War of the Worlds (2005)

Re: War Of The Worlds

Spielberg was good enough to stick to HG Wells' original ending - but failed to make it work. The Martians just die, and the explanation was given in a voice over (more or less verbatim from Wells' original text), which seems fair enough, but didn't really get the point across for a lot of people in the theatre where I watched the film

I'm not sure if it was really a worthwhile adaptation, all in all. Apart from the people assuming at first that the Martians are 'terrorists' (in the 50s it'd have been 'Russians' I suppose) nothing is really done to add a fresh angle to the story, apart from simply transporting it in place and time to modern-day USA. Althugh there is a supposedly touching human story at the core of the movie, the emotional dynamics are all too boiler-plate and the acting rather stilted. Cruise's character is implausibly sure-footed and never wrong in any of his decisions as he herds his children across the country to safety, but OK< since when have cinematic heroes been fallible.

I liked Tim Allen's performance though. Delightfuly demented. And, as usual, Spielberg couldn't resist making even evil invader aliens look kinda cute. I won't comment on the special effects, because they really don't make a difference to me. All in all, a pretty standard popcorn movie, with all the usual Speilberg eye-kicks. A decent wat to waste three hours of your life harmlessly.
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

no better than the 50s movie then ?
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

Don't have the opinion of my own, 'cos I am going to see it only this weekend.:)
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

So, I may assume that Spielberg with his "War of the worlds" didn't manage to create a stir in Amirica of such a scale as Orson Welles did it with his infamous radioplay on the same theme back in 1938?
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

the only recent movie to do that was the Blair Witch Project when people thought it was real.
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

knivesout said:
I'm not sure if it was really a worthwhile adaptation, all in all. Apart from the people assuming at first that the Martians are 'terrorists' (in the 50s it'd have been 'Russians' I suppose) nothing is really done to add a fresh angle to the story, apart from simply transporting it in place and time to modern-day USA.
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Perhaps it is to please lovers of the 'faithful' adaptation...not entirely a bad idea in this case...besides I'm not too sure of what 'fresh angle' can be added to a popcorn film sourced from a popcorn novel about an alien invasion of our world...without making it drastically different from the source material. Perhaps you can throw out some ideas on this.
Cruise's character is implausibly sure-footed and never wrong in any of his decisions
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One of my quibbles with the film (haven't seen it as yet)...a star like Cruise carries too much baggage to be identifiable as the common man he plays in the movie. I'm atleast thankful that they didn't have Cruise jumping on to the striders and dropping germ grenades into the maws of the aliens, which is what I'd feared this film would be.
I liked Tim Allen's performance though. Delightfuly demented. And, as usual, Spielberg couldn't resist making even evil invader aliens look kinda cute...A decent wat to waste three hours of your life harmlessly.
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Tim Robbins. Tim Allen is some TV comedian dude. I like the idea of the invaders being cute and killing people. Three hours?! I thought this movie was about 100 min.
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

I'm not a big fan of Tom Cruise but I thought he was surprisingly good in this, good film on the whole, I thought the crowd panic scenes were done very well, very believable...just a shame about the ending.

There's supposed to be another adaptation of War of the Worlds out, probably straight to dvd. It's a British film, set in Edwardian England, so its a straight adaptation from the book. I've seen a couple of pictures from it and it looks interesting if you can find it
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

*Possible Spoilers*

I went into this with low expectations, and they were met. Over-directed and Tom Cruise can't play the average man. Just unbelievable as a father, let alone anything else. I agree with the point about him always making the right decisions all the time... but that's Spielberg for you - he couldn't resist the Cruise-Demi-God persona that the guy has.

The crowd/death scenes were great, the bits between were boring. You could tell they were trying to be tense, but it's all been done before (not least in the old movie, which I also didn't think was anything special, but also recently Signs did this stuff better), so it kind of missed with the punch.

Has pretty much the same ending as the old movie, and was pretty much the same let-down. Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse and everyone was doomed with no way out... the humans win. This is probably the book's ending (not read it), and probably worked as a twist back then in the 13th century. But it's not a new idea anymore, and it had no impact.

Gets 2.785 stars out of 5 on the Green scale of goodity... if there'd been more action/crowd scenes and less "tension", it could have scraped a 3.154

PS - And oh yeah! If the aliens wanted to harvest bodies, why didn't they start using big scoops on the HUGE crowds when they first appeared, instead of vapourising everyone and then picking them off one by one once they had spread all over the place? That's like trying to pick up rice with a toothpick, when you could have just used the hoover.
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

You could tell they were trying to be tense, but it's all been done before (... Signs did this stuff better)
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Well I shall have to gulp in trepidation because Signs was one of the most god-awful movies I have seen...it seemed to me a lower-budget, ultra-dour version of a Spielberg flick...ended up hollow, pretentious and utterly annoying.
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

I'd have to agree about Signs. Personally, aside from his first movie and Unbreakable, I think Shyamalan's painting himself into a corner creatively.


As to fresh angles on the story - c'mon dude, Spielberg's supposed to be the big honcho Hollywood storyteller here - why pick on me for ideas???:p
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

Signs was much better than this film. But that's beside the point. You can't really call Signs a lower-budget version of this, because Signs purposefully stayed away from the CGI Independance Day spectacularrrrrr (and if it had held true to that all the way to the credits, it would have benefited from it, imo). WotW was brain-dead blasters for the most part (which is fine if that's what you're after), but the bits where it tried to make you feel anything (the bits that Signs did ten times better) fell flat on their arses. I could tell I was supposed to be scared/tense/worried/upset because the music and Tom Cruise's Bag O' Tricks told me so. But I just didn't feel any of it.

The ending to War of the Worlds was such an anticlimax. And it nearly gave me diabetes. Spielberg can't resist the SuperHappy ending.

After all that though, it wasn't a terrible film. It should have stuck to the big death scenes that it did so well, and stayed clear of anything else.
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

The only scene in Signs which even slightly gripped me was the one where this guy walks through the fields at night, gets scared by the whole atmosphere and marches quickly back. Everything else was mumble-mumble "I'm trying to be oh so profoundly wounded and hurt" unconvincing clap-trap...and his redemption is equally pointless and pat..."An alien that made a lot of crop circles came to my house and got beaten by water. Surely God exists and watches over us...now where's that darn white collar?"
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

Have to agree Signs was one of the silliest stories/movies I've ever seen, way too many half-baked conicidences and characters for my liking... :mad:
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

You'll find even more, although without the attendant ET gibberish in Basic, a film starring John Travolta and Samuel L Jackson. A totally pointless case of not just whipping a dead horse but twisting its tale wayyyy too many times! Eww.
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

I hoping to go see it this afternoon :D :D I'm all excited :D :D :D
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

Compared to The Village, Signs was a work of genius. The Village stank on so many levels, from the completely obvious and uninteresting "twist", to the non-scary nature of the creatures, to the stilted performances and uninvolving cast. Think Shaylaman has peaked.
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

I actually enjoyed The Village more than Signs.
I quite liked the films setting (circa 1700s) and was enjoying it on the same level as Brotherhood of the Wolf.

I think MNS should ditch have a twist ending in every movie though. It's not a twist if you know its coming... D'oh!
Also, he stinks as an "actor". I think he should ditch his ego and just do cameos if he feels the need to have his Id massaged by appearing in his own movie.

Back to War of the Worlds - I liked the design of the Tripods but I agree that Tom Cruise isn't convincing as an everyday family man, and the film would have benefited by launching the career of a "no-name" talented actor.
I didn't like the aliens 'death ray' though - that was too over the top and jarred me out of any sense of realism.

Verdict: Fairly watchable popcorn movie if you leave your brain behind. ;)
 
Re: War Of The Worlds

Wow, Knivesout has changed for PKD's image. The motto reminds me of his extravagant Mez speech.;)
 
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