War o' the Worlds

Hello! Wanted to throw some stuff up here…sorry I’m still working on the SIFF wrap-up. It’ll come, I just have to ration my hand use.

Anyways, I was pleased as punch to get to the advance screening of War of the Worlds. Though there have been many reviews by now, I’m still asked “Is it worth seeing?” And I’d say “Basically — yes.”

I rented the ’50s version to compare (I’d seen it before). Some good special effects for that time, but kinda slow, and a hokey love story. The Martian ships look pretty cool though; creepy.

The advance screening of the new one was at Pacific Place, we were screened heavily at the door, and it was a pretty packed house. I can’t imagine why you’d want to see a sci-fi blockbuster on a pirated copy though (the reason for our being screened).

The family story was the lamest part of the film for me. Tom Cruise is a bad single dad, stuck w/his kids for the weekend. But dealing w/the crisis makes him bond w/them (rather like Sam Neill’s character in Jurassic Park). Frankly, I just didn’t care. I felt it also lessened the impact of the invasion, so the film became less about the ETs and more about Family Values.

But at least we got to the aliens fairly soon (they’re never referred to as Martians; we don’t know where they come from). For some reason, they’re made to come up from under the ground, instead of arriving from space (the ships underground are activated by an electrical storm); don’t know why. But ships look nasty enough from the outside, and that heat ray is fantastic, incincerating people like nobody’s business. Buildings are blown to bits. Ferries are tipped over. Nothing stops the invaders. The situation is hopeless. People degenerate to Survival of the Fittest/Lord of the Flies mode, being beastly to each other. Tim Robbins has a small role as a nutty survivalist type, presumably to contrast w/how manly macho and sensible Tom Cruise is.

And then it’s all over. Shucks! And you know how, right? Germs, bacteria (always a loophole in the story for me; if the aliens have been studying us for years, why didn’t they figure out about germs?). No more mayhem and destruction.

Once the ETs get going, this film rocks away. It’s also decidedly dark, and definitely conveys the feeling of what it would be like to be caught in a massive attack, though one needs increasingly less imagination for that these days. So yes, worth checking out if you like spectacle.

It did make me think how one thing common to the ’38 broadcast, the ’50s film, and this new one is that the story is always updated, and always American. So, we still haven’t really seen an accurate depiction the H.G. Wells story. Maybe someday.