[Gort]

I just got in from seeing War of the Worlds. This movie was everything I expected it to be and more; I thought it was tremdously riveting. You have to understand that I have a 6 year old daughter, so to see Ray Ferrier working hard to protect his family and deliver them to safety really had me riveted in some scenes.

For what it's worth, I though Cruise did a terrific job in this movie; it was probably the first time I saw him as the character he portrayed instead of an actor trying to portray . . .

The tripods? They are the baddest mofos! HUGE and merciless! They tower terribly over everything and deliver death by swift and hot rays of plasma. They are death; they are formidable, unstoppable. One cannot help when seeing them in their terror but think, "this is the end of us - our reign is over"

It's been a great summer for movies.
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- Tom Carter

"You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf" - Jack Kornfield

[Max]

I felt like playing Half Life 2 all the time.
Well, it was a nice movie which finally took up the topic in a different way.
No presidental speech and patriotic will or bruce who kick the aliens asses...
However I think ther are alot of unanswered questions in the movie, I haven't read the book though.
Altogether there just wasn't enough..."drama" you could say. There's just a few scenes which made me feel with the characters.
The whole Tim Robbins sequence was totally useless imho.
All the other actors did a great job though. Not to mention the visual effects - amazing composition, some nice matteshots.
No revolution but worth seeing for the Half Life like scenes : )

[Jimmyjimjim]

Just saw it as well.. a packed house!

I really liked the "enemy within" subtext to the whole thing, which is why I believe that Tim Robbins' character was there, in part. I found it a fascinating exploration of the good and bad humans are capable of in extreme situations.

However, I felt this was such an unrelentlessly BLEAK movie. When it ends, I felt as though nothing was resolved. Nice nod to the original in the ending, you'll see what I mean.

[Gort]

[Sumaleth]

I enjoyed it a lot. Definitely made me think of HL2, but there were also a surprising number of comparisons to make with SIGNS.

I don't think it'll be a lasting classic like Close Encounters/Jaws/ET/etc, because the story of this father and his estranged children is so minimalistic, but I found it all a gripping ride.

I'm actually wishing now that it was even more minimalistic. I don't think it needed the voiceover at beginning and end. I think I'd have preferred to experience it the way the characters are experiencing it, with no explanations and no exposition, whereas the voiceovers kinda took us out of that.

Interesting choices they made anyway.
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[Drunken Monkey]

just saw it...

you guys will probably think i am nuts, but this is the worst high budget movie i've seen in years. Worse than The Core. I even enjoyed Battlefield Earth more.
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"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity" - Sigmund Freud

[winjer]

what was the point of this movie. There was no structure to the movie at all. It was just random scenes of violence followed by extremely thin character development scenes. The aliens never really felt like a threat and this made the ending extremely anticlimactic. That scene in the basement smacked of Signs, except not good. The only thing i liked was the wierd klaxon sound effect. I shouldve gone to see batman again instead.

[Sumaleth]

The idea behind War, which Steven and Tom have explained in every interview they've done lately, was to experience the invasion from the point of view of an average person on the street. To feel that you're only seeing one small part of something huge, and to know only what the average person would know (ie. very little).

I think it's an interesting approach. The war is just an incidental backdrop to a more personal story.

SIGNS was based on the same idea, and was even more confined about it. SIGNS and WAR both share similar strengths and weaknesses, although I'll probably remember Signs a lot longer, because the sense of impending doom was stronger and because that "more personal story" was more interesting.

WAR would have worked if it was perhaps less structured -- more like the first 30 minutes of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, which really did put you into the middle of a war and make you feel like it might have felt. You could see the cogs turning in WAR, and that takes you out of the film.

Just thinking out loud.
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[eyewoo]

Yea... I had a few problems with the film as well... I enjoyed it but felt there were some strange leaps of faith... like, how they suddenly ended up in a farmhouse basement with the Tim Robbins character... and... what was the news crew guy dragging out of the crashed airplane - why??? and, though it was completely faithful to the book, in today's world it seems unlikely that such an advanced race would not have prepared for the possibility of dangerous micro-organisms... but, it was worth the looksee... I do get senior discounts on my movie tickets...
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[Sumaleth]

Yeah, that transistion to the basement is the sort of thing that really frustrates me about Spielberg's work in the last decade. He can be very lazy in his plotting and staging between the "cool bits". Little (and big) moments that don't "ring true", and so momentarily take you out of the film.
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[balistic]

Well, to start with some positives, I though Dakota Fanning did a good job in the role of the daughter. I liked that the use of music was mostly restrained. I thought the sound design of the plasma weapons was excellent. I liked the ferry sequence, with the machines looming up over the hills.

As drive-in disaster cinema, it was above average. As an adaptation of an important piece of literature, I think it fell awfully flat. The whole thing felt more than a little neutered and family-friendly. The way the death rays turn people to ash inside their clothes seemed like the main concession in this regard. It seems weird to say it, but to see people burning instead of instantly turning into lint would have made the terror seem much more real. Disintigration rays have unbreakable ties to schlocky 50s sci-fi, and their use in a movie that isn't meant to be a parody sucked me out of the moment. That sequence should have scared me, instead it reminded me of Mars Attacks.

The assault itself was too flashy. Fireworks and smoke instead of creeping inevitable death. The tripods almost seemed too animated. It was too easy to read their intent. They telegraphed it like cartoon octopeds.

Initially I thought that we saw too much of the aliens, but upon further reflection, I think I was bugged by their design more than their screentime. They could've put any kind of foul, bizarre, incongruous intelligences inside of those machines, but instead we got the humanoid aliens from Independence Day minus a few limbs.

It really disappointed me how utterly conventional the creatures looked. They shouldn't have had faces. They should've been really alien instead of modified humans. But then Spielburg has always done that with his creatures.

I didn't buy Tom Cruise as a desperate dad. I wonder what it would've been like with just brother and sister. The few hints we got about their relationship make me think that it could've been a stronger story if the parents had been left out of it altogether. A brother protecting his sister.

Maybe that's just the big brother in me talking, though. When I was a teenager I used to have nightmares about trying to protect my little sister during world-ending scenarios (asteroid impacts and black holes, to name a couple), so that kind of story would've hit me harder.

Disappointed, but not surprised. It's a tough piece to adapt for screen.
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[lysander]

i suppose the whole bacteria concept worked well back in the 19th century, but it seems a little implausable today.

Still, always cool to see giant killer tripods in action. Scary
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Earth under attack by paper mache aliens; world leaders plead - 'Save us! Doctor Who!'

[Jimmyjimjim]

[Sumaleth]

[Gort]

Wow - a lot of interesting feedback and input on the film - some of which I hadn't thought of.

I saw Cruise's performance was how it was intended, although I can understand why Balistic saw it the way he did. For once I thought Cruise was pretty good - for a change.

As for the film and the ending, it is based on Well's story, so the microbial concept was expected (for me), and I liked the nod to the 50s version, although the aliens could've been more like the 50s version - that big head with one eye sort of thing.

Mars Attacks? Now that you mention it I can see the correlation, but I still loved it. Death ray . . . cool - run ferya life.

I think that the main thing here is Speilberg's interpretation from a more granular, humanist point of view. No presidents, no capital cities or cigar gnawing generals - just a man trying to save his family and all the bullshit that comes with it. I liked that part of it. Granted it wasn't a true adaptation to Wells' work, but I thought it stellar. Kinda hit home for me.

As for the tripods I thought they were well done - almost plausible - and that's a tough one for me to call. CG always seems like CG to me - it's always set up that way, but for some reason the tripods just had me in awe - I thoughtnthey were cool as hell. I want one - Sunday drive here I come - death ray and all.

Brian - looks like the buzz didn't stingya.
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- Tom Carter

"You can't stop the waves but you can learn to surf" - Jack Kornfield

[balistic]

I didn't hate it, it just didn't gel for me. I may see it again actually, if I can find time.
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[Naeem]

i agree with balistic on both counts. at the start of the movie, i didnt know the kids were his.. no strong 'dad/son' impresson was given right away . it was amazingly done, though, but i felt like something was left out. as if it was still unfinished (story-wise)

[Jimmyjimjim]

[lysander]

[blck_productions]

Nah...WoW ,did not do it for me.
First 30 minutes are awesome... the lightning -"Hey Cool, A storm let's go see"
Then the crackes...The ground shifting and the tripods emerging. Everybody running away and getting vaporised with Cruise shiffting in between ...Getting home in shock, covered in ashes of people.
Then it got lame...running running, the son wanting to fight them...The Tim Robbins character was good but the scene where Cruise had to kill him for for his daughter's sake could have more depth...they just didn't pull it off.
I felt nothing...And for the rest of the movie it's tripods, tripods, Tripods. Please some more creativity. Wooh A Tripod LAser Swoosh...Nothing else???? Almost looked like a B-film to me with some FX. OKay not everything was bad. There where some huge shots in it. Nice camera-angles- etc...But FX and camera don't make a movie- They support it- a story does...
And then there's the end...No Climax, just out of the blue...Hey they don't do anything...The caught the flew and drop dead...Duh...For a Alien-Civilisation who has been planning this for million years they are pretty stupid. Walking around unprotected. And even if this was the plot. It should have been better executed. Ex. Cruise is fighting an alien in a rage because it wants to kill his daughter. He picks up some copper-material with some copper-green on it = bacteria. As the tool hits it in the face. It burns him gravely...Like some acid. Then he knows. Then all he has to do is inform others and in a while the news is spread and by the help of evereybody, civilians and military the opression is stopped...

Nah???Spielbergs worst movie...Altough AI was bad to...

Ciao

[gLitterbug]

It's amazing how many people don't even know that this is based on a book of H.G. Wells and that the ending isn�t sucked out of Spielberg's big left toe. I am currently reading the book and appreciate the movie now even more. It has lots of references to the book and probably to the old movie too(which I sadly haven�t seen yet). The B-Movie feel it has in parts is very much intended I bet.

I personally liked it, not the best movie ever, but I think it did most of what it wanted quite well. At least while sitting in the theatre I enjoyed it very much. But in times where the first thing movie critics and so many other people is to compare movies like this to September 11 happenings and complain about how the ending sucked because they don�t even know that it�s based on a book from 1898 and also that Spielberg grew up with the cheesy alien invasion movies, it�s probably too much to ask for to have a bit of freedom when creating movies and not explain everything to death.

Another thing I just can�t understand is how people who like Episode 3 claim that Tom Cruise's bad acting ruins this movie without choking on their own words.

I�ve read so many shitty reviews of movies lately, that I wonder if we are unlearning to enjoy things, simply so we can enjoy disecting them into all the stuff they did wrong.


P.S.: For anyone who wants to read the book, afaik it�s public domain and can be read for free here

[Sukhoi]

Well, the Amtrak on fire made the movie worthwhile for me. That was just ONE cool image!

The tripods? Meh. I didn't go entirely for the design, and those cages...c'mon!

Yeah, up until the house sequence it rocked AFAIK.

-Sukhoi

[Godwin]

[lysander]

blck has a rather negative outlook on many issues it appears.

cheer up !

I mean, come on, giant killer robots from another planet!

GIANT KILLER ROBOTS!

how can you go wrong?
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Earth under attack by paper mache aliens; world leaders plead - 'Save us! Doctor Who!'

[blck_productions]

If I'd like to see giant-killer-robots I'll play HL2.
And I know the movie is based upon a book. An old one.
I tought Spielberg was going to maintain the spirit of the book. But do something more with it.

And why are the aliens attacking us with million-year old technology?...The giant robo-tripods where in the ground long before humankind inhabited earth. -That's what is said in the movie-

Negative? me? Nah...
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[lysander]

pah!

GIANT KILLER ROBOTS!

*runs*
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Earth under attack by paper mache aliens; world leaders plead - 'Save us! Doctor Who!'

[gLitterbug]

[neff]

nonono... , they need a millions years for development their software, and at least they online came up with something like Windows 95, and they got some driver problems etc, you know?
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[Jimmyjimjim]

[gLitterbug]

Nah Jimmy, you�re right. I didn�t even think of the word elitist when I wrote that. I meant that it seems in our modern times we question more. That it happens automatically and for some people that leads to the fact that they can�t enjoy a movie which doesn�t explain every single thing or leaves some stuff open for interpretation.

Also there�s a difference if someone nitpicks while he still enjoyed the movie or those that claim that a certain movie sucks simply because they hate the director/actor/whatever.

I guess I`m just pissed at the amount of people that go "omg the bacteria killed them, how lame is that, shame on you Mr. Spielberg". Hello? It�s in the book like that, sure Spielberg adapted it to our age and all, but if he changed that too he could�ve made a totally different movie and not base it on the book at all.

annisahmad got it right, it was amazingly done, but felt a bit incomplete in parts.

Oh and for the record, I loved the death ray, to me that was way more impressive and scary than some laser-like heat ray could�ve been. That Plop sound when the people disintegrated was just wow and the idea of having dust from humans cling onto you is just genius imo. Very horrible thought.