read the book instead

Rating: 2/10 (5 February 2006)

The advance publicity for this movie puzzled me because of its almost complete absence. Usually there are dramatic tempters to whet the appetite and get you hurrying down to the cinema. I saw none of these.
The advertising was extensive but vague. It seemed to focus upon Tom Cruise with a fraught expression, as though he were doubtful if Spielberg's cheque would cash. I heard a number of veiled criticisms and instead decided to stay put. Eventually, it appeared on DVD rental.
Whatever the critics had to say of this movie, they could hardly exaggerate. It was wretched. I have given it 2 stars because of the special effects and nothing else. They were spooky and state-of-the-art; but in a world of computer-generated imagery, anything is possible so they were never amazing. Special effects, like pyrotechnics, have become a victim of their own success. Plot and story are now beginning to reassert themselves again.
I once heard a publisher describe 'story' as something that happens to someone you have been moved to care about. Well, by that definition, there was no story in this movie at all. Before it was a quarter of the way through I would gladly have paid the aliens to do something unpleasant to Mr Cruise and his awful children. But then, maybe I'm unsympathetic in that way, because I was willing the dinosaurs to do as much to the brats in Jurassic Park as well. Mr Spielberg has a maudlin sentimentality about children that strikes me as unhealthy. I believe the condition is referred to in Hollywood as schmaltz.
That's a pity; because when he does concentrate on story and uses limited special effects to advance it, he has few equals. 'Dual'; his debut movie will always be his best (there were no kids it).
It is claimed that War of the Worlds was shot from the standpoint of Joe Public. In this way, events simply unfolded with a frightening, unexplained confusion. There was none of the political and military overview more typical of the genre. The idea followed in the footsteps of the original novel by H G Wells, who's narrator found himself in the same predicament. Actually; although I found Well's story riveting, I didn't much care for his character either.
Even so, in the novel, and in the original movie, we are left in no doubt that these creatures originate from another planet. Wells made it clear that they came from Mars. But in this case, it's impossible to say where the little beggars come from.
Adopting this no-explanation technique is fine in some degree, but the viewer is left to think for himself and in doing so discover all of the faults in plot, effects, and so on. For example: why did these invaders go to the trouble of excavating great big holes hundreds of years ago to bury their fighting machines, only to come back centuries later to activate them? Why not destroy us then? And how come the guys who put the fighting machines in the ground didn't get infected with terrestrial diseases? Or how could they be sure that the machines would work after being under the damp earth for so long, or that we wouldn't discover them ourselves? In any case, wouldn't their own technology have progressed in the meantime? This is one movie that sends the implausibility metre off-scale. Check out the rotating road junction that takes away half of a church. And notice in one cut - where Cruise has to sidestep the fault-line - its turning in the opposite direction. Hmm. And how come it takes just 5 minutes to walk round to an epicentre which we can see from his window is several blocks away? And why didn't his kids likewise see this towering monster rise up out of the ground, when they had an unobstructed view from that same window? And isn't it amazing that a commercial jet can crash right next to a wooden house and not set it on fire - even when the basement is engulfed in flame and one of its engines finishes-up in the lounge? More amazing still that said jet can do a belly-flop landing and somehow manage to lose its roof instead?
I could go on.
As to the fighting-machines themselves; Wells conceived these during the 19th century, in a world still largely moved by horse and cart. They were imaginative then, but this movie is a product of the third millennium. I mean; are we really to suppose that aliens who can flash across the sky in lightening bolts would go wobbling about our planet on giant zimmer-frames? When I saw the first of these whirring, clanking, contraptions rise-up out of the ground, I half expected to hear a Peter Sallis voice-over to the effect "Come on Grommit, let's get a move on, lad".
Tom Cruise is a movie star and a very competent actor, as indeed is Tim Robbins. Both make the best of a script that might easily have been written on a beermat, and a director who seems to have a childhood and special-effects obsession. One supposes that if actors of lesser stature had been employed instead, this twaddle would scarcely have survived the cutting-room.
If you want to watch a dysfunctional family squabble for 2 hours whilst humanity is put to the flame, this is the movie for you. But if you want to see top-drawer science-fiction - look elsewhere.