OT: War Of The Worlds
 

I came in, didn't really expect much from the flick... but hey, it was a good flick. Spielberg really does a good job of making you feel like you're in the protagonist's shoes, and you end up just rooting for Tom Cruise during the whole flick. ILM does a great job of creating the aliens and their crafts. Definitely worth its salt. Two Thumbs up!

Really looking forward to this one.

Definitely going to see this one soon.

Comes out Friday right? Oh are they faithful to the original story or did they just take the name and no mention of HG Wells.

No. Starts today.

I think it borrows a lot of concepts from the novel, but obviously they have to do a lot to alter 1890s England into 2005 New York/New Jersey. I think the aliens are largely the same, though they obviously don't come from Mars.

The 1950's version is one of the first movies I ever saw and I still get freaked out when we see the alien that first time. Lets hope that this one has many scenes to remember.

I just got home from seeing the movie and there are several scenes to remember.

Dakota Fanning was very good in the movie. Tim Robbins was pretty good as well. You know though I never believed Tom Cruise was a blue collar Joe. I am sorry. I just don't see it. Plus Cruise was able to put that smug look on his face one time too many for me.

But having said that, It was not a horrible movie, but it certainly wasn't Spielberg's greatest either.

Enojoyed it. Some good intense parts in the movie.

Well, I was afraid they'd botch it - and they didn't. :)

I liked the first half a lot more than the second half, though.

You guys are great...Every time I need advice on new outcoming movies you post something here!!!! :)
Think I'm going too see it. BTW I'm still having Batman on my to do list.

Just came back from the movie, I liked it a lot. It lagged a bit in the second half but the cinematography was amazing and there were a lot of truly scary and even better, disturbing scenes in it.

Im about to go watch it right now.

Dola: Just got back and WOW!!!!! A chilling scene was the footage from the film crew. Totally freaked me out! and of course those natl. guardsmen and reservists, God bless 'em. Specially that beautifully done tribute near the end.

Saw it this afternoon, it was pretty good. I don't remember the original film, so I can't compare it to that. I do agree with others in this thread that the 2nd half could have been better. It just seemed so awkward.


They did have the trailer for King Kong and that looked very good.

The second half seemed like The Village meets Independence Day meets Signs.

for those that saw both movies...

you guys like the new movie or the original?

New one, then again I'm a Spielberg fanboy

The new one I thought was more faithful to the book and well done compared to the 50's version that reeked of US v. THEM and cold war jargons.

I just got back.... and I was pretty damn disappointed. I cannot recommend this movie.

i refuse to see this movie. Until Tom Cruise keeps his wacky scientologist views out of everybody's faces I won't be seeeing anything he's associated with (or at least...not paying to see). If he was a private citizen and a scientologist then whatever. But the fact is he's a public figure, it's a wacko cult/religion, and he ought to stop trying to plug it in the press.

Saw the movie again over the weekend, can't say enough good things about it. I could appreciate the genius of the cinematography even more the second time around.

The Movie was prety darn good, but what quirky lil ending....

Makes sense in a way, but damn.

Then again it is Speilberg.

War of the Worlds get a solid B+ from me...almost an A-

The best/ most emotional part of the movie wass the battle on the hill.

Does he plug it? I saw a press conference wherein he was pissed off at a reporter when the guy asked him if the movie had anything to do with Scientology, or if Scientology had anything to do, influencing the movie. It was clear he didn't want to talk about his wacko religion, and he made it clear that the movie had nothing to do whatsoever with Scientology.

Are you serious that you won't see a movie because of an actor's religion?

I think we know who the real wacko here is

*spoilers*

I couldn't disagree more strongly. It was just stupid, non-sensical, drama for the sake of drama. That kid needed to be smacked in the fucking head and dragged along with his sister. It was ever worse that the kid managed to survive it all. We saw the amount of fire/explosions that were going on there seconds later, no fucking way that kid makes it.

The movie has no heart. There is no reason to really care about the characters. Dakota Fanning (the girl) does two things all movie long: Produce an ear-piercing scream and give you the vacant "i'm really scared" stare. It gets incredibly annoying about halfway through the movie.

The way the movie ends is borderline retarted. I'm tired of aliens with no foresight.

1. They apparently buried these ships here ages ago... why didn't they just occupy the planet then, before humans were even there? Why wait so you can later invade the place using million year-old technology?!?

2. Why would the aliens be running around the houses looking at things (with no space-suit of course)?

3. Using human blood for the "fertilzier" was just stupid. We saw a million scenes early in the movie where they were just vaporizing every human in sight - why weren't they scooping any of them up then?

4. The aliens were smart enough to pull this whole thing off, but had no basic knowledge of how things like viruses work? I mean, come on, don't insult my intelligence Speilberg and company.

5. Spielberg pisses me off because he never really commits to one side or the other. He could have made it a much darker movie with an underlying question of "what are you willing to do to survive?" They see how people are going crazy over posession of the car, they themselves force their way onto the Ferry, Tom Cruise kills a guy just because there's a chance he's going to bring his daughter harm. But all of this is swept under the rug by the feel-good ending. And his father-son shit is just getting tiring.... every movie of his seems to be about the same thing.

I could go on and on. In summary I thought the movie was a "decent" way to spend two hours, but I would not recommend it to anyone unless you want to see it strictly for visual effects. The writing is shoddy as hell, and the whole thing is ultimately pointless.

ummm...So yeah like I was saying.. B+ anyone?

You realize the ending (the alien part) is straight out of the original H.G. Wells book right? This isn't something that Spielberg just made up.

Yeah, I haven't read the book but I'd imagine a lot of the complaints orginate from it.

It seems to me this is a movie thats much more enjoyable if you have read the book, because it feels like a good story executed poorly. The special effects are real nice though and it does have a lot of cool moments. But other than the action it just felt flat.

wasn't one of themes of the book "human stupidity is only rivaled by alien stupidity?"

Yes, I am aware of that. But I'm watching a movie, not reading a book.

Maybe that shit played in 1938, but it does't fly now. i'm sorry.

I want a remake of the "10 Commandments" just to read cthomer's review. :)

I saw it on Saturday night. Immediately afterwards I would have given it a C+, but when I thought more about it yesterday I upped it to a B-. It just seemed like a little more cerebral version of "Independance Day".

Absolutely, as long as they set 10 commandments in modern day, as this movie was.

You can't just update the times but leave in piss-poor writing which now seems to have become cliche in alien movies.

I detest the movie the more i think about it.

lol, you had to think about it?

I knew you detested the movie from the moment you first posted in this thread. :)

Haven't seen the movie, and I don't really care to. But as far as this comment goes, I think some stupid stuff is kind of required in alien movies. If it was more realistic, we would lose every time.....
;)

Honestly, I thought the movie was kind of "eh" when I walked out of the the theatre... It took some serious thought to come to really hate it.

Like I said, from your first post in the thread. The above doesn't sound a whole lot like "eh" to me. "Eh" would be a massive improvement over the above. :)

I've read the book and avoided the movie. I could see from the previews that Spielberg and co. had given the main character some children to drag around and add "interest" to the main character. In the book, he's alone, just trying to find out if his wife is still alive.

It sounds like the ending is taken straight from the book. In a way, it was an anticlimax, but it also built up the suspense; I couldn't predict what would happen since there weren't enough pages to contain the typical ending that I was expecting.

Basically, the book absolved the aliens of every crime except being ugly. Wells emphasized that they saw the humans the way we see animals that are in the way of our survival. The humans in the book, however, commit just about every sin there is. From what I heard, the father and his children become closer and profit from their shared hardship. If that's true, it's completely counter to the actual book, which takes a very pessimistic view of how humans act in a disaster. Hence my avoidance of the movie.

Oh, and the aliens in the book just arrive in spaceships, the way you'd expect them to. None of this buried-for-a-million-years nonsense.

Spoiler




In the book are the humans on the brink of losing when the ending hits? Seems that would add a little something more, but I didn't get that feeling at all in the movie. The Tripods prance around, kill some people, get sick and die. It's like the first 15% of the movie gets stretched to 99%, then they just out of the blue die, not even in a dramatic way. And you are only told whats happened by a 20 second voiceover.

Then it rolls to the shitty Spielberg ending.

Spoiler of the Book!


Yes, in the book there's a lull right before the end, where London is a ghost town and the main character is starting to be resigned to living like a cockroach, always scurrying away from the aliens. I really started to believe that the book was just going to end there. So, yes, the ending in the book comes just when you'd thought there was no way for the humans to escape. H.G. Wells was a very good storyteller and good at pacing, but from what you said it doesn't sound like Spielberg conveyed that.

Lots of Spoiler












This was similar to my big complaint about the movie. Just because you *can* make characters unlikable doesn't mean you *should*. I've seen this a ton in movies and tv shows where someone's common retort to me is that "it's realistic" which I just counter with "yes, but you could have written it in {insert suggestions here} manner and it would have been equally realistic. To extend it to this, "I wouldn't have spent half the movie wishing Dakota Fanning dead" as I did- she was only tolerable onscreen towards the end when she was constantly in shock. Smirking idiot Tom Cruise is the only guy I even remotely wanted to see survive.

As for the feel of the movie, I loved it. Probably won't hold up on multiple viewings since I know how it ends (I figured from the intro they would hold true to the book but you're never really sure). It was fairly dark and scary without being too gory- the blood was cartoony and most of the violence was either cartoony or implied. Like a good roller coaster- just enough "scary" without being creepy, cringy, or crazy.

So, aside from wanting the girl dead and the boy to remain dead, I really enjoyed it. That and a quibble with the exterraneous "Tom Cruise kills an alien ala Luke Skywalker and the AT-AT despite the fact that they are discovered to be dying 10 minutes later in the movie" but I try not to let stuff like that ruin an entire movie for me, just let it be a bit of a mark against it. I was a bit surprised- I thought it would be kindof average and it surprised me by being somewhat above average: 8.5 out of 10.

SI

This movie was crap IMO. From the moment of the scene on the hill where the son wants to stay and fight the aliens or whatever, it lost all direction and just sputtered around lamely before dying an empty death. I agree with the comment that the more I think about it, the more I detest it.

***** spoilers*****









yeah, the moment from the hill onwards, the movie kinda goes downhill (no pun intended). I would have been happier if the rest of the movie had played out the way it did minus the boy miraculously surviving a firestorm and being at the house. Having Cruise's character have to explain to his ex-wife where their son was would have been nice. Signs was more intense.

Ok, I finally got around to seeing this. After the hill seen, I disliked this movie. Before then, I enjoyed.

I do have some questions for people in the know: What did the blood actually do for the aliens? Was it fuel, food, or what? And what the hell were the veins / roots growing everywhere?

To me a poignant part in the movie was when Cruise and family encountered the Natl Guard convoy and while both were arguing a guardsman, yells at the boy and says '' Kid get off the road.'' That scene was pretty ironic because the natl guardsman wasn't much older than Cruises' son.

I agree with a lot in this thread, some from each "side." I disliked the saccharine sweet ending (but was not surprised, of course) and didn't find Cruise to be very believable... but I did find a few scenes to be effectively gripping. I am glad, I guess, that they didn't rework Wells's ending concept... though it did make for an odd plot diagram (build...Build...BUILD...BUILD...and end).

I'm with the C+ or B- crowd.

Did some research to answer my own question - just in case anyone else was wondering:

About the blood, from my understanding, that red weed that was growing is kind of a simbiotic organism for the aliens. They spread it so that it's growth would modify the atmosphere on Earth and make it more like there home planet. In the book, the aliens came from Mars, and the book was written before anything was known about Mars other than that it was red, so it was reasonable to assume that it was covered with read plantlife (just like much of Earth is Green and Blue because it is covered with Water and green plants). The blood serevd as a fertilizer for the red weeds to grow. It also served as a form of nourishment for the Aliens. They took what they needed form the blood and then used the rest as fertilizer for the weeds.