Rate Spielberg's War of the Worlds

Rate War of the Worlds

  • 0 (lowest)

    Votes: 7 5.0%
  • 1

    Votes: 1 0.7%
  • 2

    Votes: 4 2.9%
  • 3

    Votes: 9 6.5%
  • 4

    Votes: 11 7.9%
  • 5

    Votes: 14 10.1%
  • 6

    Votes: 17 12.2%
  • 7

    Votes: 33 23.7%
  • 8

    Votes: 23 16.5%
  • 9

    Votes: 15 10.8%
  • 10 (highest)

    Votes: 5 3.6%

DonTadow said:
But there are inconsistencies??? which are facts???. The only opinions i give is what they could have done instead of the inconsistencies. Again, if you are happy with inconsistencies fine. In my opinion they were a major distraction to enjoying the movie and I prefer for my movies to make sense throughout. In my opinion the movie could have been smarter by taking a bit more time and eliminating the major inconsitencies. I'm so curious as to how the original script for this read.

Every single movie has some inconsistencies. The fact is, for the movie, the only one I really noticed while watching it was the boy living at the end...but even that can be assumed as we have NO IDEA what happened on the other side of that hill. Its just impossible to say.

The part that isn't fact are the 'major' inconsistencies. They aren't major. For you, they may be, but it is not a FACT that they are major inconsistencies. A strong case can even be made that what you note aren't inconsistencies at all, simply how the story was decided to be told and they make perfect sense within their own context.

By the way, I"m sure percentage wise we have more bacteria than water ;). So if thats your reason for hating Signs it counters you reason for liking war of the worlds.

...but you can't see all those bacteria from space. Really, though, we could make a case for both species of aliens being complete idiots. Only the ID4 aliens really knew what they were doing...but then they HAD to use those IBM made computers and ruin it all. ;)
 

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Ankh-Morpork Guard said:
Every single movie has some inconsistencies. The fact is, for the movie, the only one I really noticed while watching it was the boy living at the end...but even that can be assumed as we have NO IDEA what happened on the other side of that hill. Its just impossible to say.

The part that isn't fact are the 'major' inconsistencies. They aren't major. For you, they may be, but it is not a FACT that they are major inconsistencies. A strong case can even be made that what you note aren't inconsistencies at all, simply how the story was decided to be told and they make perfect sense within their own context.



...but you can't see all those bacteria from space. Really, though, we could make a case for both species of aliens being complete idiots. Only the ID4 aliens really knew what they were doing...but then they HAD to use those IBM made computers and ruin it all. ;)

Every movie is fiction in some way, and all ask for you to suspend your belief in some way. War of the Worlds asked too much of me to the point where i began laughing after some time. When the boy came out at the end most of the audience had joined me.

Plus in signs they never explained what was the aliens alergic too. It could have been what was in the water. Honestly I assumed it was bacteria in the water, clearly Shamala paying tribute to Wells.

But none was smarter than in ID4, which clearly had it together. They can not be blamed for purchasing equipment from one of the leading hardware distributors. I"m sure the purchase helped save thousands of jobs.
 

Gave it a 6. The first hour or so was okay. The real problem for me wasn't any inconsistencies, though. When viewers are making lists of inconsistencies, the PROBLEM isn't the inconsistencies. Any movie can have holes poked in it.

The PROBLEM is that the story is insufficiently exciting to keep viewers from noticing the inconsistencies.

And I saw two fundamental (and painfully "Spielbergian") problems with WotW:

1. A reluctance to show us horror. No bodies in the plane crash? Sure, you can justify it, but if you have a plane crash without bodies, it's because you didn't want to show torn and burned bodies, and dammit, HE SHOULD HAVE. This movie should have been PAINFUL. HORRIFYING. It's meant to be SCARY, for crying out loud. When TC goes to kill TR, he blindfolds the girl... and then we're just sitting there watching her and listening to grunts and noises? COME ON. We're supposed to be watching human civilization fall apart here, Steven! Sheesh.

2. A determination to give us a sense of triumph. The last act of the film (from when TC gets grabbed) seems to be trying to rally our emotions so that we feel triumphant. They blow up a tripod, then the silly tripods can be hurt, hurrah, we're going to win this sucker after all! Of course it's just germs, but all that build-up of success serves to undermine the primary thrust of the story -- that for all our pride and our apparent power, we're in fact helpless children in the face of the universe. By giving us those moments of "triumph", Spielberg undermines his own story and ends up with a film that feels half-baked, weak and deserving of nitpicking.

Bah. Mr. Spielberg, you're better than this. You haven't been since like, 1981, but you are.
 

barsoomcore said:
No bodies in the plane crash? Sure, you can justify it, but if you have a plane crash without bodies, it's because you didn't want to show torn and burned bodies, and dammit, HE SHOULD HAVE.

At first, I agreed and thought this was odd. Then there came the scene with the clothes falling from the sky in the forest. I get the impression that there were no bodies because the heat rays were used to take out the people inside.
 

Hey barsoomcore! :)

I agreed with much of what you said with the notable exception of...

barsoomcore said:
Bah. Mr. Spielberg, you're better than this. You haven't been since like, 1981, but you are.

You must be suffering from amnesia (no doubt induced when you tried to block out memories of the dreadful War of the Worlds), so let me refresh your memory.

Saving Private Ryan is one of the greatest movies of all time.

The original Jurassic Park was awesome.

Indiana Jones (both Temple of Doom and the Last Crusade) are virtually flawless.

While I haven't liked much else Mr Spielbergs done over the same period I realise many of his films are good, but simply not 'my kind of movie'. So I'll cut him slack for those. Unfortunately War of the Worlds is one of those I paid money to see, I should have enjoyed, if not loved it - but it turned out to be terrible.
 

barsoomcore said:
Bah. Mr. Spielberg, you're better than this. You haven't been since like, 1981, but you are.

Bless you. I was beginning to think I was alone in the world.

Things that bothered me:

1. Every scene existed to serve itself, independent (and often in contradiction to) the rest of the movie. For example, the daughter was alternately a cynical 30 year old, a smart ass teenager, a scared little girl, and back again. Not because that was the character, but because that's what the scene called for. Notice how her claustrophobia came and went. Same with the son -- rebellious car-stealing teenager, caring older brother, gung-ho soldier wannabe.

2. An utter disregard for internal consistency. This goes beyond nit-picking over continuity errors and the like. The plane crash pretty much ended any minor enjoyment I might have gotten from the film (and judging by the audience reaction , I wasn't alone). On 9/11 we shut down commercial aviation across the country. Something tells me that 12 hours after the tripods appearing, we wouldn't still have jetliners flying over New York. It would be possible (and expected) to believe the the aliens were undone by bacteria, except that any race that was going to process us for food would have already understood our biology sufficiently that they would have taken that into account. Not to mention the use of the EMP effects when it was convenient and ignoring it when it wasn't, Tim Robbins waiting till the alien was sneaking around to chamber a round in the shotgun, or the numerous other eye-roll inducing instances of sloppiness.

3. No attempt at a plausible level of alien technology. A million years before, they buried these high-tech skyscraper-tall robots, but they have to send a tentacle with eyes into a basement to scout for humans? (A tentacle with eyes that apparently doesn't know what a mirror is, to boot). Never heard of infrared scanning?

4. Glacial pacing and scenes that went nowhere. Up until the tripods appear, it was working well (sort of -- the scenes with the ex were ham-handed). But then the pacing goes to crap, with the extended sequence in the basement being devoid of tension, logic, or anything else that would justify it taking up 20 minutes of the movie. Or the scene at the ferry, where the other parent and child appear and disappear a minute later.

The most telling thing about this movie for me was that I saw it with a friend that absolutely freaks when scary stuff happens in a movie (we've all learned not to sit next to her because she'll dig her fingernails into your arm :p ). *She* was bored by it.
 
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Upper_Krust said:
Hey barsoomcore! :)
Saving Private Ryan is one of the greatest movies of all time.

The original Jurassic Park was awesome.

Indiana Jones (both Temple of Doom and the Last Crusade) are virtually flawless.

While I haven't liked much else Mr Spielbergs done over the same period I realise many of his films are good, but simply not 'my kind of movie'. So I'll cut him slack for those. Unfortunately War of the Worlds is one of those I paid money to see, I should have enjoyed, if not loved it - but it turned out to be terrible.

Saving Private Ryan was excellent for the first 20 minutes. After that, it was every cliche from every war movie ever made, with the same Spielbergian inability to string together scenes to make a coherent whole. Not to mention one of the stupidest ending sequences in cinematic history.

Temple of Doom and Last Crusade pale in comparison to Raiders. Temple of Doom suffers from obnoxiously precocious kid syndrome (another Spieldberg hallmark) and casting Kate Capshaw who didn't have half the screen presence of Karen Allen. Crusade took the perfect mix of humour and action in Raiders and reversed it, turning it into a slapstick comedy instead of an action picture. (Especially the German Castle). Neither is flawless, both suffer heavilty from playing down the tension and dialing up the cute.

Jurassic Park was pretty damn good, although in large part due to the way the effects were integrated into the story.

He's made three inarguably great movies (Jaws, Close Encounters, Raiders). I'll even grant 'Schindlers List' though I've not seen it. But even Schindlers and Jurassic was 12 years ago, and the other 3 were a quarter-century in the past.

EDIT: Found this apropos quote from Ebert's review of Jurassic Park

Roger Ebert said:
In the 16 years since it (Close Encounters) was made, however, big-budget Hollywood seems to have lost its confidence that audiences can share big dreams. "Jurassic Park" throws a lot of dinosaurs at us, and because they look terrific (and indeed they do), we're supposed to be grateful. I have the uneasy feeling that if Spielberg had made "Close Encounters" today, we would have seen the aliens in the first 10 minutes, and by the halfway mark they'd be attacking Manhattan with death rays.
 
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DonTadow said:
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.

You are so on the money! The thing i would like to add is Sci-Fi used to be a way for writers to subtly tell sensitive and controversial stories with out directly offended the parties involved, such as stories about racism. I myself enjoy both types of Sci-Fi the introspective/political and the blow-em-ups SFX extravaganzas. This movie had some good parts with the SFX but was extremely weak on internal consistancy and logic. I must say I felt for the characters but their stupid actions out numbered their smart ones. Also personally I thought Independance Day was a much better remake of WOTW from the straight Sci-Fi end and sticking to the original theme. This seemed like Splieberg wanted to make a movie about how one family felt on 9/11 but just didn't have the balls to make a movie about 9/11 so he added aliens and called it WOTW.
 


I'm curious if those that didn't like this incarnation of WotW liked the 1953 version?

I personally loved the 1953 version and I believe that is part of the reason I enjoyed this movie so much - it was so similar to the 1953 version (flaws and all).

I also have to say that this thread has once again shown me that there are a number of posters here who I have no common ground with when it comes to movies :)
 

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