A Great Film - Incredibly Intense

Rating: 10/10 (2 July 2005)

Stephen Spielberg's War of the Worlds is a wonderful film. I have not watched as intense a movie as this since the original Jaws and Alien. What Spielberg does is quite intriguing. Hollywood and all the users of ILM have perfected special effects so much, that they can now make almost any scene believable. So Spielberg goes one step further, he tells a story from the viewpoint of one dysfunctional family typical of this time period, thrust into a world wide cataclysmic event. When necessary, the special effects are there and amazing. But for the most part the movie is told from the viewpoint of an average middle class family that when faced with war, flees like refugees, and does whatever it has to to survive. Aliens are only shown when this refugee family encounters them.
There are some incredible scenes that need no vocals to explain - the burning train speeding by, the tripods coming up over the hilltop at the ferry scene, the bodies floating by in the river, the idiots taking photos and camcorder shots at an ominous moment before the tripod emerges, the lightning never strikes twice in one spot scene.
I have been reading other reviews that pan the movie, commenting about so many flaws. Why was the camcorder functioning? Hello? Who said EMP waves are 100% effective? Why was Cruise able to drive along the highway? Hey, when the EMP's hit, weren't all the cars moving, and then slowly coasted to a stop? Do you think all the drivers would have been crashing into each other and piling up at 5 mph? The point of the entire movie was how an average Joe reacts to an incredible disaster. Lack of information, panic, finding basic necessities and being totally unprepared. The "This is a test" message was awesome humor. And don't worry about why was the car radio working.
Yes, there were elements borrowed from Schindler's List and Jurrasic Park and Saving Private Ryan. But why not reuse cinematic devices that work so well? Homage was paid both to the book and to the earlier 50's version of the movie, and it showed a respect to its roots.
People in the film acted irrationally, they panicked, told rumors, did stupid things, all very believable. That's what made the film great. It was a massive SCI FI story told very realistically! As if the Orson Welles broadcast was telling the truth.
And the aliens weren't exactly geniuses either, who said they had to be? So many people in the negative reviews nitpick the film and debate the merits of the original novel or how believable the film's premises are. I just enjoyed it for what it was, a suspensefully constructed story using judicious interaction with the aliens, but not an obsession with showing off sfx. And I got to relate to what if I was in Tom Cruise's shoes and faced the same events he did, what would I have done differently? Truth be told, not much. A great movie!