Posted on 06/29/2005 6:02:40 PM PDT by zook
Alien Reality It takes you there, and makes you feel it.
I didn’t think it was possible to make movies like this any more. War of the Worlds is an almost perfectly realized movie of the classic aliens-attack type: satisfying, believable, and very, very scary. It comes so close to perfection that a long list of accolades are going to have to be cleared out of the way before we get around to that “almost.”
Ray Ferrier, a dockworker, has just gotten charge of his kids for the weekend, as his ex-wife and her new husband head off for a weekend at her mom’s. The teenaged son, Robbie (Justin Chatwin), is resentful and rude; the ten-year-old daughter, Rachel (Dakota Fanning), is a bit too world-weary for someone still carrying plastic ponies around. (After Ray blows up at Robbie she informs her dad, “You’re never going to get through to him that way.”)
We get a couple of hints from an overheard news broadcast that somewhere in “the Ukraine” (didn’t they drop the “the” years ago?) there have been solar flares and power outages. But then a curious thing starts to happen in the local neighborhood. Ray is exhilarated to watch a gusty whirl of gray in the sky, which pulls the wind toward it and sends all the backyard laundry flapping. “It’s like the Fourth of July!” he tells Rachel; she, quite sensibly scared, replies, “No, it isn’t.”
That’s the last time anything in this movie is remotely normal. As the extent of the alien attack becomes increasingly apparent, the situation shoots to the level of hopeless and stays there. Ray’s goal becomes simply to get his children safely back to their mother. Rather than unfolding a storyline, it is a series of harrowing experiences, one after another. Which is, truthfully, what living something like this would be like.
That’s most impressive thing about what director Steven Spielberg has done here: This crazy story about space aliens destroying the earth is so realistic. We never know anything more than what Ray knows, and he doesn’t know much. Decisions are as agonizing and unclear to us as they are to him. He trudges day after day, exhausted and filthy, and we too feel the interminable and hopeless nature of his quest. In its own way, War of the Worlds is like the harrowing first 20 minutes of “Saving Private Ryan” (of which Spielberg was producer). It takes you there, and makes you feel it.
When Ray walks past a wall adorned, as Manhattan was after September 11, with notices begging for help in locating lost relatives, we think, “Yes, that’s what it would be like.” When Rachel and her dad argue over her need to have privacy for a roadside potty break, and his need to have her never out of his sight, we know that’s just the kind of thing that would happen. When they encounter people along the way who are kind, or who are suddenly and alarmingly vicious, or who are something strangely in-between (a great performance by Tim Robbins), we know we would meet that range of characters too.
Steven Spielberg has wisely located the power of this story, not in the size of the aliens or their destructive powers, but in how such threats would make us feel. Other directors trust the effects to be big and noisy enough to elicit these emotions, but Spielberg has set his sights on the subjective, experiential feel of the story itself. It’s a terrible temptation that now, with computer images, there are no limits to special effects; you can make an explosion 30-feet high, or 300, or more, so why not go for the biggest bang you can get for the buck? But a super-size wowzer like that becomes a distraction, breaking the bounds of the story and taking on separate existence as a mere object of gawking. Spielberg tames the effects and makes them serve the story. By exercising restraint he manages to make even a movie about invading aliens, in some sense, realistic.
Only “almost” perfect? The ending is a little sweeter than it needed to be, and a little clunky for that, but it’s not a serious flaw. If anything, Spielberg’s pursuit of “you are there” realism is too relentless. He wisely forgoes scenes that would constitute “comic relief,” but also gives us little in the way of character development, and nothing truly develops in the plot. The misery and anxiety-saturated atmosphere is so endless that we never get a break — no moments of hope or beauty, that would give us a breather. Halfway through the movie I scribbled this note: “Along about here I got tired of being scared.” I was tired of being at this pitch of tension for so long, tired of worrying about these people, and not knowing what horrific thing would happen next. But real life wouldn’t give us a break, and Spielberg doesn’t either. Few movies about flying saucers and bug-eyed aliens tell us such true things about human nature. War of the Worlds sets a new standard for space-age classics; it’s in a universe of its own.
— Frederica Mathewes-Green writes regularly for NPR's Morning Edition, Beliefnet.com, Christianity Today, and other publications. She is the author of Gender: Men, Women, Sex and Feminism, among other books.
Well, he plays a real a-hole blue-collar dockworker, which for him is believable.
"Saw it at 2PM EST and I realize it's still with me past 10:30PM."
I saw it at the 4pm show in Greenbelt. I walked out of the mall into those storms that were just coming around. I heard thunder and realized I was scanning the horizon for Martian machines.
It was a good movie, faithful enough to the book (which I just read for the first time) and with lots of nods to the 1953 film.
But what was the most disturbing scene may not have been anything with the aliens or the tripods. It was the moment when they're in the minivan and society finally breaks down. Almost like a George Romero flick at that point. If Augustine was right in his observation that man is the beast with the angel inside, the angel done fled and is cowering in a basement somewhere as Americans realize that the chips are down and not getting back up - and in fact are incinerated all over the poker table.
And no doubt that's what it would be like in reality.
Yeah, if something like that happened, I certainly wouldn't be relying on the Better Angels of our Nature.
I have to disagree.
The 1953 version is campy fun, in a way, but typical 50's B-movie schlock. Spielberg's is more faithful to the book, with the obvious alteration of being set in 2005, not 1898 (or "the early 20th century"). But Welles would approve. He wanted to make his story as topical as possible.
But despite its flaws, this one does what it's supposed to.
Plus you get to have Tim Robbins beaten to death. That has to be worth a star right there.
"Almost like a George Romero flick at that point."
Yeah, "Night of the Living Refugees." Cruise's character was right in being worried about people knowing they had a running vehicle.
Most of the logical flaws can be blamed on Welles. For example: Why clunky tripods? Why the strange red weed and how can it possible terraform anything? Why annihilate the entire countryside if you're planning to use it? Why the deus ex machina ending and how can it be that "intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic" who have been planning this business for a long time didn't figue out about the dangers of earthborne contagions? And why have the aliens go out on EVA's when they've been shooting up everything previous to that?
Having the tripods buried deep underground is Speilberg's alteration but it adds - the more I think about it - an unsettling imagery to the film - and certainly works better now than Welle's idea of having them fired in giant cannon shells from Mars.
SO I went in prepared to deal with these anachronisms. And because of that, I didn't allow them to take me much off the track of what Speilberg was trying to do.
The only real distraction was Cruise himself, who as the review says always plays himself. But the stirling performance of Dakota Fannon makes up for that.
Which is why I would have avoided crowded or populated places at all cost. Especially if I didn't have four or five guys armed to the teeth with automatic weapons inside.
I'm still trying to figure out why replacing the starter motor didn't work but replacing he solinoid did.
Easily one of the most disturbing images Spielberg has ever committed to film.
"Having the tripods buried deep underground is Speilberg's alteration but it adds - the more I think about it - an unsettling imagery to the film - and certainly works better now than Welle's idea of having them fired in giant cannon shells from Mars."
The buried-for-a-million-years gizmos (and how the Martians got to them) was the weakest part of the plot to me. At least one would have been uncovered in the course of human activity. Spielberg could still have had his swirling clouds and lightning and explained it as hypervelocity re-entry as the cylinders buried themselves in the ground.
People interacting with the cylinders was a pivotal moment in both the book and the 1953 film.
I agree about the clunky triods. In 1897 that may have been future-tech but in 2005 it's a little lame (although still terrifying). The 1953 film dealt with that more scientifically.
All in all, it was a good/scary way to spend two hours.
Previews were good, too.
"Which is why I would have avoided crowded or populated places at all cost. Especially if I didn't have four or five guys armed to the teeth with automatic weapons inside."
You have to go where the road goes. They would have gotten waylaid much sooner on an interstate. If the kid had not driven right up to the people first the father might have gotten them turned around.
"I'm still trying to figure out why replacing the starter motor didn't work but replacing he solinoid did."
My guess would be that EMP would fry the computer in a modern vehicle. Something much much older still running would have been more realistic.
As for the tripods: I must say that clunky they may have been, Spielberg somehow managed to retrieve the original Welles concept art in such a way that was decidedly creepy in a way that INDEPENDENCE DAY's giant saucers never were.
Good point.
I was thinking he was going to be able to flee because his main ride was a vintage Ford Mustang Fastback... no computer! But, alas, no. He makes his escape in a mini-van.
I wasn't a survivalist in the 80s for nothing. :)
Cool. Your good review means more to me than good reviews in the MSM.
There is a worse diaster then hell?
I wonder if the Left (Robbins, Cruise, Speilberg) will at least allow us to fight back against aliens, if not terrorists.
Well, I see the Left wing proganda has been effective.
Yes, that is exactly how Americans have behaved in times of crises like 9/11.
The Left always wants to portray America without any spine or character, like them.
How quickly you forget, lets roll.
The military is portrayed very favorably, but they are mostly background. I supposed it's alright for the military to attack off-planet aliens invading the country.
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