Review/Rant: War of the Worlds
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, New Releases, Paramount, Theatrical Reviews, Dreamworks, Tom Cruise, Steven Spielberg
If you're looking for a story, look elsewhere. War of the Worlds is more like a two hour theme park ride putting you at the center of the biggest battle in Earth's history. You're in the middle of a war zone trying to stay alive. It's a roller coaster ride from hell, twisting and turning till the very end where the ride suddenly and abruptly comes to a stop and people hug and kiss. This may sound a bit cynical but I have to admit, I really did love this film. The last ten minutes not so much, but the majority of the film, yes.
Cruise and Fanning both turned out great performances. Don't let the public backlash on Cruise persuade your opinion. Tim Robbins was perfect in his portrayal of Ogilvy, so much so that I can't imagine anyone else doing a better job. The special effects are big and spectacular. The destruction is amazing and abundant. But the whole movie is filmed in such a way that we're always focused on the characters. It's not just another mindless "Let's make a movie just to destroy stuff" type of movie (see: The Day after Tomorrow, The Core...etc)
Some of the tricks Spielberg employs with the camera are just spectacular. There's two shots that stick out in my mind. In the first shot, Tom Cruise's character is running away from the tripods early in the film. The people around him are getting vaporized and cars and buildings are getting destroyed. The two minute (my guess) tracking shot plays out in real time with one camera. The other shot is as they drive away from the city and the camera weaves in, out, and around the car.
Many critics had a problem with the alien's undeveloped plans. I tend to take the viewpoint that much like the rest of the movie, we're seeing the whole thing through the eyes of this one family. And just because that one family doesn't see the aliens' master plans doesn't mean they didn't have one. One of my friends suggested that the aliens planted us on Earth so that they could come back years later to essentially eat us. Why wouldn't we have come across at least one of the spaceships buried beneath the ground? Well, okay, there are flaws.
Ebert didn't like the movie much, and gave it only two stars. This means he liked The Honeymooners, Land of the Dead, Kicking & Screaming, The Longest Yard, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Bewitched more. Ebert recently received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He told the audience: "When we are born, we are placed into a specific box, in a certain space and time.'' In his opinion, film is the one art form that most easily enables people to escape their own reality, "imagining what it is to live somebody else's life -- to be a different gender, live in a different time, to live in a different economic class. "It is a truly liberalizing experience and makes people broader-minded as film makes it possible for them not to be just stuck being [themselves] day after day.''
I think this is definitely one of those films Ebert was talking about. Why can't he bypass some nit picky logic and see this?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-30-2005 @ 11:04AM
Dan said...
Agree 100%. Maybe Ebert didn't get his "special envelope" from Spielberg? The issues that Ebert raises are pretty darn nick-picky, even for him. After all, if you're going to get all "Science Fiction Fan" etc. then you should start talking about how true the film is to the book, etc. etc... Not about how much "sense" it makes in some absolute way. I just got the feeling that the movie was cut poorly. It lacked some important transitional and expository scenes, but those scenes would have slowed down the "ride." So, Roger should have read the book, then seen the movie, and relaxed and enjoyed it.
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6-30-2005 @ 12:34PM
Sundroid said...
If Ebert meant to say, "WOTW is a great but flawed film," then I'd agree with him. Spielberg's talent usually shines so brightly that people tend to let some of his sloppiness slide; for instance, the apparent script hole related to Cruise's teenage son character, which I suspect had a fuller portraiture in one of the drafts of the screenplay, but someone, likely Spielberg, decided to reduce him to a hothead who is conveniently, and very sloppily, made to disappear halfway through the movie and miraculously pop back up again later. Another example, I think the survivalist character played by Tim Robbins is totally unnecessary -- Cruise and Fanning need a place to duck into, they can easily find an empty basement without anybody in it; the presence of the survivalist does not add to the tension of the scene, which is basically to introduce the snake-like tentacle and the aliens. I will say this: Dakota Fanning has such a mesmerizing presence that it's possible the fact that her performance outclasses those by Chatwin and Robbins has, to me, rendered the latter two characters ineffective.
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6-30-2005 @ 1:05PM
Tyler said...
I think the survivalist (Tim Robbins' character) was really important and the scene wouldn't have been as effective without him. His acting was so spot on, as usual for Tim Robbins, and I think he was neccessary to the film. I definitely think the ending was way to cheesy but overall the movie was great! It stayed so close to the book (as much as they could anyway) and was immensely enjoyable. I don't see what everybody's bitching about with this movie. Sure Tom Cruise has gone crazy but I still think he acted really well in the movie.
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6-30-2005 @ 4:09PM
monika said...
WAR OF THE WORLDS IS A GREAT MOVIE! THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE THAT I'VE SEEN SINCE DAY AFTER TOMORROW....
TOM CRUISE DID A GOOD JOB BEING A GREAT ACTOR IN THIS MOVIE! I WOULD HAVE GIVEN THIS MOVIE 4 STARS!!!!!!!!
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6-30-2005 @ 5:18PM
Sundroid said...
Last time I checked, Ebert's title is "Movie Critic", not "Movie Cheerleader". The man is paid to criticize, not to heap praises on a film that has been praised to the skies. Ebert's harshness on WOTW is understandable, because his action is akin to a teacher chiding the best and brightest student in the class for handing in an A-minus school assignment. Spielberg is a cinematic genius who brought us masterpieces such as "Schindler's List", "Jaws", "Saving Private Ryan", "Close Encounters", "E. T.", but he also gave us less stellar works like "A. I." and "Minority Report" (let's not even talk about "1941"), and Ebert is simply saying, "Look, Steven, you can do better," and I agree with him. In WOTW, the "mysterious gap" in Chatwin's character and the jaw-dropping sappy ending are indefensible. And the justification for writing in that survivalist character is dubious, but let's give Spielberg the benefit of the doubt, because it's his movie. Still, I maintain that the whole scene with Robbins is botched, and Robbins is definitely not to blame. On paper, the casting of the survivalist calls for "an eccentric loner" type, and in my opinion, actors like Sean Penn, Jack Nicholson, Billy Bob Thornton, Al Pacino (I could go on and on) would do a better job. Instead, we now see Tim Robbins with a hood over his head running around in a dimly lit basement doing nothing more than lifting up a glass of moonshine, an ax, and a shotgun.
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6-30-2005 @ 10:47PM
Tony said...
I hadn't really planned on seeing this movie, but after reading this post, I decided to go check it out. I have to say, I pretty much agree with Mr. Scrietta. There was a lot to like about this movie, and some of the camera work was very impressive. The ending was a let down, but almost all of the movie really delivered on the excitement scale. To me, this movie does a good job of keeping the repeated "skin of their teeth" escapes from feeling tedious.
I wish I had gone to see the movie during the day, perhaps the theatre would've been less full. Bascially the entire movie people were getting up and down and going in and out of the doors. Also several people brought very young kids (4-6 years, i'm guessing), which (as a parent) seemed pretty inappropriate. One poor girl had to be carried out of the theatre by what I assume was her dad, and she did not look happy.
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7-01-2005 @ 11:04AM
matt said...
the movie really sucks, i don't know why i wasted my laundry money to go see it.
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7-02-2005 @ 12:27AM
zander106 said...
No one will probably read this now because this post is a couple days old, but I just saw the movie and really enjoyed it. Well, maybe enjoyed it isn't quite the right word. I thought it was a great moviegoing experience.
What I thought was most amazing about the film was that for the first half of the movie or so, I felt like I was experiencing the terror and uncertainty of September 11 all over again, except that the destruction was being carried out by aliens instead of terrorists. The desperation and fear that people experience throughout the movie really transfers to the audience -- at least to this audience member. The part where the family's car is surrounded by survivors who are demanding the car, for instance, was truly chilling.
Spielberg really seems to have taken the lessons from Saving Private Ryan -- immersing the audience in a hellish situation to the point it seems real -- and applied them to the alien invasion scenario. Yeah, the ending was rushed and didn't really make sense, but overall I came away much more satisfied than I thought I was going to be. An impressive effort from Spielberg.
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7-16-2005 @ 10:38PM
acting jobs said...
yup, excellent acting all round.. even us in the trade would agree!... but i wish the girl would stop screaming for a few minutes, please!!!! :D
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