes in the beginning made me jump.
During the basement scenes, with either the tentacle tripod or actual aliens nearly catching the main characters, I was on the edge of my seat in paranoia. I spent much of the movie fearing for the safety of certain human beings.
Oh. I also decided I liked that the machines were built much like the aliens themselves. When we humans write a story about our own giant robots, the robots have a humanoid shape. Voltron, Power Rangers' Megazord, Megas XLR, etc. So the tripods' design made perfect sense.
3) The screenplay. Spielberg stayed as true to the book as a movie can be(according to many I spoke to who read the book), and yet he added the excellent father character fixation.
4) Cruise's character kills Tim Robbins. No, I like Tim Robbins, so it isn't what you think. In the basement scenes when they were hiding from the aliens and their camera, Robbins nearly blew their cover several times. He was hotheaded, and Cruise had to stop him from using an axe and then a shotgun. The huge machines were right outside, so even if they bested their closest foes, the worst of the storm would have consumed them. Cruise does not want his daughter to die, and Robbins' foolhardy acts would likely get them all killed. So...Cruise blindfolds his daughter and has her sing, and then he kills Robbins. I'm not saying I think it's a great moral thing, but I love the debate this can cause inside a viewer. Previously, we'd seen desperate people shoot someone to death who had one of the few working cars(an alien EMP had shut down alot of electronic equipment). Cruise is the main protagonist, so he's supposed to be above the acts of those 'shmucks', isn't he? But in hindsight, Robbins really would have gotten them all killed, and he showed no signs of calming down. Isn't Cruise just as entitled to keep his loved ones alive at all costs, like the rest of the desperate populace? Maybe he's supposed to be a hero to his children, but is in the same grey area as everyone else as an overall human being. Of course, the car shooting was much more malicious, as the danger of death from not having a car was nowhere near as immediate as Robbins' impulsive behavior was causing. Though Robbins' character was understandably unhinged - his entire family had been killed by the aliens - survival is survival, and was he entitled to bring others down with him in his grief? Again, not that I for sure would have Cruise's thinking(I'm all sappy, so I'd probably be running relief missions or something), but I cannot blame him either. I just liked the way that act made me think for awhile.
Cons:
1) Occasionally forced viewpoints, or perhaps just shaky focus transitions for the main character. A rule of thumb Spielberg set for this movie, as I've mentioned, is that we only see whatever Cruise's character is around to see. That posed a challenge. Lots of major things we need to see which are part of the story's clout. But would one man really see every aspect conventionally? Usually, it made perfect sense to me. But when the initial lightning storm hit which seeded the tripod under Cruise's city, he had moments before learned that his son had taken the car without his permission. So he learns this, the storm hits, then he tells his daughter to stay in the house while he goes out to look for his son. He walks about a block, maybe less, then suddenly looks indecisive, and instead gives up and walks over to the spot the lightning struck twenty six times. This is where we see our first tripod emerge, and I'm as awestruck as the citizens in the movie. But...I don't know, his sudden change in what he wanted to pursue seemed...odd, at best. I mean, maybe any of us would think it hopeless to search on foot for a dead car which had a good head start after awhile, but in the short amount of time Cruise did? I know he loves his son alot, so that didn't go down quite easily. But we needed to see the first tripod emergence scene, didn't we? I dunno, I just think Spielberg could have made that transition a little bit more palpable. Perhaps Cruise could have walked more than a block. I would think his son is worth more than a block and morbid curiousity.
Then in the basement scene, Tim Robbins sees that one of the alien machines is using the humans they take as fertilizer for their foreign foliage(the red vines which are appearing everywhere). We need to see this, as it's an important piece of information. So Robbins starts yelling "Ray, Ray!"(Ray is Cruise's character's name...sorry I didn't mention that until now). Ray comes over to tell Robbins to keep his voice down, and gets a glimpse of a man being turned to fertilizer. Eh...couldn't Ray have just been looking outside the window himself in his own curiousity? He'd shown earlier that he was as curious about those aliens as anyone else, save for perhaps his son. I dunno, Ray being called over by someone else just to get a short glimpse of an important plot device...it felt like the awkward plot fences and lassos which some role play video games have(think first Resident Evil, with Barry calling for Jill to look at a friggin' puddle of blood on the ground in another room, and then still mentioning that it's blood, in case we players cannot ascertain that for ourselves).
2) The vines' purpose was never explained. Ok...we know how they produce it, but what is this shrubbery for? Are they just trying to make themselves feel at home with some nice decor, hence no need to explain a non-existant larger purpose? No no, I think not. When any enemy force launches an initial offense to conquer another country, they worry about decor MUCH later. Like, after they've won the freaking war, so as not to be premature. It takes away from their military strength as well, because we have valuable soldiers and vehicles busy playing intergalactic Martha fucking Stewart. So obviously, those vines' early planting had some strategic value, but we never find out what. The vines are never seen attacking anyone, nor is it indicated that they are draining our natural resources, for example. Well, they drain our population to fertilize them, but that is a longer process than simply vaporizing those who stand in the way. So why, WHY did they commit forces to gardening in the middle of their important offensive?
3) Ray's son appears to undeniably die in one scene, then is magically at his mother's house in Boston when Ray and his daughter arrive there. He climbed to the top of a hill where military vehicles were in an artillery war with the tripods. After he is visibly atop the hillside, the entire hillside is lit up like a California wildfire by alien weaponry. Ok, so he might have escaped. Could we at least hear him explain how he escaped with his life, and his body in one piece? Maybe such an explanation would seem somewhat cliche, but perhaps escaping virtually impossible odds without explanation is worse, and his explanation could have just been short?
Undecided, debatable points for me:
1) The ending. The aliens' immune systems were utterly vulnerable to our planet's microbial assassins, much like Native Americans were unprepared to handle smallpox. So the aliens' shielding went down, and they were too sick to effectively pilot their machines, leaving them open to our attacks. We humans had earned out place here over the millenia, having evolved to adapt to the habitat.
Ok, so Welles was trying to prove a point with that. We think we're so dominant of this planet, yet our native bacteria and viruses made our victory possible when it was otherwise impossible. Those things decided the outcome of the war, so we are obviously not as almighty on this planet as we think. Clever and probably true, in my opinion.
Yet it raises questions. After THOUSANDS OF YEARS of research, the aliens did not even take those factors into consideration? Why is it that we thought to say, examine Venus' habitat first, so we were able to say "Shit guys, we'll die there, we better not fucking set foot on that hellhole unless we have protection which is currently unavailable". Ok, so time advanced technology does not equal superior common sense, but didn't they overlook the planet's full biology for a hell of a long time? And if they did not overlook it, and knew they were not suited to our native microbes, why didn't they somehow use any sort of protection? Their machines obviously were not good enough, because the tripod pilots were as afflicted as any of their brethren. WE used spacesuits when we knew we could not breath on the moon. WE use airtight biohazard suits when in an area we know is hazardous to our health due to viruses or etc. Why didn't they think of any of that technology, at their technological level? Maybe a gas mask? At least take some vitamin C before the invasion?
2) More alien intelligence stuff. It is mentioned in the movie that, and I apologize for my faulty memory, they planted their tripods underground and began planning their invasion either before man's existence or at the very beginning of it. Right, so...back then, we had stupid ass people and dinosaurs. Missiles and bombs could not penetrate the tripod shielding, so I doubt dinosaur bites or spears could have. Um, wasn't our planet far more ripe for the picking back then? Of course, our bacteria was still a threat, but they obviously overlooked that for centuries anyways. It's obvious they only thought about the visible inhabitants' offensive capabilities as well as landscape. So like, why didn't they stomp and vaporize the crap out of the dinosaurs and/or early humans, instead of waiting for us to evolve and develop better weaponry? Was it the atmosphere at the time? Did they need pollution and a bad ozone layer to survive, so they waited for us morons to fuck up the ecosystem before striking? I dunno, they must have had some reason.
3) Tectonic plate havoc. This one is undecided, because I believe the narrator only said the aliens began planning the invasion when they did, and did not specifically mention that the tripods were firmly planted underground at the same time. Or maybe they did mention as much. Again, faulty memory. Now if they did plant those things right when they began formulating strategy...well, waaaay back in those days, our land masses were much different than they are today, and we've had some noteworthy tectonic plate movement since then. That could have potentially damaged or destroyed some of their underground tripods. Eh, they could have been wise enough to avoid fault lines, but not all future fault lines were in existence at the time. Or perhaps the tripods depth protected them(they had to have been pretty deep, because we humans never saw any hint of them, with our probing instruments nor our deep drilling into the earth). Or maybe some of them were indeed destroyed, but they had planted more than they needed in case of such a circumstance.
Those three things btw, I am unsure which are of the original plot, and which are movie added debate points.
I greatly enjoyed the movie overall, and I personally recommend it. On the infamous scale of one to ten, I'd say between 7 and 8. If forced to choose, I would settle on 8
Spielberg made some updates to the movie and included a significant new aspect, and I thought they were good choices. The aliens are no longer from Mars. Yes, the mystery of that planet has been dissipated, so the 1890's take wouldn't work again. Spielberg chose present day east coast America for the setting(I know it's actually the world, but we don't see anything unless it is seen by Tom Cruise's character). He said it was due to personal taste, as he hates the 19th century english look. Works for my personal taste as well, and perhaps everyone else on the globe. A period alien invasion piece might be interesting, but we all can relate much more to present day, right? And Spielberg centered the viewpoint to a father who is with his two children, instead of the nameless narrator of the book, or skipping from place to place and person to person like in the old movie. Well, I'll just get right to a list of pros and cons, aside from what I've already mentioned.
Pros:
1) The family thing. As with the original movie, we get the shock of global invasion from astoundingly strong opponents. But tagging along with a dad just trying to keep his two children safe, we get an even sharper picture of the horror, desperation and fear most of the humans feel during that time. I also think Cruise's acting for the part is decent, and the three characters we mostly see have good chemistry. I think Spielberg added the perfect layer to H.G. Welles' story, making it suitable for a movie.
2) Without saying, the special effects, as well as the flow of a scene. Perhaps I had an added advantage having only heard about the book's plot and seeing some of the movie. But throughout the picture, I was either gaping in awe, biting my proverbial nails in suspense, or both combined with being scared shitless for the people about to be turned into ash by a tripod. I mean, I'd never seen one of those tripod machines before. So when the first one's leg came out of the ground, I wondered if that was the whole enchilada(it looked fairly large on it's own). But no. Then the entire fucking thing slowly rose out of the ground, my eyes went wide and I'm thinking "Holllllly shit". The noise those things make is terrifying, because the 'size' of the sound matches the enormous presence of these tripods. And of course the other sound effects were gripping. The lightning strikes in the beginning made me jump.
During the basement scenes, with either the tentacle tripod or actual aliens nearly catching the main characters, I was on the edge of my seat in paranoia. I spent much of the movie fearing for the safety of certain human beings.
Oh. I also decided I liked that the machines were built much like the aliens themselves. When we humans write a story about our own giant robots, the robots have a humanoid shape. Voltron, Power Rangers' Megazord, Megas XLR, etc. So the tripods' design made perfect sense.
3) The screenplay. Spielberg stayed as true to the book as a movie can be(according to many I spoke to who read the book), and yet he added the excellent father character fixation.
4) Cruise's character kills Tim Robbins. No, I like Tim Robbins, so it isn't what you think. In the basement scenes when they were hiding from the aliens and their camera, Robbins nearly blew their cover several times. He was hotheaded, and Cruise had to stop him from using an axe and then a shotgun. The huge machines were right outside, so even if they bested their closest foes, the worst of the storm would have consumed them. Cruise does not want his daughter to die, and Robbins' foolhardy acts would likely get them all killed. So...Cruise blindfolds his daughter and has her sing, and then he kills Robbins. I'm not saying I think it's a great moral thing, but I love the debate this can cause inside a viewer. Previously, we'd seen desperate people shoot someone to death who had one of the few working cars(an alien EMP had shut down alot of electronic equipment). Cruise is the main protagonist, so he's supposed to be above the acts of those 'shmucks', isn't he? But in hindsight, Robbins really would have gotten them all killed, and he showed no signs of calming down. Isn't Cruise just as entitled to keep his loved ones alive at all costs, like the rest of the desperate populace? Maybe he's supposed to be a hero to his children, but is in the same grey area as everyone else as an overall human being. Of course, the car shooting was much more malicious, as the danger of death from not having a car was nowhere near as immediate as Robbins' impulsive behavior was causing. Though Robbins' character was understandably unhinged - his entire family had been killed by the aliens - survival is survival, and was he entitled to bring others down with him in his grief? Again, not that I for sure would have Cruise's thinking(I'm all sappy, so I'd probably be running relief missions or something), but I cannot blame him either. I just liked the way that act made me think for awhile.
Cons:
1) Occasionally forced viewpoints, or perhaps just shaky focus transitions for the main character. A rule of thumb Spielberg set for this movie, as I've mentioned, is that we only see whatever Cruise's character is around to see. That posed a challenge. Lots of major things we need to see which are part of the story's clout. But would one man really see every aspect conventionally? Usually, it made perfect sense to me. But when the initial lightning storm hit which seeded the tripod under Cruise's city, he had moments before learned that his son had taken the car without his permission. So he learns this, the storm hits, then he tells his daughter to stay in the house while he goes out to look for his son. He walks about a block, maybe less, then suddenly looks indecisive, and instead gives up and walks over to the spot the lightning struck twenty six times. This is where we see our first tripod emerge, and I'm as awestruck as the citizens in the movie. But...I don't know, his sudden change in what he wanted to pursue seemed...odd, at best. I mean, maybe any of us would think it hopeless to search on foot for a dead car which had a good head start after awhile, but in the short amount of time Cruise did? I know he loves his son alot, so that didn't go down quite easily. But we needed to see the first tripod emergence scene, didn't we? I dunno, I just think Spielberg could have made that transition a little bit more palpable. Perhaps Cruise could have walked more than a block. I would think his son is worth more than a block and morbid curiousity.
Then in the basement scene, Tim Robbins sees that one of the alien machines is using the humans they take as fertilizer for their foreign foliage(the red vines which are appearing everywhere). We need to see this, as it's an important piece of information. So Robbins starts yelling "Ray, Ray!"(Ray is Cruise's character's name...sorry I didn't mention that until now). Ray comes over to tell Robbins to keep his voice down, and gets a glimpse of a man being turned to fertilizer. Eh...couldn't Ray have just been looking outside the window himself in his own curiousity? He'd shown earlier that he was as curious about those aliens as anyone else, save for perhaps his son. I dunno, Ray being called over by someone else just to get a short glimpse of an important plot device...it felt like the awkward plot fences and lassos which some role play video games have(think first Resident Evil, with Barry calling for Jill to look at a friggin' puddle of blood on the ground in another room, and then still mentioning that it's blood, in case we players cannot ascertain that for ourselves).
2) The vines' purpose was never explained. Ok...we know how they produce it, but what is this shrubbery for? Are they just trying to make themselves feel at home with some nice decor, hence no need to explain a non-existant larger purpose? No no, I think not. When any enemy force launches an initial offense to conquer another country, they worry about decor MUCH later. Like, after they've won the freaking war, so as not to be premature. It takes away from their military strength as well, because we have valuable soldiers and vehicles busy playing intergalactic Martha fucking Stewart. So obviously, those vines' early planting had some strategic value, but we never find out what. The vines are never seen attacking anyone, nor is it indicated that they are draining our natural resources, for example. Well, they drain our population to fertilize them, but that is a longer process than simply vaporizing those who stand in the way. So why, WHY did they commit forces to gardening in the middle of their important offensive?
3) Ray's son appears to undeniably die in one scene, then is magically at his mother's house in Boston when Ray and his daughter arrive there. He climbed to the top of a hill where military vehicles were in an artillery war with the tripods. After he is visibly atop the hillside, the entire hillside is lit up like a California wildfire by alien weaponry. Ok, so he might have escaped. Could we at least hear him explain how he escaped with his life, and his body in one piece? Maybe such an explanation would seem somewhat cliche, but perhaps escaping virtually impossible odds without explanation is worse, and his explanation could have just been short?
Undecided, debatable points for me:
1) The ending. The aliens' immune systems were utterly vulnerable to our planet's microbial assassins, much like Native Americans were unprepared to handle smallpox. So the aliens' shielding went down, and they were too sick to effectively pilot their machines, leaving them open to our attacks. We humans had earned out place here over the millenia, having evolved to adapt to the habitat.
Ok, so Welles was trying to prove a point with that. We think we're so dominant of this planet, yet our native bacteria and viruses made our victory possible when it was otherwise impossible. Those things decided the outcome of the war, so we are obviously not as almighty on this planet as we think. Clever and probably true, in my opinion.
Yet it raises questions. After THOUSANDS OF YEARS of research, the aliens did not even take those factors into consideration? Why is it that we thought to say, examine Venus' habitat first, so we were able to say "Shit guys, we'll die there, we better not fucking set foot on that hellhole unless we have protection which is currently unavailable". Ok, so time advanced technology does not equal superior common sense, but didn't they overlook the planet's full biology for a hell of a long time? And if they did not overlook it, and knew they were not suited to our native microbes, why didn't they somehow use any sort of protection? Their machines obviously were not good enough, because the tripod pilots were as afflicted as any of their brethren. WE used spacesuits when we knew we could not breath on the moon. WE use airtight biohazard suits when in an area we know is hazardous to our health due to viruses or etc. Why didn't they think of any of that technology, at their technological level? Maybe a gas mask? At least take some vitamin C before the invasion?
2) More alien intelligence stuff. It is mentioned in the movie that, and I apologize for my faulty memory, they planted their tripods underground and began planning their invasion either before man's existence or at the very beginning of it. Right, so...back then, we had stupid ass people and dinosaurs. Missiles and bombs could not penetrate the tripod shielding, so I doubt dinosaur bites or spears could have. Um, wasn't our planet far more ripe for the picking back then? Of course, our bacteria was still a threat, but they obviously overlooked that for centuries anyways. It's obvious they only thought about the visible inhabitants' offensive capabilities as well as landscape. So like, why didn't they stomp and vaporize the crap out of the dinosaurs and/or early humans, instead of waiting for us to evolve and develop better weaponry? Was it the atmosphere at the time? Did they need pollution and a bad ozone layer to survive, so they waited for us morons to fuck up the ecosystem before striking? I dunno, they must have had some reason.
3) Tectonic plate havoc. This one is undecided, because I believe the narrator only said the aliens began planning the invasion when they did, and did not specifically mention that the tripods were firmly planted underground at the same time. Or maybe they did mention as much. Again, faulty memory. Now if they did plant those things right when they began formulating strategy...well, waaaay back in those days, our land masses were much different than they are today, and we've had some noteworthy tectonic plate movement since then. That could have potentially damaged or destroyed some of their underground tripods. Eh, they could have been wise enough to avoid fault lines, but not all future fault lines were in existence at the time. Or perhaps the tripods depth protected them(they had to have been pretty deep, because we humans never saw any hint of them, with our probing instruments nor our deep drilling into the earth). Or maybe some of them were indeed destroyed, but they had planted more than they needed in case of such a circumstance.
Those three things btw, I am unsure which are of the original plot, and which are movie added debate points.
I greatly enjoyed the movie overall, and I personally recommend it. On the infamous scale of one to ten, I'd say between 7 and 8. If forced to choose, I would settle on 8