War of the Worlds, the most craptacular movie of the summer!

Rating: 5/10 (13 September 2005)

I'd like to start by saying that War of the Worlds had the potential to be the kicass blockbuster of the summer. Hell, I mean Tom Cruise proposed to a girl to promote the movie. How much more badass can you get? On the surface, the movie has everything you want out of a good popcorn movie: explosions, guns, car chases, aliens, action, and very very loud noises. The only thing missing is a good love story thrown in for good measure.
The basic synopsis is, Tom Cruise plays a really awful divorced dad, there are lightning storms, and then these huge Martian war machines come out of the ground and start vaporizing everybody with these badass heat rays. Tom Cruise and his son and daughter have to try to survive for the next two hours and get to Boston so they can roll the credits and we all get to go home. It seems like a pretty simple premise; however, Steven Spielberg manages to screw it all up.
Here are 10 things that stop this movie from being the summer blockbuster movie and keep it in total suck territory.
10. Plot holes. After a lightning storm, all electronic equipment in the city stops working. Everything. Cars stop driving, radios don't work, flashlights don't turn on, no current is flowing to anything. Regardless, when the big alien machine comes out of the ground for the first time, some guy is filming the whole thing on his camcorder. Jesus, didn't anybody catch that during editing?
9. Alien transport. The aliens are shot in lightning into the Earth, where they board machines that supposedly have been buried under the Earth's surface for millions of years. For the most part, I think the movie follows the themes from the book  but I thought this departure was a huge missed opportunity. In the classic novel by H.G. Wells, the Martians are shot to Earth in large cylinders. Bystanders hear things going on inside them (the aliens are assembling their machines), causing lots of wonder and speculation at what they are... this could have been a really cool buildup, but Spielberg instead opted instead for the instant gratification of in-your-face blow stuff up and loud loud noises instead of conveying a mood.
8. The virus thing. In case you didn't know from hearing the Orson Welles radio play, or from reading the book, or from the glaringly obvious scenes where this plant stuff that the Martians grow gets sick and dies, or from when the Martians are evidently sick, Morgan Freeman comes in a narrative at the end to TELL you all about it. Thanks for beating it into my head with a 9 iron.
7. The shields go down. The Martian war machines have shields so none of our weapons can hit them. Everything just detonates before it makes contact. Fortunately, the first thing that Martians forget to do when they get sick is turn their shields on, and the US Armed Forces are free to blow the heck out of them.
6. Showing the aliens. I never understand why directors feel the need to show the aliens in movies. Look at Alien, one of the best (if not the best) alien-horror movie ever. You only catch fleeting glimpses of the alien until the very end, which totally adds to the horror of being eaten by something unknown. In this movie, aliens play key roles in several scenes, and they just look like crappy cartoons.
5. Stuck in basement. Remember that scene in Night of the Living Dead where all of the characters are stuck in a basement and can't get out? I do too, because it has to end up in almost every movie since then. Evidently, Spielberg never saw Signs (which was also completely craptacular).
4. Tim Robbins is a repeat. Tim Robbins plays the exact same character in this movie that he did in Mystic River. Enough said.
3. Teleport from NY to Boston. Now I understand that when you go to see a movie about alien invasion, there's a considerable amount of suspension of disbelief that you have to commit. On one hand, it's one thing to believe that Martians can board huge war machines and start wiping out the human race. On the other hand, it's a whole different thing to ask me to believe that Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning can get from New York to Boston in a matter of thirty seconds. I might not have a Master's degree in Geography or whatever the hell my hippie liberal neighbors are studying, but I'm pretty sure that's like a five hour drive, and I can't imagine how long it takes to walk there. Especially with Martian war machines trying to kill you the whole way there.
2. Boring second half. The first half of this movie is one hour long. The second half takes two days.
1. The son is still alive. Halfway through the movie, the son leaves to spontaneously join the military group that's hopelessly fighting the Martians... five seconds after he joins them, a huge explosion obliterates everything in sight. Miraculously, not only does he manage to survive the terrible explosion, but he also manages to survive to meet his father and mother in Boston in what might be the most clichéd Hollywood ending in history. Not only do Tom Cruise and his two kids survive, but also their mother, their stepfather, and their grandparents. Give me a break.
The good news for Tom Cruise is that despite being a total scientologist nutjob, he puts on the best performance in the movie. After being upstaged in every movie that he's done since 2002, it's probably a welcome relief.