Woe Of The Worlds

Rating: 4/10 (29 June 2005)

I'd confidently say that this is the worst film Steven Spielberg's ever made. Right from the panoramic opening shot of those New York docks the viewer is forced to distance them-self from both the action, and more importantly for this film, the characters. To quickly compare the openings other random Spielberg films, E.T.'s first scene is shot from very low angles, which helps the audience understand the whole story from a child's point of view, the opening of Saving Private Ryan is another classic attention grabbing opening sequence were the audience is virtually thrown in with the soldiers that are landing, achieved by shaky point of view shots, slow motion and an inescapable aural invasion that really grabs you by the senses.... Then this. From the beginning we are forced back in our chairs watching a pretty unlikeable character, well, do pretty much nothing for just under a couple of hours. When i say, 'do nothing', i don't mean that there isn't any action in the film, rather i mean that he's exactly the same character at the start of the film than he is at the end of it. None of the events of the film seem to change him. There's one scene that sticks out in my mind as being particularly rubbish, that being the one were Ray Ferris (Cruise) lets his son run off to be blown up. That scene could have been the best in the film, a total turning point that could have made it, well, good. Instead we get a Cruise not seeming that bothered about his own flesh and blood getting pulverised, an appropriate response in my view would have been to break down and beg him to stay, and because of their (badly portrayed) past he goes anyway... just an idea... And then i was thinking about the scene in The Last Crusade (Spielberg again) where Henry Jones thinks he's lost Indi. 'There's so much i never told him', we can tell he's gutted that he thinks he's lost his son. Then when he indi clambers back up to the top of the mountain, he grabs him and says 'i thought i'd lost you boy' Not here. When the ridiculous end comes around and the son bounds up to Ferris in the final scene Cruise might as well give him a jovial punch on the arm and say 'all right. what's up'. The fact that the son needlessly survives bewilders me entirely. Cruise is awful in it. But i'd blame spielberg for A casting him and B letting him get away with such lazy acting. the character demanded the same venomous, spiteful idiot that he Cruise portrayed in Rain Man. It also needed that character arc when we think by the end of the film that he's actually all right guy that can actually see things from other people's perspectives... but as i said at the start of this rant, he, as a character, goes nowhere. Even when he does get the chance to be resilient, it seems more by chance than any kind of Determination that he manages to blow up one of the tripods. Then there's Dakota Fanning. OK, she is really good in the film. Her acting is fantastic anyway, well above the standard of most of her adult peers. So when she's given a pretty mediocre character like this to play she really shines. The only bits where there's any real tension is the bits when she's in danger. The most nerve recking being the one when she's trapped in the car which is under mob siege. And that bit doesn't even involve Aliens. Again though, by the end her character just kind of disappears without changing. When the aliens come into the house near the end and all the actions in the basement of Tim Robbins house, i felt it was a very cheap and far less tense/exciting slap in the face to Shyamalan's 'Signs' movie. And then when i thought about it, it was exactly as if they'd taken the scene from Jurassic Park where the kids are hiding from the Raptors in the kitchen and making it really really really devoid of tension. I don't even see the point in mentioning what becomes of the aliens. The whole film is about that family, and i don't think i've ever seen such boring three characters committed to cinema. Just me? I just really can't believe that was a Steven Spielberg film... i even think the terminal's good. I'd like to think that maybe, like stephen king does or something, he got a ghost director to fill in for him. Looks more like Renny Harlin to me. Oh Well. I guess an argument for the film is that it tries to mirror our own fears about terrorism or apocalypse...but it's just so... dull.
Would have got 2/10, but a couple of very good moments and Dakota Fanning claw it to 4/10 for me. And i'm trying to be generous.