Lets You Know How the Aliens Felt

Rating: Null/10 (6 July 2019)

I felt cool and unsympathetic watching the family deal with the trauma that was all around them.
The biggest problem with War of the Worlds is that Spielberg, Williams, Cruise, and the VFX/Sound team do such a perfect job of building up the monstrous threat of the alien invaders that are wiping out humanity, that you as a viewer have the hardest time switching gears back into the comparable microcosm of a problem that is this family's dynamics.
Let me just say that I get what this movie TRIED to do, and I applaud it for that: it makes an attempt to mirror the dynamics of the outside aliens threatening the earth's organisms (humans) who have built up such a long history that our built-in defenses deter them; just as Ray is dealing with the outside step-father/divorce to keep his family organism intact.
But the dialogue and interactions are so inorganic and awkward compared to the existential threat, that I almost wonder if the scriptwriter just put (PERIL ENSUES) for parts with the aliens, left that to Spielberg to figure out, and is why those parts mesh so poorly with the family.
For an example about the awkwardness, did we just survive and witness the kick-off of an alien's extermination of all of our neighbors and city? Yes. What's our plan? To go maybe ~20 miles outside of town, not make much of an effort to ensure no aliens are around here, and resume cracking jokes and talking to each other like none of that just happened.
But what's the alternative? To tell the rest of the movie with truly traumatized children who have a harder time recovering, and throw away the side-story that is this man's inability to bond with his kids? Maybe choose a less complex ground of protagonists to focus on and let the aliens tell the rest of the story? Those are some options, but then you run the risk of becoming 2012, Godzilla, or Day After Tomorrow.
What this movie really should've done is just go terrifying, dark, and perilous, and stay there-- or maybe one small beacon of hope at the end if Spielberg insists, which it feels like he's insisted on happy endings ever since Hook; because the cheesiness that is put in this movie to mitigate the peril is so potent, all that's missing is wine and crackers.
War of the Worlds gets halfway to where you want a different end-of-the-world, big budget movie to get, but then pulls its punch from being truly terrifying, and instead decides to land in the safety of blockbuster mediocrity.
And because Spielberg and crew had the resources they did, the result is slightly more forgiving and fascinating to watch than, say, something by Dean Devlin.
Watch it with big audio and on a big screen if you can, because that DOES make it more glorious.