Movie Review - War of the Worlds

I discuss movies with Ben. He has a great eye and a critical perspective. I don't mean critical in a negative sense. It's just that he's very observant and catches things I usually miss. Naturally, I emailed him in order to pick his brain regarding this movie.

We were in agreement about a number of things. First, War of the Worlds is good, mindless entertainment. I don't suppose that is what Steven Speilberg had in mind when he made the movie, though. I am fairly certain he wanted an "edge of the seat" suspense. To his credit, he didn't go for the "boogeyman jumps out at you" type of reaction. I can't stand that cheesy tactic. It's just..too predictable. And entirely too overused.

While I am not overly fond of blood curdling shrieks, I have to say the girl who played 'Rachel' was compelling. She was the perfect combination of blonde wide-eyed innocence coupled with wisdom beyond her years. She was my favorite character. Yes. I just said that. She was my favorite character. Move aside, Tom Cruise! But then, I really liked the little girl in "Signs", too.

Another point brought up by Ben was that as an action film, it wasn't typical in its make up. He's right.

"...where your heroes are in the thick of things from the beginning until the end, and are instrumental in defeating the bad guys. In WOTW, the main characters, not to mention everyone else, are in the dark about exactly what's going on."

Nicely put. Hence, the quote.

See? There are plenty of nice things to say about this film. Now the critique will begin in earnest. Again, Ben was extremely eloquent so I'll use his thoughts here:

I would have preferred to know where the aliens came from and why they wanted earth. I'm glad that the ending was faithful to Orwell's original story, but you'd think that the aliens would wear protective suits or something before seeing if the earth was safe for them. A lot of stuff is left unexaplained...what the red stuff is...what it does...if the aliens are trying to terraform our planet...why they're so dang hostile.

Taking that just a little further, what about the fact that the aliens had visited our planet at least briefly many years ago in order to plant their "destroyers" under the earth? Didn't they discover at that time our planet habored certain dangers for them? Yeah, we are led to believe the aliens visited before there was any life whatsoever on the earth. Excuse my poor grammar, but I ain't studyin that. Were they that much more advanced than us that they had this technology before life was on the earth and they didn't change it? Grow? Improve? Implement protection of some sort? Filters? Or as Ben said, suits? Anything? Nah. Not believeable. Isn't Sci-fi supposed to bring an air of possibility with it?

I have one more nagging thing to report about this movie. If you have not seen it yet and plan to, I would recommend you stop reading here. I do not enjoy spoiling movies for people.

The ending was a huge disappointment. Throughout the movie we saw total carnage. Buildings were reduced to varying degrees of rubble, water supplies were spoiled, and the people looked like refugees. Well, they were refugees. They were dirty, hungry, and shell shocked. So why is it when Ray carries Rachel into the Boston neighborhood where "Mommy" is, the buildings are totally intact? For at least 3 square blocks the only evidence of the alien occupation/extermination is disabled cars. And look! What's this? Mommy, Tim, and the grandparents all open the front door to their beautiful home and they're all clean, fed, and well adjusted.

Yeah, Right.

As I told Ben: Bad move, Steven. Bad move.