War of the Worlds - 2005 (Movie)

Tom Cruise : Ray Ferrier
Dakota Fanning : Rachel
Justin Chatwin : Robbie
Miranda Otto : Mary Ann
Tim Robbins : Harlan Ogilvy
Directed by Steven Spielberg

It’s quiz time. Which of the following best describes the reason that Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds was produced:

A. The original movie wasn’t all that good and the new version improves on it.
B. The original movie was good but the director has a new take on the film
C. The original movie was good, but If we put out a new version we’ll make a lot of money

Let’s see it’s not A because the original version of War of the Worlds was actually a pretty good movie and the new version didn’t improve on it one bit.

And it’s not B because the new version tells the same story as the old version; the new version breaks no new ground.

So it must be…

You guessed it C. Dollar signs were apparently foremost on the mind of Spielberg and his DreamWorks buddies when they decided to produce this picture.

It’s not really a bad movie, it just wasn’t really needed. The 1953 movie had already told this story quite well and the 2005 version does absolutely nothing to improve on it.

In the original version, Gene Barry plays the part of scientist Dr. Clayton Forrester, who has been sent to investigate a number of meteors that have crashed on the outskirts of a small town in California. While investigating, he meets Sylvia Van Buren, the daughter of a local minister, who is played by Ann Robinson. While waiting for the meteors to cool sufficiently to allow them to be analyzed, the meteors hatch and reveal alien ships that rise from the ground and proceed to attack and kill all in their path.

Forrester and Van Buren flee to Los Angles, gathering information about the aliens along the way in hopes of finding a way to stop their onslaught. While the military discovers that their most advanced weapons are useless against the aliens. Just when it seems all is lost, the aliens begin dieing on their own because they are not resistant to the microbes on our world.

In the Spielberg version the characters of Forrester and Van Buren are replaced by a dead beat dad Ray Ferrier, played by Tom Cruise, and his two kids, Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and Robbie (Justin Chatwin). All three are trying to find their way back to Boston so the children can reunite with their mother and step-father during the alien onslaught.

Instead of arriving in meteors, the aliens are transported to Earth in “lighting bolts” which inserts them into their ships that have been hidden within the Earth for millions of years. Like in the 1953 version, the aliens start killing all in sight and are once again brought down through the mysterious magic of microbes.

As you can see, the two films a pretty similar.

The acting in WOW 2005, was decent. Cruise does a pretty good job with his character as do Fanning and Chatwin but it’s not much of a stretch for any of them; these are pretty one dimensional stereotypical characters so there is only so much that can be done with them.

Special effects were good, with the early sequences involving the rise of the aliens from the Earth being the most impressive. The scene taking place in a New York neighborhood with the people coming out into their yards to watch the massive lightening storm was actually quite terrifying. I found myself anxiously waiting for the characters to get back into their homes because I knew the worst was yet to come.

The trek to Boston, that made up the majority of the movie allowed Spielberg to showcase a lot of special effects but beyond that it didn’t add much to the movie. During the trip, Ferrier and his daughter are befriended by a man, played by Tim Robbins, who in the end turns out to be a right-wing survivalist nut case, which once again demonstrates that Spielberg will leave no stereotype unturned.

The end was pretty much anti-climactic with the family reuniting in Boston as the alien ships start falling from the sky accompanied by a voice over letting us know that the invaders couldn’t stand up to our microorganisms.

There were a couple of things that really annoyed me with this film.

First, the aliens apparently had scouted out Earth millions of years earlier and had buried their attack ships in preparation for the invasion. This just seems plain stupid.

Why would they be planning this so long?

Does any species really have the patience to wait a million years and if they did would they remember where they planned to attack?

And if they had visited here in the past, wouldn’t they have figured out the whole microbe thing already?

Next, what was the purpose of vacuuming people up, grinding up their bodies and spraying their guts all over the Earth?

Since Spielberg gave no explanation for this, I will assume it was just to add a gross out factor and make the movie a little scarier and bring in the teens. I just found it annoying.

If Spielberg really had to make this film, I would have hoped that he would have changed the ending in some way to make the payoff better for those of use familiar with the original. I had two controversial ideas that I think would have made this a much better film:

1. The aliens die, not from the naturally occurring microbes, but from all of the pollution that we’ve added to our to our planet. They could be sensitive to hydrocarbons, and the fact that we now have billions of cars on the Earth renders our planet useless to them. Oh the irony!

2. And this one is real controversial. During the trek to Boston Cruise’s character is abducted by the aliens and he finds he is able to destroy a ship from the inside, using hand grenades. What if to rid their planet of the alien menace, people start strapping explosives to their backs and become suicide bombers. (I told you it was controversial) Alright, given the current political climate this probably wouldn’t fly, but unlike Spielberg, at least I was trying to be creative.
So here’s my advice. If you really want to see War of the Worlds (2005), then by all means do. It’s not a great movie but it’s somewhat entertaining. While your at it, make sure that you rent the 1953 George Pal version; although the special effects aren’t in the league with Spielberg’s version, the movie has a lot more heart and in my opinion is the definitive War of the Worlds movie.

6 out of 10 Stars

Posted by Al on 01/11/10 at 06:33 PM in Movies