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| YOU ARE HERE : Home > Categories > Movies > Sci-Fi > War of the Worlds | |
| ProdID: 625 - War of the WorldsDirected bySteven Spielberg | Product Score: 8.0 |
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Ray Ferrier is a working class man living in New Jersey. He's estranged from his family, his life isn't in order, and he's too caught up with himself. But the unthinkable and, ultimately, the unexpected happens to him in an extraordinary sense. His small town life is shaken violently by the arrival of destructive intruders: Aliens which have come en masse to destroy Earth. As they plow through the country in a wave of mass destruction and violence, Ray must come to the defense of his children. He also learns to see outside of his own life, and sees the world try and defend itself from this new and very advanced enemy, not of this world. |
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I was hopeful when I saw that War of the Worlds was being remade, even though Hollywood's track record when it comes to good science fiction is, to put it mildly, abysmal. I was wrong. The first few minutes were good, with the beginning monologue voiced in the dulcet tones of Morgan Freeman, one of my favourite actors. Sadly, the movie went downhill from there. The main character of the movie is no longer a journalist but is instead an American blue collar worker with an attitude. Supposedly this guy is an expert container crane operator down at the local wharf, I realised things where not going to go well when this expert moved the spreader (the thing that attaches to the container to handle them) to pick a container in such a bad way that the cable going from the crane to the spreader can be seen swinging in front of him, something a true crane operator would be embarrassed and ashamed about. We find out that he is divorced with the stereotypical surly teenage son and a preteen daughter who screams at everything. Then we find that somehow the martians managed to bury their fighting machines a long time ago. Strangely, the machines just happen to be buried under major cities that have only been around for a couple of hundred years, if that. There are various other incongruities, such as someone videoing in an area that has been hit by an EMP pulse and a car with a computerised electrical system be bought back to life by "changing the solenoid". There are a lot more as well. Other elements of the book are missing, such as the Thunderchild saving the ferry at her own cost The character "development" does not exist other than the father/son "mutual respect" hug at the end of the movie, so they staid their cardboard selves throughout. Thankfully there was no pointless, insipid romance dropped in this time round The movie is entirely forgettable and derivative. It is nothing more than a vehicle to try and boost Tom Cruise's sagging career. Don't bother with it. Read the excellent book instead. Yet again a great story is butchered in a slapdash way. |
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As a young lad, I was enthralled and thrilled, delightfully terrified by my first encounter with 'bad aliens from space' when I got to see the video of the 1953 original version of War of the Worlds. I sat on the edge of my seat, squeeking in fear as the giant alien machines climbed up out of glowing pits and scorched everything around them, then sowed the seeds of ravaging red martian plants. I thankfully didn't notice some of the smaller details back then. Some of the antics I saw in the modern remake would have given me screaming terrors for weeks on end. So it was with great interest i sat in the darkened theatre and watched Tom Cruise make lucky-fluke escapes time after time against all odds. While watching this, I figured out pretty quick that there wasn't much in the way of plot-elements that I hadn't seen already, however the special effects employed these days allowed the cameras to get closer to the aliens, the technology presenting the viewer with opportunities never possible before. The story itself scores low, since it made no real effort to re-tell the story, it simply re-states the original, pedanticly so. However the special effects made up for it, keeping me sitting there trying hard to ignore the rude sod sitting next to me talking the whole way through the movie in some asian language I could not define. However, I had to laugh at the multi-colored lights just prior to the probe entering the basement to sniff out Tom and fellow refugees hiding, waiting, hoping. This is a reference to the red, blue and green lights from the probe in the 1953 version of the film. What makes this a nifty reference was that the probe in this movie only emitted cyan and white lights. However, the aliens who wandered in shortly afterwards broke any chain of similarities, since they were far more nimble and articulate, being fully-virtual and thus immune to the ravages of real-world gravity and puppetry limitations. Actually, they were too smooth. After all, as natives of Mars, they would be adapted to a substantially lower surface gravity. Their technology may have kept them safe, but only while the critters remained inside it. Outside, they should have collapsed, not walked on walls. It was nice to see Gene Barry and Ann Robinson, stars of the 1953 original, play the Grandparents. It just gave that much-needed tie-in that stopped this one from being a total shocker. However, despite the numerous references, similarities and sideways-honours for the '53 classic, this remake simply lacked something. Overall, it was TOO close, in that it left nothing genuinely shocking to a viewer with today's jaded palate. We've seen some seriously nasty stuff on our screens... so the sheer thrilling horror from the classic simply doesn't translate into shocking by the current benchmark. It's only major downfall, caused by over-dedication to the original. Still worth seeing, and if you are new to Scary Sci-Fi, you might really enjoy this. But if you are a die-hard, you'll walk away with a smile, and a hollow spot inside. |
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| Printed at 10:32:31pm on Saturday 20th April 2024 |
