A Mediocre Dud

Rating: 5/10 (11 July 2005)

The recently released Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise movie "War of the Worlds" is merely a mediocre dud. In spite of very good special-effects, including its superb computer graphics, the movie as a whole was a disappointment. There are four things which really bothered me.
**Some spoilers in the next two paragraphs.**
First, the original plot by H. G. Wells that the space aliens were defeated by massive outbreak of infection due to earthly bacteria and virus makes no sense whatsoever. Please recall when NASA sent astronauts to our moon for the first time in 1969. When the astronauts came back to earth, they were quarantined and tested to make sure that they did not bring back any dangerous disease unknown to humans. Before undertaking a huge enterprise like the massive invasion of earth, wouldn't the space aliens do something similar? Wouldn't an advanced race like the space aliens send a probe or a small reconnaissance team to test the earth's atmosphere, water and soil for something dangerous or toxic even before planning an invasion?
Second, the movie was awfully myopic in its scope. I understand that Spielberg intended this movie to be a portrayal of alien invasion from the point of view of Ray Ferrier, an average Joe. However, by viewing an epic event like massive invasion by space aliens from a point of view of an average citizen, a moviegoer feels rather dissatisfied. He or she wants to see more. For example, the moviegoers are shown only the destruction of one part of New York-New Jersey area from Ray's point of view. The massive destruction of other parts of the world is never shown to us. Moreover, we never get to see the defeat of the space aliens. By the time Ray Ferrier reaches Boston, the defeat of the space aliens have already occurred. The fait-accompli defeat is simply described to Ferrier by an Army soldier. The moviegoers never get to see even a glimpse of the massive defeat. At the end of the movie I said to myself, "Is that all?" I felt awfully cheated. I paid $7.00 to see this movie!
Since the days of Homer's "Iliad" and Leo Tolstoy's epic novel "War and Peace," epic events were portrayed from panoramic points of view, where a reader or moviegoer can see the entire picture of an epic event. Even though "Independence Day" and 1953 version of "War of the Worlds" were rather cheesy movies, they depicted the epic battle between humans and space aliens with a more satisfactory panoramic point of view.
Third, why did we have to see so much of Tom Cruise in this movie? Wasn't he in about 95% of the scenes in this movie? Some of the recent Tom Cruise movies have the same problem. We saw Tom Cruise ad nauseum in Mission Impossible 2. I don't care how beautiful he thinks he is, but seeing too much of him makes the movie and Tom Cruise himself rather tiresome.
Fourth, even though the computer-generated graphics in this movie were very well done, some of them looked awfully and distracting busy. Just like many other computer-generated graphics, the computer-generated shots in this movie have too many interesting things going on in a single shot--as many of us know, this is called "busy" in painting terminology. Many classic directors like Kurosawa and Jean Renoir studied paintings by master painters to create concise but perfect shots. But modern computer graphic artists must have learned shot construction from Marvel Comics and Japanese manga. Just like Marvel comic book pictures, which are often extremely busy, some of the computer-generated graphics in this movie are distracting busy, busy, busy.
In conclusion, this movie was not bad. It was just a disappointing dud.