not a miss

Rating: 8/10 (9 July 2005)

Many have found the family struggle in the movie to detract from the film. i disagree, i find it provides a realistic set of characters from which to tell the story. most action adventure movies suffer from the lack of character story and relationships and focus primarily on the action, which is good for spectacle but unsatisfying in the end. Despite the family drama there is constant action, (he spent 135 million for a reason), once the aliens attack there is constant running, screaming, explosions, and humans being vaporized. This is also one of Tom Cruises best performances (because it is unlike his usual cocky confident characters he usually plays), i believe it was an extremely difficult project to take on, and anyone else would've taken the dumb easy way out and told a straight up monster explosion movie with shallow characters and even worse writing.(spoiler ahead) the one complaint i have is that tom cruise's son in the movie does not die, i felt it was too convenient that he managed to survive that massive explosion. the ending was not very climactic, but it sticks with the original H.G. Wells novel. I am glad they kept it though, i would prefer this ending over a glamorized, campy Hollywood finale. we have seen humanity destroy the alien mothership before and how else were they going to end it and maintain some degree of originality. The fact that bacteria saves humanity and not our machines, tells us that despite how advanced and in control we think we are, nature still is in power. humanity has been put in its place and forced to realize its weakness. which i think is a far more terrifying ending than we upload a virus and blow up the mothership. and find we are superior in our own humanity.