War of the Worlds *SPOILERZ*

[Miku19]

Went to see it yesterday, and I thought it was good. It's quite amazing for a movie of today to have no dull moments, time just flew while watching the movie. I think Dakota Fanning was overrated in the movie, yes, she might be cute to somebody, but her part was pretty much panicking and screaming. Tom Cruise did act that one well, in my opinion.

The movie seemed quite unrealistic in the way they got saved at times though. Imagine the odds.

[Shas'la T'au Kais]

Edit: I need to read posts. nvm.

[Edify]

Can his accent be any worse than Madonnas fake accent?

BTW the original story was based in NJ and never was it in NY.

same difference

[Ikrit]

Can his accent be any worse than Madonnas fake accent?

BTW the original story was based in NJ and never was it in NY.

The original story was based in England... some small town East (I think) of London

[genocidal]

For the record, War of the Worlds is not narrated by Samuel L. Jackson but by Morgan Freeman. The movie wasn't that good, I'd give it a B-. Lot of effort.

[Pressure]

Gen, either your A) drunk B) high or C) having sex with the wrong people

the movie was insane dont listen to the skeptic maniac who posted before me

[Cut]

Well I'll take an example from our history.

When the Europeans came from Europe into North America, they carried diseases which they themselves were immunized from after adapting to it from hundreds of years. However, when they started to reconcile with the Natives in North America, they started to spread the disease they had which the Natives were not immunized from. Thus, many Native people were killed because they had a lack of exposure to it and weren't immunized.

Now the way Samuel L. Jackson explained it is the same concept as this, except totally different worlds.

The Earth, as we know it, carry many diseases that are harmful to species as a whole in hundreds of ways. But since humans have existed for a long time, we tend to not be affected by these diseases because we have adapted with it. In the War of the Worlds, the water on a leaf is a totally new substance to the aliens. Like the europeans, the "water on a leaf" might be carrying a disease that we aren't affected by, but the aliens may react to the water on the leaf because they've never been exposed to it. Like an allergic reaction, the alien body would probably think it's a dangerous substance since it's not familiar with it and harm the alien.

Its like in that movie "SIGNS" where we defeated aliens with super soakers.

[Cut]

yea i steal cable so ill just see it on tv

you're 12 years old

[Cut]

and heres a spoiler for you
everyone dies at the end

[genocidal]

There simply is nothing particularly good about it. It's a disaster movie about aliens coming to fuck us up. That's one of the most rehashed ideas and on top of that, disaster movies generally have some of the worst plots. War of the Worlds was promising for two reasons only: it is directed by Spielberg and thus has a giant budget and it's based on a book by H.G. Wells.

The movie was pretty good up until near the end - which seemed like it was forced or merely just a cop-out of a fucked up story (over a billion people dying). The characters were loathesome, the plot weak, but the direction and effects are fabulous. Hence, a B-.

[Evasive]

this is not a good movie

[Epinephrine]

I think if you could accept that the end of the movie was based directly on the book then it's actually a great movie. Probably one of the best disaster movies that have ever been made really. It's just that we've all seen so many disaster movies (Armageddon, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, Volcano) and alien attack movies (Independence Day, Signs, Mars Attacks) in the last 10 years that by the time Spielburg got to it, it's become old hat. When Independence Day was released about 10 years ago, it was spectacular. Sure the story was stupid, but the effects were worth the price of admission alone. But now with so many of these movies being released over the years, you start wondering about the stupidity of this movie.

Questions arise at the end.

How does an alien invasion where they even go as far as destroying individual farmhouses in the countryside NOT manage to even scratch a street in Boston, where every house looks perfect and the occupants look like they've just been having Sunday Brunch?

When you see the flaming train pass by you accept it (awesome scene by the day) because you know that you don't need to keep your feet on the gas pedals in order to keep the train moving... that's just how the train works. Why do you need to keep your feet on the 'shield pedals' for the tripods to have shields so to speak? Why would the shields turn off when the occupants inside died?

With tripods everywhere, why are people still flooding into major cities (i.e. Boston at the end) with the military directing people to 'walk faster' into the city at the end?

Why vapourize people if you're going to suck their blood?

Why would anyone who planned an invasion for millions of years not bother to see if there were viruses around that they would be susceptable first?

Where are they burying these things so that our modern construction techniques wouldn't have found ANY tripod yet? It's not like they were 20 kilometers underground or something (or else I have no idea how they could surface so fast without using a drill of some sort).

Aside from being a convienent plotpoint, why would the highway be clear with a clear continous path to drive upon if all the cars suddenly died? That would never happen!


Then of course there is the ending. While the ending truly is based on the novel, the fact is with our modern understanding of evolutionary biology and diseases it's pretty hard to accept the ending at all. The fact is, diseases evolve to attack specific species and specific host defenses. That's why we don't most diseases that animals may have unless by chance they work on us. Aliens would be by definition very different from us. It's why no one questions the fact that people on Star Trek never get sick when they go on different planets.



Ignoring those really weird plot moments, as a movie that tried to accurate convey the athmosphere of a real alien attack, it was very spot on. People were behaving just like how you'd think people would behave in that situation. The effects were quite spectacular. I get the feeling all the military stuff wasn't even effects at all. I heard that Spielburg got one of the mountain divisions that served in Iraq (or was it Afghanistan) to participate in the movie. I bet they actually took a bunch of tanks, helicopters and maybe even got the airforce to fire a bunch of missles and shells to create some nifty explosions. Then again maybe ILM just really outdid themselves.

Also the intentional aspects of direction which ensured that you didn't see major landmarks being destroyed, didn't see what happened to anyone else around the world, and were generally left in the dark about what was occuring was pretty cool. Of course if I didn't see all that already in... Signs it would have been more interesting.


But before I finish, I must talk about the greatest flaw in the movie. The book was written in 1898, at a time when there was true fear about mechanisation and industrialisation taking over the world. As well, being written in England, at the time, it was also the height of the British Empire, an empire conquered by seemingly 'invincible' armies over the native peoples of Africa and around the world. To those people, the British must have seemed invincible, much like the aliens were supposed to be invincible to the peoples of the time. To set the movie in modern day, changes the dynamics completely.

In the past all they could have mustered were cannons and rifles. But now with missles, nukes and other weapons Spielburg is forced to add on a 'shield' device to the tripods. As well, the whole concept of the tripod seems a bit stupid. Why wouldn't they shoot some stuff at the ground around it and make the thing trip on itself (a la Return of the Jedi), or just blow up the legs which didn't seem shielded at all? In the book, cannonballs would probably just bounce off it... but now it gets more silly the more you look at it.

What about the beginning and ending? In the book, they were martians, who left Earth because they'd ruined their planet and needed a new place to live. They didn't care about humans at all, and since it was also their first time on Earth, they got many of the diseases that humans got and died (much like the British armies kept getting malaria and other diseases to which locals had some resistance towards. Or like how the native Americans got almost totally wiped out by smallpox). Really the book was about a lesson on endless colonization and endless mechanised fighting which no matter how powerful the weapons, things could be overlooked and thus you could still lose. By being set in modern times with our modern understanding of science and so on, we've lost a lot of the meaning to this story. True Spielburg tries to paint it in the modern context with terrorists and maybe even Iraq (Tim Robbins talks about how invaders will always encounter stiff resistance, much like in Iraq) but it's not enough. The powerful messages in the book were a product of it's time, and cannot truly be replicated here. That in the end is why this movie doesn't work.

Was it a good disaster epic? Well it wasn't really epical, but it was a cool movie. Was it anything more than that? Absolutely not.

How about the ending? In

[PaulOakenfold]

Funny, all the hype got most of the big time critics to give it a couple of stars. When Ebert was asked, he gave it 2 stars, and for any of you that know Ebert's critiques, he's ALWAYS backing Speilberg, and for this movie he would have been the FIRST to back him. Interesting....

[Squeezer]

Let me just say, that I think thise movie is absolutely brilliantly directed. Spielberg's still got it.

The flaming train made me start to believe.....and when the ferry fuckin flipped, and we got the view of people in their cars, screaming as they sank, then the camera bobs up and we get a view of the chaos above the water.

I orgasmed.

[froedrick]

Let me just say, that I think thise movie is absolutely brilliantly directed. Spielberg's still got it.

The flaming train made me start to believe.....and when the ferry fuckin flipped, and we got the view of people in their cars, screaming as they sank, then the camera bobs up and we get a view of the chaos above the water.

I orgasmed.

well directed yes, I'll say that. Was a good movie, but nothing more than good. Don't listen to Thix it wasn't spectacular or one that will go down in history as amazing.

On another note, I watched 'The Aviator' last night, and I saw 'Million dollar baby' and I'm still left thinking how the hell did Million dollar baby win the best picture oscar. seriously, that movie had nothing on The aviator or Finding neverland. oh well to each his own I guess.