*** spoiler alert *** My review of War of the Worlds
POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 2, 2005 11:28
VIEWED: 15587
PAGE 4 of 6
I'm not sure where I fall on the film at the moment - had problems that took me far out of the story, but Spielberg did a good job directing it IMO.
I guess its proof positive that if you don't get the script right (or nearly there), the film will end up a mess - seems to me that if they hadn't had to rush this into production, some of the crap direlog(s) would have been re-done.
The problem with Dakota Fanning is that she clearly is freakishly mature for her age - but that means that she's only able to play Children of the Damned. The guy playing Robbie just sucked, and Tim Robbins was in an entirely different movie.
Somehow they kept putting humour in the film where it didn't fit at all (I'm sorry, but the peanut butter on the window just looked stupid, not profound).
Shame, because as I say, the 'Berg brought his game, and Cruise rarely fell into his stock mannerisms - good directors usually get a good performance from him.
And the less said about John Williams "cut and paste" soundtrack the better; did he just tell Steve to go ahead and use the stuff from the temp track of the old movies?
I think its been mentioned above - the confrontation between father and son "I just have to see". I got the idea, and with some more work on the script it could have worked - with those crap parents miming in the background and creepy ET eyed girl doing her best Kaylee:
"My dad's right there! Look, look where I'm pointing!"
"I threw up on your bed"
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I saw the film Friday, pretty good, but it lost a lot by having Cruise as the star. Tom Cruise is good at playing Tom Cruise. He plays the same character over and over.
They should have gone with an unknown, or if they absolutely needed a star maybe Ed Norton or someone along those lines.
It would be nice if they actually had made the story from the book.
The main character is never named, the majority of the book he isn't running from the alien machines,but following them and it takes place in England.
The biggest plot hole for me, from the film...if the aliens came and buried the machines, I'm guessing centuries ago. Wouldn't they have learned about earth germs, virus's and bacteria then? The book deals with the issue quite well.
Also, why bury them? Except for a way for the filmakers to create a great visual it seems like a stupid idea.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Opus:
I saw the film Friday, pretty good, but it lost a lot by having Cruise as the star. Tom Cruise is good at playing Tom Cruise. He plays the same character over and over.
They should have gone with an unknown, or if they absolutely needed a star maybe Ed Norton or someone along those lines.
It would be nice if they actually had made the story from the book.
The main character is never named, the majority of the book he isn't running from the alien machines,but following them and it takes place in England.
The biggest plot hole for me, from the film...if the aliens came and buried the machines, I'm guessing centuries ago. Wouldn't they have learned about earth germs, virus's and bacteria then? The book deals with the issue quite well.
Also, why bury them? Except for a way for the filmakers to create a great visual it seems like a stupid idea.
SO TRUE! The whole divorsed dad & angry teen son thing was very distracting to the story.
The whole alien "remote probe" scoping out old farm houses for straglers was ridiculous! Why would aliens waste their time out in the country? They would concentrate their time in metropolitan (heavy populated) area. Yet Bostom is vertually un-scathed!
I was disapointed - the movie did not live up to the Spielberg/cruise hype!
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Quote:
Originally posted by BlackEyedGirl:
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I mean in the original the aliens come from the damn sky, not the earth. Sounds like Independance Day was closer to WotW than this version. What kills the aliens in this one?
well I believe that it was...
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Well I thought that the aliens died because their immune systems sucked, and they basically died of all the bacteria that was on Earth. I don't blame these aliens, planting their giant tripod things millions of years ago, just so they can tackle a bunch of ants(humans), and they didn't even think to check it for an influenza, isn't that how the original ended? or am I going crazy again. Also, that Ray guy Tom Cruise played would NOT have killed Tim Robbins character, now THAT was out of character big time...
peace out playa
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Quote:
Originally posted by tmurrie:Quote:
Originally posted by BlackEyedGirl:
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I mean in the original the aliens come from the damn sky, not the earth. Sounds like Independance Day was closer to WotW than this version. What kills the aliens in this one?
well I believe that it was...
Select to view spoiler:
Well I thought that the aliens died because their immune systems sucked, and they basically died of all the bacteria that was on Earth. I don't blame these aliens, planting their giant tripod things millions of years ago, just so they can tackle a bunch of ants(humans), and they didn't even think to check it for an influenza, isn't that how the original ended? or am I going crazy again. Also, that Ray guy Tom Cruise played would NOT have killed Tim Robbins character, now THAT was out of character big time...
peace out playa
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You are 100% right! There is no way that Ray would kill anybody!
You also know that the Military has got a lot of "Star Wars" toys that would easily bring down a 1 million year old man eating tri-pod space craft
This Bomb should put Tom's career in the toilet
Don't hate the player, hate the game!
Remember what LOUIS VUITTON said: "It's in the bag!"
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I loved the movie, another Spielberg classic.
The movie wasnt a direct adaption of the book because that movie had already been made very excelent. Instead they went with the new perspective of having it all happening to another person like you and me. Not another super hero who runs into them.
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The fact that the father let his son go was in response to this new perspective, to let the side of us which wants to fight the monsters. Be part of the epic battle portrayed in the previous movies.
Ray killed the shotgun cellar guy because he was making a lot of noise while they had to be quiet to hide from the aliens. If he didnt do that chances are the aliens would have heard them and would have killed them. Ray knew that.
The fact that the son made it in the end of the movie was to accentuate the up feeling, that we are not helpless and not another sheep in the herd being slaughtered.
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I thought it was an excellent film. I see what everyone's saying but watching it, I was completely engrossed. Normally I'm quite critical of films while I'm watching them, picking out bad lines, etc, etc but with War of the Worlds, I was so immersed in it, I didn't have chance.
Being a Star Wars fan (obviously not as much as Firefly Serenity of course 
) I found myself liking War of the Worlds far more than Revenge of the Sith.
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I've never read the original book nor seen/heard anything of it before but I thought that the aliens would be killed not by nature, but by the pollution. I figured that if they had burried their machines so many years before (and you would have thought they might have had the sense to check that the atmosphere and everything was OK for them) then the reason that they all started dying was because the world had changed. The environment and atmosphere were now full of things that weren't there before and thus the aliens were unprepared. That was what I thought at the time. Obviously I was wrong...
I definitely recommend it to those people who haven't seen it yet!
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Quote:
Originally posted by Daikath:
I loved the movie, another Spielberg classic.
The movie wasnt a direct adaption of the book because that movie had already been made very excelent. Instead they went with the new perspective of having it all happening to another person like you and me. Not another super hero who runs into them.
The other film didn't follow the book anymore than this one did, the story, from the book has never been filmed.
The lead character from the book is anything but a superhero, he was an everyman. To the point where he's not even given a name.
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i saw the movie and I could really see how the world in the 30's went into panick mode and thought that they were being attacked. bunchof paranoid twits... Any way the movie was entertaining and it did show what mankind would do to eachother in order to servive. Tom Cruise looked like the pretty boy that he is so there you go...
But on a more important note!!!! i saw the preview for SERENITY!!!!!!
i cannot wait until I see the movie...
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As far as the plot goes, I too admit that it had its holes. Yet, the journey was enjoyable enough for me that the plot holes didn't break me out of the story.
However, some of the complaints I've seen from several people don't seem quite cricket to me:
1) "...the things have been buried for millions of years, why weren't they found?" Only one character said they had been buried for millions of years and he was a NUTBAG! Before he was a nutbag, he was an AMBULANCE DRIVER. I don't get my scientific information about subterranean features from nutbags or ambulance drivers (no disrespect meant to the drivers... I think they are great at what they do). So why does this one crazy man's pronouncement become gospel? Far more likely they were buried a few thousand years ago. Hence geologic activity is no impact. And the nutbag's knowledge that the devices were buried millions of years ago came from the same store of knowledge that informed him he could dig with a shovel all the way to New York where the Resistance was forming up in the subway tunnels.
2) "... so with all the drilling and digging we've done, why weren't they found?" What is the deepest building foundation or subway tunnel ever dug? Perhaps a couple hundred feet? Put the machines 10 feet deeper and no construction company will ever find them. Why didn't any geological drillings find them? What is the cross section of a geological/oil core? A foot? Two? Need to drill a lot of those to find a few thousand machines scattered about the face of the planet.
3) "... so why didn't the aliens do X or Y like we would?" I think the operative word is "alien." They would operate by their own precepts... some of which might be fatally flawed. Just as we do... just as ours are. Viet Nam. Waterloo. The list is endless.
4) "... so why didn't they think of vaccinations?" This ending was cutting edge, state of the art when Wells wrote it a century ago. It is admittedly weak now. But it doesn't take much forgiveness to make it work. Say they buried the things 7000 years ago. They vaccinated against the tuberculosis of that time. With our own medical technology, we have grown TB that eats yesterday's antibiotics like potato chips. How effective would a 7000 year old vaccination be against that? We've grown Super Staph that makes yesterday's version look geriatric. A new flu virus every year. The list goes on. Admittedly, why wouldn't the invaders have thought of that? Good question. A plot hole. I'll accept it because the story was entertaining.
Just a few thoughts.
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