War of the Worlds | 2005 | movie review
Film: War of the Worlds (2005).
Reviewed: June 29, 2005.
Word Count: 1430 words.
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1. If I haven't finished writing all of my comments about "War of the Worlds" within an hour, I'm just going to stop and post up whatever I have. That said, this is probably going to be kind of long-winded and rambling anyway. But I want to get all of my thoughts down before I write other reviews.
2. I'm going to avoid drawing comparisons with the book, mostly because it seems kind of pointless, and partly because I haven't really read it in awhile and I'll probably say things that don't make sense. That said, I still may anyway at points.
3. Comment on the audience: You are annoying idiots, and there weren't even many of you. To the two assholes sitting behind me for about five minutes before I moved, you should have outgrown kicking seats and giggling about it by now. Same with making stupid noises. To everyone else, why did you keep laughing at everything? I fail to see how a traffic light was apparently hilarious.
If you're looking for a movie with social commentary, drawing parallels with how the Martian invasion is not so different what we as humans have done to other species and even our fellow man -- this isn't it. When the film was finished, I tried to think of how I'd describe the movie, and the answer was, predictably, "eye-candy".
And that's basically it. Eye-candy.
There really isn't much of a story. And if there was, I guess you can basically summarize it as, "Aliens invade Earth and blow shit up. Pretty. Bland protagonist drags Requisite Cute Spielberg Kid (TM) around as they run from the aliens." Had more of a horror movie atmosphere than a science fiction one, but that's fine with me. Problem is, it's hard to get involved in the story, beyond the special effects oogling, when you really don't care about the characters. Basically, there's Rebellion and Angry Teenage Boy, Crying Little Girl, and Tom Cruise. Miranda Otto is wasted. I'll give Dakota Fanning a lot of credit for her amazing emotional range and acting talent, even though in the end, her character didn't really have a real purpose besides being there for Tom Cruise to rescue and Tense Family Moments that we're supposed to get all emotional over, but can't because you know it'll be all right in the end because it's a Spielberg film after all.
Come to think of it, I think there WAS an attempt at a Deep Commentary at one point, but it had nothing to do with what I said earlier, and given that I can't even remember what it was, it must have been rather weak.
That said, I did kind of like how the film was darker than the typical Spielberg popcorn flick (so we're NOT counting "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" here). He pulls off the scenes of mass panic very well, kind of reminded me of "Empire of the Sun". Like there was one scene where I was afraid that it was going to be sanitized heavily, but it worked. Basically, it involved the main family having the only working car and they're driving through a huge crowd of people and of course, the crowd swarms all over the car, breaks the windows, panic, fight to get it, etc. That sort of stuff was well-directed, I thought. But the part I really did like was when one guy gets into the driver's seat, drives for a bit, and you see someone open the door and shoot him to get the car. You don't see the guy actually getting shot per se, but it was still kind of nice to actually see the shooting (sort of) shown. That probably didn't make sense, but I tried.
But going back to eye-candy: The tripods look AMAZING. The movie isn't really worth the price of watching on a large screen, in terms of quality, but the tripods must be seen on a big screen to get the full effect. They're very well-designed, very creepy and alien-looking, especially in how fluidly they move. There are lots of beautiful shots of them throughout the film, with my favourite one being a scene after the pseudo-Thunderchild scene where the family is standing on a bank and they're looking back at a number of tripods against a nightsky, essentially fishing for humans who've fallen into the water (they have little blue lights at the end of their tentacles here, and it looks rather neat). And then there was another nice shot after that where they run for a bit and we get a look at a rolling hill in the distance and there are people running wildly all over it while tripods are chasing them down and killing them off with the heat-ray. Oh yeah, there's another beautiful shot where you see a single tripod looming out of the top of a forest in the dark, and then there are two more.
But going back to the technology -- first of all, there's no Black Smoke. There were a few times where I thought I saw it, but it turned out to be plain smoke or blood. The heat-rays weren't invisible, but looked like wide bluish-green laser beams. Instead of setting people on fire, the moment they hit someone, the person is basically vaporized and explodes into white powder. Um, I'm not sure which way I like it better. The vaporizing was pretty creepy though, so I suppose for the intents and purposes of the film, it worked. Props to the sound department for the wonderfully creepy alien noises too. The aliens themselves though -- nicely rendered, but kind of silly-looking. Red weed looked pretty good. There are no cylinders. Instead, the aliens go lightning-surfing.
Going off on a random tangent, there were many moments where I couldn't stop thinking how nice it would be if there was a "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" film based on the second volume. I mean, during the part where the aliens are stalking around the basement, I kept envisioning Hyde picking one of them up and eating it, but yeah, I digress.
I kind of liked how the film was "framed" by having similar openings and closings. Nice foreshadowing of how the aliens would be defeated (thank God they did NOT change it), but they didn't make it too clear in the end anyway and probably made people unfamiliar with the story wonder why the hell the aliens just died. It also felt very anti-climatic and random. At first, I really liked how the opening voiceover was essentially the opening of the book, but somehow, it felt wrong and out of place in the end. Maybe it was because the voiceover had a sort of "this is an intellectual sort of film" feel to it, and it just ended up being a lot of eye candy. That, and it made the invasion seem very expansive while in the film, we just followed one annoying family in New Jersey and never really got the feeling that this was beyond the United States. Although in its defense, the book concentrates solely on England (the "world" at the time very much like how the US is now, so I guess it was appropriate).
It would have been nice to have a symbolic Man's Last Hope scene a la the Thunderchild. I never really got the sense that mankind was seemingly defeated, and as overused as it is, well-done self-sacrifice scenes can work well on an emotional level (better than crying kids anyway). I guess in a way, there were two homages to that chapter, but neither really worked, at least for me. The most obvious one is the ferry scene, although here, it tips over. And then there's the scene where the US Army and Air Force are trying to destroy a tripod (we can't see it) and they're all destroyed in a spectacular computer generated fireball, but it didn't really have that sort of self-sacrificing atmosphere to it. And that didn't make any sense either, I think.
As entertainingly scary the aliens were, the scariest thing must have been Tom Cruise trying to sing a lullaby. NEVER AGAIN.
In summary, it was entertaining and while I enjoyed watching it, it could have been much better. It's not a bad way to kill an afternoon, but there are better movies in theatres right now. If you still want to watch it, avoid paying full price. BUT you MUST see it on a huge screen to really experience the alien tripods (and good sound for the noises). Do NOT think about the book while watching it.
Reviewed: June 29, 2005.
Word Count: 1430 words.
-----
1. If I haven't finished writing all of my comments about "War of the Worlds" within an hour, I'm just going to stop and post up whatever I have. That said, this is probably going to be kind of long-winded and rambling anyway. But I want to get all of my thoughts down before I write other reviews.
2. I'm going to avoid drawing comparisons with the book, mostly because it seems kind of pointless, and partly because I haven't really read it in awhile and I'll probably say things that don't make sense. That said, I still may anyway at points.
3. Comment on the audience: You are annoying idiots, and there weren't even many of you. To the two assholes sitting behind me for about five minutes before I moved, you should have outgrown kicking seats and giggling about it by now. Same with making stupid noises. To everyone else, why did you keep laughing at everything? I fail to see how a traffic light was apparently hilarious.
If you're looking for a movie with social commentary, drawing parallels with how the Martian invasion is not so different what we as humans have done to other species and even our fellow man -- this isn't it. When the film was finished, I tried to think of how I'd describe the movie, and the answer was, predictably, "eye-candy".
And that's basically it. Eye-candy.
There really isn't much of a story. And if there was, I guess you can basically summarize it as, "Aliens invade Earth and blow shit up. Pretty. Bland protagonist drags Requisite Cute Spielberg Kid (TM) around as they run from the aliens." Had more of a horror movie atmosphere than a science fiction one, but that's fine with me. Problem is, it's hard to get involved in the story, beyond the special effects oogling, when you really don't care about the characters. Basically, there's Rebellion and Angry Teenage Boy, Crying Little Girl, and Tom Cruise. Miranda Otto is wasted. I'll give Dakota Fanning a lot of credit for her amazing emotional range and acting talent, even though in the end, her character didn't really have a real purpose besides being there for Tom Cruise to rescue and Tense Family Moments that we're supposed to get all emotional over, but can't because you know it'll be all right in the end because it's a Spielberg film after all.
Come to think of it, I think there WAS an attempt at a Deep Commentary at one point, but it had nothing to do with what I said earlier, and given that I can't even remember what it was, it must have been rather weak.
That said, I did kind of like how the film was darker than the typical Spielberg popcorn flick (so we're NOT counting "Schindler's List" and "Saving Private Ryan" here). He pulls off the scenes of mass panic very well, kind of reminded me of "Empire of the Sun". Like there was one scene where I was afraid that it was going to be sanitized heavily, but it worked. Basically, it involved the main family having the only working car and they're driving through a huge crowd of people and of course, the crowd swarms all over the car, breaks the windows, panic, fight to get it, etc. That sort of stuff was well-directed, I thought. But the part I really did like was when one guy gets into the driver's seat, drives for a bit, and you see someone open the door and shoot him to get the car. You don't see the guy actually getting shot per se, but it was still kind of nice to actually see the shooting (sort of) shown. That probably didn't make sense, but I tried.
But going back to eye-candy: The tripods look AMAZING. The movie isn't really worth the price of watching on a large screen, in terms of quality, but the tripods must be seen on a big screen to get the full effect. They're very well-designed, very creepy and alien-looking, especially in how fluidly they move. There are lots of beautiful shots of them throughout the film, with my favourite one being a scene after the pseudo-Thunderchild scene where the family is standing on a bank and they're looking back at a number of tripods against a nightsky, essentially fishing for humans who've fallen into the water (they have little blue lights at the end of their tentacles here, and it looks rather neat). And then there was another nice shot after that where they run for a bit and we get a look at a rolling hill in the distance and there are people running wildly all over it while tripods are chasing them down and killing them off with the heat-ray. Oh yeah, there's another beautiful shot where you see a single tripod looming out of the top of a forest in the dark, and then there are two more.
But going back to the technology -- first of all, there's no Black Smoke. There were a few times where I thought I saw it, but it turned out to be plain smoke or blood. The heat-rays weren't invisible, but looked like wide bluish-green laser beams. Instead of setting people on fire, the moment they hit someone, the person is basically vaporized and explodes into white powder. Um, I'm not sure which way I like it better. The vaporizing was pretty creepy though, so I suppose for the intents and purposes of the film, it worked. Props to the sound department for the wonderfully creepy alien noises too. The aliens themselves though -- nicely rendered, but kind of silly-looking. Red weed looked pretty good. There are no cylinders. Instead, the aliens go lightning-surfing.
Going off on a random tangent, there were many moments where I couldn't stop thinking how nice it would be if there was a "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" film based on the second volume. I mean, during the part where the aliens are stalking around the basement, I kept envisioning Hyde picking one of them up and eating it, but yeah, I digress.
I kind of liked how the film was "framed" by having similar openings and closings. Nice foreshadowing of how the aliens would be defeated (thank God they did NOT change it), but they didn't make it too clear in the end anyway and probably made people unfamiliar with the story wonder why the hell the aliens just died. It also felt very anti-climatic and random. At first, I really liked how the opening voiceover was essentially the opening of the book, but somehow, it felt wrong and out of place in the end. Maybe it was because the voiceover had a sort of "this is an intellectual sort of film" feel to it, and it just ended up being a lot of eye candy. That, and it made the invasion seem very expansive while in the film, we just followed one annoying family in New Jersey and never really got the feeling that this was beyond the United States. Although in its defense, the book concentrates solely on England (the "world" at the time very much like how the US is now, so I guess it was appropriate).
It would have been nice to have a symbolic Man's Last Hope scene a la the Thunderchild. I never really got the sense that mankind was seemingly defeated, and as overused as it is, well-done self-sacrifice scenes can work well on an emotional level (better than crying kids anyway). I guess in a way, there were two homages to that chapter, but neither really worked, at least for me. The most obvious one is the ferry scene, although here, it tips over. And then there's the scene where the US Army and Air Force are trying to destroy a tripod (we can't see it) and they're all destroyed in a spectacular computer generated fireball, but it didn't really have that sort of self-sacrificing atmosphere to it. And that didn't make any sense either, I think.
As entertainingly scary the aliens were, the scariest thing must have been Tom Cruise trying to sing a lullaby. NEVER AGAIN.
In summary, it was entertaining and while I enjoyed watching it, it could have been much better. It's not a bad way to kill an afternoon, but there are better movies in theatres right now. If you still want to watch it, avoid paying full price. BUT you MUST see it on a huge screen to really experience the alien tripods (and good sound for the noises). Do NOT think about the book while watching it.