The entire cinema laughed at the end

Rating: 4/10 (8 July 2005)

A bit of a rant I'm afraid:
I need to stress something - the 4 points I have awarded this are for the visual effects and the visual effects alone. Well done ILM! But I'm so tired recently of walking out of a movie and commenting that "well, the special effects were good". Unfortunately, War Of The Worlds deserves exactly the same kind of postmortem analysis, crudely disguised as compliment, because the effects are the only good thing about this entire movie.
Like many, I grew up on Steven Spielberg and I love a lot of his work, let's face it, the man is a legend. So what has happened with his latest piece? A disaster movie - in every sense of the word!
No, I must be fair - for the first half an hour, forty five minutes, I was intrigued, interested and impressed, right up to the point even when the first Tripod starts blasting the hell out of a downtown street. Then, however, the film takes a turn for the worst. Let's analyse: When you set up a narrative, you introduce certain elements that act as tools for the storytellers. There are so many elements introduced that simply get forgotten about here - story beats that could have the potential to go somewhere that have been missed - for example: 1) The splinter in Dakota's finger - a conversation that seemingly is given importance and weight withing the first twenty minutes simply vanishes - and, knowing the end of the story - i.e. germs kill aliens - surely they could have used this splinter story to greater significance. "When it's ready, my body will simply push it out" - a fine metaphor for the world rejecting alien life - but as I said - forgotten, dismissed. 2) Tom Cruise places a piece of lightning-struck rock in his pocket - again, something that could have gone somewhere and didn't. 3) relationship between Tom Cruise and his kids VERY stereotypical - and never really given room to develop beyond the fact that his son always MOANS at him. By the time his son wants to go with the army to fight the tripods telling Tom Cruise "You have to let me go" I was practically screaming at the cinema screen - "YES! Please Tom, for God's sake, let the whining idiot GO! Spare us all another scene with him!" 4) How are we supposed to forgive a lead character who kills another man in cold blood - the entire Tim Robbins scene is absolutely appalling - what does it say about humanity? Human spirit in the face of adversity? I felt physically ill watching these scenes as all Tom and Tim seem to do is fight, then Tom decides to kill the "crazy guy". 3) What the hell is with Spielberg and his crappy, sappy sentimental endings? So, what - millions of people die horribly at the hands of the tripods, but - no, wait - Yes! there they are - ALL of Tom's family, including son who we are led to believe is dead - PLEASE!!!!! At this point, people in the cinema were in hysterics laughing!!!! - I'm sorry, but that kind of sappiness won't fly anywhere except in the States - it just doesn't work on British audiences. 4) What a completely crap end to a film - "and so the human race had earned it's place to survive" - whilst germs kill off the tripods - I know this is the ending to the novel, but come on - where is the story here? There is none. They should have changed this ending. At least in ID4, it was human actions that figured out how to kill the aliens.
If the people behind this are so-called "master storytellers" I worry. I am currently training to be a screenwriter and see, all too often, people with far more storytelling capabilities get put down time after time and then along come two really big names who have a new bag of tricks they'd like to play around with and the waves part for them to make their film, with no coherent story, no convincing character arc or anything like that. It sickens me, really.
But, War Of The Worlds will gross millions worldwide, so what the hell do I know, hey?