ID4 - Episode one

Rating: 1/10 (4 July 2005)

Has anybody actually read the storybook of the real War of the Worlds? HG Wells' would turn in his grave. Spielberg took a classic story (obviousely without really understanding it), wrapped it around his favourite actor and placed in todays America. Do we really have to Americanise every good story that was written in human history?? And what's even worse - the film is lacking half of it's backbone which is actually not only horror and massacre but PASSION: The passion for survival and chivalry..where is Beths plea for the good in mankind, where are the artillery man's impossible visions of a brave new world, where is the heroic sacrifice of the Thunderchild coming to the rescue of the steamship? And why is it not playing around 1900 as it was intended to...that would have been a real masterpiece. Instead, we had to watch a confusing attempt to transform a story to what it wasn't meant to be...a kind of "Independence Day - Episode one". Good job they didn't let Spielberg do Lord of the Rings as he would probably have placed it in todays Colorado with Tom Cruise as Frodo, riding around in a Hummer chased by his evil mother in law in a F18... What an abuse of one of the ancestors of Sci-Fi, what a waste of money. Jeff Wayne's musical version of the story, written in the 70s, is still number one and we are sadly still to wait for a worthy film version of it.