War of the world of CGI

Rating: 6/10 (7 July 2005)

Mr. Spielberg, you've done it again! You made a movie, which had groundbreaking (literally) effects, believable cast and a thrilling atmosphere.
Even Tom Cruise, who I usually call a "mass produced Hollywood flick flack", plays surprisingly well, and his two children were also casted quite well.
Now, lets talk about effects. War of the Worlds is CGI Haven, every single effect is made by someone with a mouse and keyboard. The Tripods looks terrifying, shambling about, hurling people and blasting their way to world domination. There may be some small issues, when discussing the camera positioning. When there is a battle, the camera sticks to the characters, only looking briefly at the alien war machines.
The sound job is made well, with trembling roars and horn blowing coming from the Tripods, and of course the multiple explosions throughout the movie.
The movie could be one of the finest achievements Spielberg yet has to share with us... But now we have come to the ENDING: If you have seen Matrix Revolutions, you will have a quite clear picture of what War of the Worlds has in store for you. It seems like in some scenes, they spend 34 million dollars, and in the final cuts they realized they were down to 50 bucks. The last scenes are horrible, dreadful, if I may, finishing off with nearly no explanations. The Hero gets to his destination, the aliens are defeated (VERY suddenly, and yes, no explanation to yell Hurrah at), and everyone is happy.
If they would just have taken a bit more time with the ending, maybe 10 more minutes of "question cutting", this movie would have gotten a 10 from this side, but with the nightmarish finish, it gets a 6, for awesome story, effects and cast, but killing ending.
-Peter Schaumann