War of the Worlds

Rating: 3/10 (29 April 2006)

I've seen this movie twice now, so I believe I have formed an opinion about it. Fortunately and unfortunately the director is Steven Spielberg. Why am I saying this? Fortunately, because he can raise a big budget, so the special effects will be of excellent quality. Unfortunately, because he doesn't seem to get over his ET-period, except when it involves Jews as victims. The movie starts at a good pace with a little insight in the family, the subsequent scenes with the alien machine rising from the ground is also good, but could have been more horrifying. Still, it gives an in look in things to come. People seem to want to be killed by the machine because they start running only, when it's too late. Maybe this is the normal reaction of the average American under a Bush-government. I however would have run away at the sign of the earthquake, which starts when the machine wants to crawl out of the ground. Then eventually, starts the runaway with the only working car???. Just change the starter and it will work,.. yeah right like this is a car from the pre-electronic age. Let me explain what disturbed me in the movie. The son. He acts like a real asshole and moron, and seeing him alive at the end of the movie seems to be very contradicting with his actions, like.. wanting to see how the army fights the aliens, while it was a massive fire-sea he went into. How the hell did he escape from that and get before the main character and his daughter to Boston at his mother family-home. If I was his father I would kicked his moron butt. The daughter: She really started to an annoy me from the start. She seems to be intelligent, but on the other hand acts like a scream-queen. another contradicting element. I really hoped she would be killed bloodily by the aliens when she was stupid enough to leave the house. But there's no blood in this movie.., except the one used as fertilizer for the alien's favorite plant, which is also red. Tsk, tsk Spielberg, when a plant is red, it doesn't mean you have to spray it with blood, water will do just fine. Hell, spraying it with human-blood will probably kill the plant. Ah, now I get it. the aliens where out of fertilizer, that's why they planted the machines ages ago, to wait until there where enough humans to use them as fertilizer. And in all those years nobody seems to have digged deep enough to uncover one of these machines. Even HG. Wells would have found this a stupid idea. One of the end-scenes with the unshielded alien machine who eventually gets shot down but the military looks forced and at this point I completely lost interest in the movie. Having seen the original movie with the hand falling out the machine, I'm quite disappointed. I'm not going to speak more about the last scene, that was a real turnoff. Typically ET-Spielberg. The book for this film was probably quite acceptable for the movies from the 50's, but having the same plot again, that a super-intelligent race gets beaten by bacteria can't cut it in the 21th century. It would be like an astronaut going in space with his T-shirt on. Totally unacceptable for a plot. I would at least suspect Spielberg would have changed this in another more intelligent defeat of the aliens. Although on second thought, based on his other SF-movies, that's just what I expected Spielberg to do. So, I gather, this is a movie for the masses an not for the intelligent viewer. I didn't expect much more from Spielberg. He'd better stick with holocaust movies in the future.