Rate Spielberg's War of the Worlds

[ShinHakkaider]

This is really strange because aside from the tripods laying waste to the cities and everything else, I thought all of the alien stuff (including the aliens themselves) were extremely tame. The coolest part of the movie was the first ship coming out from underneath the street in the beginning. Batman was much scarier and intense than WotW.

Well I didnt particularly think Batman was all that great of a movie. I thought that it was alright performance wise and all but overall due to the extremely WEAK action sequences I didnt really care for it at all. It wasnt scary or intense to me in the least bit.

War of the Worlds on the other hand... I kept picturing myself in Ray's shoes doing everything that I could to keep MY 3 year old safe and making the hard choices that he had to make. I relate to that kind of struggle more than I can to a man dressing up as a bat and fighting crime. There was also the fact that I live in NY and was in the city the day the WTC came down that certain imagery in WOTW struck home. Just in that the cold efficency of the aliens was enough to unnerve me and then there's the reveal of EXACTLY HOW the red weed was created.

So yeah, aside from the ending, I really liked WOTW and cant wait to see it again.

 

[DonTadow]

SPOILER ALERT THROUGHOUT:::

What the heck was that?

I"m reading the reviews and, in all honesty wondering what you guys saw. It was horrible. The special effects was great but STeven Spielberg dropped the ball. The dialogue felt as if George LUcas was doing guest director parts. I really am disappointed in Dakota. She essentially whined, cried and made dumb decisions during half of the movie. During the other half she was poised and smart. The problem with that is it made an inconsistant character. She's smart enough to watch the news, eat humas and give advice but she cries and whines during every other interval in the movie.


"Aliens are destroying the world"
"I want my mommy"

"An alien ship has discovered us"
"Let me run up the stairs right to where I last saw 20 to 30 of them. Then let me stand there completely still like an idiot so they can grab me. As a matter of fact let me run in the forest, hide, wait for them to grab my daddy then go back to my daddy and let him know i was just playing"

The dialogue was corny and over the top. Especially the scene where the son for some dumb reason wants to go up the hill. Why does he want to go up the hill? He doesn't havea gun or weaponry? Because he says he wants to "see". But the worst part about this movie. There were SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many inconsistencies.

Spoiler Alert :




The movie started off great, even up until the tripods, then the idoitic inconsistencies happened.
0. A random police officer is able to tell to tell everyone that there is nothing underneath the street and everyone believes him.
1. The man's camera worked but it was explained that nothing worked in the storm
2. When they go to the other house, and the next morning happens everything is blown up. Essentially a plane landed on the house. The van is not only completely undamaged but in good working order. HEy theres even a path/road created so they can get away.
3. The van of endless gas. Man I"m going to get one of those for my modern campaign. It just kept going and going and going and going.
4. The camera crews camara and electrical equipment worked great .
5. The overzealous mob attacking the van. It was just silly. They are all heading toward a river and their killng each other over a car.
6. A car lands on the family and all are in complete working order.
7. The national guard did not move the vehilces off the ferry. What idiot commander was in charge of this operation
8. Everyone travels in packs in this movie. Despite the fact that it seems the aliens always attack the packs. And the cruise family alwaysgoes back to the pack
8a. The burning train was a great scene. Now how the heck the train was traveling without either derailing or exploding is beyond my knowledge of physics.
9. Cruise kills an innocent man, because in the next scene they get caught anyway/???
10. Dakota runs up the stairs to the aliens. Also no one set up any kind of watch.
11. The force field protects from bullets, missles, rockets, possibly even nukes, but there is nothing like a trusty axe
12 Why did hte aliens get out of the ship
13 So they make it ot boston and find out everythings hunky dorry there. Apparently the large 100s of alien pods didnt make it there.
14 Millions of years of planning and no one remembered to bring the Off!! Man. Seriously these were the smartest dumbest aliens I"ve ever seen (and i saw Mars ATtack) They are smart enough to know all the major cities in the world millions of years previously, they are smart enough to hide these monsterous weapons deep into the core, They are smart enough to have weaponary that would destory beings that havnt even evolved yet, but they didn't bring ANY bio suits. Even us humans are smart enough to do that.
15 How the heck did the boy survive? Everyone on that hill was burned.
16. NO explanation to answer any of the inconsistincies. There was no payoff. It was so bad that MOrgan Freeman opted out this movie and only wanted to do the voiceover.

The no explanation works in a movie like Signs (ten times better)because the movie is focused on one family and how the aliens effect theone family. So in the end you want to know about the one family. This movie introduced too much stuff for them just to end the movie as they did. This movie had a lot of good idea, some of the best special effects of the summer but the plot, story and acting were horrid.

 

[frankthedm]

I agree with the previous poster about the dialogue & most of the inconsistencies.

but...

I went to go see a sci-fi movie not a family drama. At least this one HAS special effects. Just a real shame they had those three bags of flesh wasting screen time.

 

[DonTadow]

I agree with the previous poster about the dialogue & most of the inconsistencies.

but...

I went to go see a sci-fi movie not a family drama. At least this one HAS special effects. Just a real shame they had those three bags of flesh wasting screen time.

I'm all for good sci fi, but sci-fi is not explosions, aliens and special effects. It's those things wrapped up in a story that gives you reason to suspend your belief. It just didn't feel polished and that is what really irks me. Outside of the dialogue a lot of those inconsistencies can be fixed with reshots, script tightening and cuts. It shows that that they show this movie in a couple months.

 

[GlassJaw]

That was a really good writeup Don. You nailed most of the things I noticed too. I usually try to look at a movie as a whole and ask myself - did I have fun watching this film? I this case, I'd say "yes" overall but I certainly wouldn't call it a great piece of cinema. It was an entertaining summer flick. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[Chain Lightning]

SPOILER ALERT !
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-SPOILER ALERT!

SPOILER ALERT THROUGHOUT:::

What the heck was that?


9. Cruise kills an innocent man, because in the next scene they get caught anyway/???

I agree with all your points except number nine. In reality, you have no idea what's going to happen to you next. He didn't know that he was gonna get caught afterward despite "silencing" the crazy guy.

And as far as Dakota's character...yeah, she's smart...but c'mon she's still a kid. Some parts of her personality are still gonna revert to that scared little girl mode. Especially when she's getting weirded out and attacked by aliens.

But agree with all the rest of the inconsistencies. The biggest one being the resolution. Doesn't make sense either considering the intelligence of the aliens. But as a friend of mine said, "well, that's how it ends in the book ... a WotW movie will always end with that same resolution". Which he's right. So the thing is this, if they want to make a more logical ending, the have to be willing to stray from the book's trademark ending or just not do WotW at all and do their own alien invasion movie.

Despite all that....great ride. I enjoyed the movie not for its final destination, but the ride getting there.

7 out of 10 for me. Very enjoyable. (but yes....holes of logic abound) Still enjoyed way more than SW: Ep III.

 

[Mallus]

There won't be much of the human drama that waters down far too much sci fi.

I'm guessing you're not a fan of Ray Bradbury then? Or films like Gattaca?

 

[Adeodatus]

I was dead-set against enjoying WotW, but had to watch it because of my job. (I am a projectionist at a theatre.) I was actually really enjoying it...until the aliens showed up. Tom Cruise was such an jerk to his kids and you could see the same kinda bad attitude in his son. I was impressed. Then aliens killed stuff, which was kinda cool. Then they ran away. Then all character bleeds away from the son, Robbie, as he suddenly devlops a deathwish. Cruise maintained some of his nastiness but not enough. Tim Robbins did make a pretty good nut though.
The movie was eye-candy thinking it could be compelling commentary on the place of man in the universe, but it wasn't it was just eye-candy.

I was really disappointed when the aliens weren't the same kind of aliens as in E.T. That waould of been so cool.

 

[devilbat]

I saw it this afternoon, and I rate it a solid 6.

The special effects were excellent, but the story was non-existant. I've read reviews that have panned Dakota Fanning, but I thought her performance was admirable. She portrayed emotions believably. Cruise was the same as he is in all his movies (you decide if thats bad or good).

 

[TwinBahamut]

I really, really liked this movie. It is about the best adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel that I can imagine. Rated it a 9.

I really enjoyed the human drama that many people here are complaining about. After all, the original novel was always far more about how people struggled to survive the alien invasion rather than telling a story of how a bunch of aliens wipe out humanity. And I don't think that the characters acting irrationally hurt the film at all. Rather, I think it made the "suspension of disbelief" all the more powerful. The characters acted human. They were scared, terrified, angry, confused, and had no idea what on earth to do. The characters weren't a bunch of D&D characters metagaming themselves into a perfect calm and possesing perfect insight into what to do in order to survive. They acted like people really would in that scenerio. And I am really impressed that Spielberg pulled off that effect.

All the special effects were perfect.

Spoilers below.

I don't agree with nitpick #14 above. Why would the martians use bio-suits? How could they? There are two big problems with expecting that.
1: To the invaders, the humans were neither real enemies, nor pests to be exterminated. Humans were food to them. Things to be consumed and eaten raw. How do you biologically isolate yourself from your food?
2: Not mentioned in the movie, but in the book the narrator made theories that the martians had already completely annihilated all forms of disease on thier own world, and it had been so long since then they didn't think of the possibility.