M. Night Shyamalan's SIGNS is better -- 5 (too one dimensional)

Rating: 5/10 (11 July 2005)

I haven't read the book, nor have I seen the 1953 movie, but I don't think that doing either would lend any meaning to Spielberg's 2005 remake of WAR OF THE WORLDS. To begin with, two hours of people screaming and running for their lives gets pretty boring after the first fifteen minutes and gets downright annoying past the half-way mark. Like a laboratory mouse exposed to too much noise and frequent prodding, I felt like running around in circles after irascibly getting up from my seat in the theater.
Any time you're going to have that much action going on with cars flying in the air and huge clunky robots demolishing the earth, it pays to have a breather once in a while and focus on the story and characters a little bit. Twister (1996) did this quite nicely, where Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton had to sort out their previous marriage amidst fighting a natural disaster. WAR OF THE WORLDS fails miserably in character development, since it seeks only to capitalize on Cruise's sexiness, the little girl's cute innocence, and the boy's unmistakable resemblance to Lord of the Rings' Elijah Wood, while failing to give us a better explanation for the three of them being together than "they made the cast." The interim family scenes where Cruise tries to comfort his children are contrived, and more than feeling an kind of familial bond among the characters, I was more ready to imagine the young actors returning to their trailers and calling their friends on expensive cell phones. "Yeah, we had a rough shoot today, but I have some cool stories about Tom Cruise, you want to hear?"
Taking a step back, I'm not even sure the original concept behind WAR OF THE WORLDS could effectively make an entire movie. I have a feeling that the original novel dealt more with each individual's struggle against insurmountable odds, as in Camus' Plague. Unfortunately the Spielberg filter reduces that character centered concept to the stereotypical urban panic scene, which is probably what people pay to see anyway. A sign of the concept's attrition on its way to the modern silver screen is that three of the novel's original characters were compressed into one character played by Tim Robbins.
Although the distilled panic-driven concept behind WAR OF THE WORLDS is utterly flat and one-dimensional, the one scene at the beginning when the Martian tripod breaks out of the ground is very well done. Everything happens in full daylight, and there is a seamless combination of CGI and real sets that simulates the impression of seeing something really big against a blue sky. Still, the rest of the movie can be thrown away, and that one scene can be looped on the home theater showcased at your local electronics store. After all, that's really what the movie is meant for, you know, with a catchy chime and the Intel Pentium logo flashing across the screen.
I would definitely recommend Shamlayan's Signs (2001) over WAR OF THE WORLDS any day of the week. For a fraction of the budget, Signs succeeded in portraying the alien invasion theme ten times better than WAR OF THE WORLDS, opting for subtle directorial style over huge noisy special effects. Plus, one of the central themes to this kind of movie is American Dad's weakness in the face of an overpowering force. Mel Gibson does a far better job of playing the confused and powerless father figure than Tom Cruise. While Mel Gibson gives a silent, blank expression on his face, Tom Cruise in a cliché explosion of frustration throws clichéd peanut butter and jelly sandwiches against a window. The same contrast can be seen with the two movies compared in their entirety. Signs is quiet and disturbingly comic while WAR OF THE WORLDS is two straight hours of THX noise.
JY
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