War of the Worlds (29 June 2005)
directed by Steven Spielberg
starring Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Justin Chatwin, Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Gene Barry, Ann Robinson
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MPAA rating: Studio: Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks SKG, Amblin Entertainment, Cruise/Wagner Productions Script: Josh Friedman, David Koepp Based on the book by: H. G. Wells Music: John Williams Running time: 116 minutes Tags: Action; Adventure; alien abduction; aliens; Boston; Horror; invasion; New York City; novel adaptation; Remake; Science Fiction; Thriller; tripods Tactical strength: [7/10]
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for frightening sequences of sci-fi violence and disturbing images
H. G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds in 1898, and he generally receives credit for having written the first story where aliens invade the earth. In 1938, Orson Welles terrified his radio listeners when he put on a radio production of The War of the Worlds as a simulated news broadcast. In 1953, Paramount Pictures released the first movie version of the story, directed by Byron Haskin. And in 2005, three different directors released updated versions, although one went direct to video. When a story remains popular for over a hundred years, clearly the elements strike a chord in the human psyche, and who better than Stephen Spielberg to know how to make a movie that resonates that chord in modern audiences.
Spielberg's version takes the same basic story and focuses on a particular family's reaction to the events. Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) works as a freight loader and lives in suburban home in New York City. Ray has agreed to watch his kids Rachel (10) and Robbie (15) (Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin) for the weekend while his ex-wife, Mary Ann (Miranda Otto), takes a trip to Boston with her new husband. Ray clearly doesn't have good relations with his kids and demonstrates repeatedly that he doesn't know much about them, like not knowing about Rachel's allergy to peanuts.
Sure enough, the aliens pick this same weekend to start their invasion of earth. When the mayhem starts, lightning strikes a location near to Ray's house multiple times, and Ray tells his kids to stay at home while he goes to have a look. Ray watches as a Martian tripod rises from beneath the street and starts vaporizing humans. Ray, along with everyone else runs from the alien craft, and miraculously he avoids vaporization in spite of having people all around him blasted into grey dust. (Alien targeting systems must not have much accuracy.) Ray gathers up his kids, steals the only working car in the area, and heads out of town, attempting to catch up to Mary Ann. In route to Boston, they learn that the Martians want to convert Earth into a habitat fit for alien occupancy. The aliens have planted Martian flora, which require fertilization with fresh human blood. Outraged at the alien invasion, Robbie deserts his father and sister to join the Army's attempts to fight off the aliens, and Ray and Rachel keep working their way toward Boston without Robbie.
--- S P O I L E R A L E R T ---
The following discussion of artistic qualities relies on several details you only know by watching the entire movie.
As you would expect from any Spielberg production, we have excellent acting, good pacing, and a generally well constructed story line. With such good production, I have to look at some of the artistic decisions that distracted me from the story. For example, in the initial scenes where Mary Ann drops off the kids at Ray's home, the backgrounds appear so overexposed. You don't see any background detail, just a white blur, like a precursor to a nuclear explosion. Since no other scenes use this effect, you have to infer that Spielberg does this on purpose, but I cannot figure out why. Perhaps Spielberg wants to symbolically give a portent of doom, but I don't find this very effective, since all the characters in the scene survive.
I also don't understand the Martian modus operandi. Although we never really get details about the Martian's reasons for invading, we can assume that they need humans as fertilizer for their "terraforming" efforts. We see several scenes with the tripods spraying the red weeds with human blood. So if you need the humans as fertilizer, why blast them indiscriminately from the beginning? Why make the humans run and hide so you have to spend so much effort later to find and harvest them?
When Ray and Rachel emerge from Harlan's basement to find the Martian red weed growing everywhere, the set looks like a soundstage. The scene takes place in the exterior of a farmhouse, but the set looks so obviously man-made, that even attributing the appearance to the radical Martian landscaping efforts, you cannot see anything but a soundstage. On a Spielberg production, you have to assume that if Spielberg wanted more money to make a scene look better, he would get the money, so I don't understand Spielberg accepting a scene where the setting looks so obviously fake.
And my biggest question of all: Why does Robbie live? Throughout the film, Robbie treats Ray like crap and repeatedly wants to desert Ray and Rachel to take up arms against the aliens. He witnesses several unsuccessful attempts by the army to subdue the alien craft, so his fatalistic decision to volunteer seems doomed from the start. Then we see a huge fireball engulf the troops that he has joined. The next time we see Robbie, the aliens have succumbed to our indigenous bacteria, and Ray and Robbie hug like long lost friends. War of the Worlds portrays with pretty vivid detail the destruction of thousands of people. As with a real war, you can imagine that just about everyone will have lost someone close to the alien invasion. So I don't understand the happily-ever-after ending. Robbie made his decision to fight in spite of the evidence that he would lose his life trying. He made a decision to sacrifice himself for the greater good of mankind. Leaving Robbie dead ennobles his character and makes up for all the crap he gave his parents. Also, leaving him dead just makes for a more sweet and sour moment once Ray gets to Boston, where he could only save one of his two children. But instead, Robbie has inexplicably survived. Without this happy reunion, the movie would end with the release of tension with Ray surviving the ordeal with Rachel. Since Robbie survives, we get an extra boost of good feelings, but to me this boost feels more like blatant audience manipulation rather than plausible storytelling.
