The end of our world...almost

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2006)

First of all, we must despite the first version of War of the worlds, with George Pall and weird flying saucers moving scarily across a model of a city. Cheap effects, but effective enough to make us tremble in our seats.
Steven Spielberg made, here, a movie that fits his regular summer blockbuster. This is not Dinosaurs, giant sharks, benevolent aliens or bullets and blood. This is nasty aliens, anti-heroic Tom Cruise and paced rhythm with John Williams notes lost. This is a report of the end of the world seen across the eyes of a regular American family.
The revealing tripods sequence is, so far, a lesson of how to build the suspense in a movie. You see the lighting's, the hole on the road, what is that rumble?, oh noes the floor is breaking, look that cathedral, is being tear apart!, take cover with that car!. What is that three legged thing? All that from the lower POV of the little humans, that suddenly became a bunch of flying ashes.
While we are more or less safe into that repaired working car, the menace turns from the three legs to the two legs of humans. That violent attack on the car, beating Cruise to the ground while we see his daughter being suffocated by the mass, that can only make two reactions into us: Tear the seats of the cinema screaming, or look in the other way. I tore the seats, not very nice really. So this is another message in David Koepps effective screenplay, a not very welcome message: Even in the worst situations, humans are dangerous animals. Some people wont understood this message, but is a kind of irony about how the world is being destroyed by invaders, and we keep destroying between each others.
The film is ironic to the very end. Specially the part dedicated to the regular cold killing the rampaging tripods and their evil pilots. Tim Robins' part is far from pleasing and nice, is another scary moment.
So to finish this long comment, WOTW is a Spielberg movie, where the Cruiser is far from his hero status, and that ending part with so many anti-climax and "it's-over-get-out-of-the-theatre" is a direct copy from the HG Wells book. Now looking forward to the other versions of this never ending alien invasion.