cellio | War of the Worlds

We saw the new War of the Worlds last night. This had the potential to go one of two ways, I thought. They might have decided to make a thriller action flick (which would not have been very interesting to me), or they might have made more of a character story. Wells provided a foundation that could go either direction -- not that movies necessarily take much from the books they're based on, of course.

I was glad to see it lean more in the character direction. The plot wasn't so much a story as a snapshot showing how a few characters deal with horrific events. I thought they did it well; giving the main character a young child to deal with certainly made a difference there. (Wells' narrator pretty much goes it alone.) We saw a range of responses, from thugs to helping each other to people who were a little bit crazy, and they all rang true for me.

They did a good job of modernizing the effects while preserving the signature death-ray-wielding tripods. Making the first signs of trouble be wacky electrical storms was interesting; I don't know if it really tracks with what was going on there plot-wise, though. If the news crew is to be believed (and ok, that's not certain :-) ), the storms were caused by something suspiciously like energy beings being transported into the buried tripods. Ok fine, but we saw decidedly non-energy-being creatures later, including a corpse. Are we to understand that some sort of conversion to energy and back took place?

Why would the aliens have buried the tripods millenia ago and waited, rather than just conquering earth then? I'm guessing that while they killed lots of people, their real goal was food. So it's best to let the planet fill up more before harvesting. I don't know if that's what the script-writers had in mind, but that's how I interpreted it.

There were, not surprisingly, plot issues. I think the arrival in Boston at the end was a little too pat given that we last saw our heroes, sans transportation, in New York. Just how many days did they walk to get there, that were just skipped over? And I really think the son needed to die to make the story both real and poignant, which didn't happen, but this is Spielberg so I can't claim surprise.

This is a nit, but while the shot near the beginning showing the mayhem through a camcorder was well-framed, that camcorder wouldn't have been working if all the electronics in the area had been fried.

Death rays vaporize people but not their clothes? Huh?

I particularly noticed the sound in this movie; all the right sounds seemed to be coming from all the right directions. I definitely jumped a couple times from sound+visual effects.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. I haven't seen any other movie/video versions of this story to compare it to. (I only know the book, the Orson Welles radio version, and Jeff Wayne's musical setting.) My favorite telling of it is probably still Jeff Wayne's; it and this movie are so different, though, that comparing them wouldn't really be feasible. That said, though, it's been years since I've listened to that recording and I should do something about that. And maybe dump it to CD if I can, since I currently have it only on vinyl.

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Darn -- I had this all worked out and hit the wrong "close button"

Gene Barry and Ann Robinson were the main character & his girlfriend in the 1953 movie. In this version they play Tom Cruise's ex-wife's parents -- his daughter's grandparents, the house where they are struggling to get to all that time.

Here's a picture from the old movie:

And one of him and his wife from the preview night for this movie:

I have to confess, I just love things like this. Drive my kids crazy. ;-)

War of the Worlds

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