Aw.. Too much visual effects and less a story.

Rating: 5/10 (5 July 2005)

I didn't have high expectations of this movie, which didn't make me disappointed when I finally watched this movie. I expected it, anyways, even though Spielberg is a good director and has done many well-done movies in his past - E.T., Close Encounters, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List and Jurassic Park just to naming a few. This is just not a movie that even Peter Jackson would be able to make good. The problem is that War of the worlds was written in the end of the 19th century and when you will make a movie about it and change the time to the 21th century, then the story gets too simple and the visual effects take over too much. The beginning had deep, the rest is flat. I prefer the original War of the worlds, when everything had deep but the end was flat. Maybe there is a curse about War of the worlds being filmed.
The story seems promising in the beginning, but gets too fast with the machines from outer space - they start to attack already after about ten minutes and don't finish until five minutes before the ending scene, which made it a pity to see the movie. The story is too simple - it is just about Tom Cruise and his two children escaping from or fighting the machines. But there are some deep scenes during the entire movie - the scenes between Tom Cruise's role as the father and his relation to his son, Robbie. And how he takes care of Rachel (Fanning). Those scenes are very deep, but it doesn't make the movie any better. Despite that fact, the visual effects are very spectacular but the sad truth is that visual effects can't make a movie good if there is no great story. And the ending is also too predictable, it becomes too Hollywoodish, excuse my saying this. Too much clichés.
But anyway, like I said before, nobody could have made it any better than what Spielberg did (Jackson would probably have done it at least as good as him, but who knows? You can always be surprised) in this century. If you really want to see a good version of any of H G Wells's novels, see the original Time Machine from the '60s.