The chances of War of the Worlds being any good were a million to one, he said

Once again, my mate Masato and I took advantage of Orange Wednesdays to go and see the latest summer blockbuster, War of the Worlds. Now, I'm a big fan of both the 1953 version and H.G.Wells' genre-setting original. So whilst I greatly enjoyed the spectacle, and thought Tom Cruise's acting was pretty much spot on as was the rest of the casts', there were several dissatisfying points.

Warning: possible spoilers below

1. The ending.
   Now, it is very much a deus ex machina. But for it to work at all it has to be set up right. Wells made it work in the novel. Byron Haskin made it work in 1953 with the hero Dr Clayton Forrester running from church to church filled with congregations praying for that impossible miracle that, incredibly, does come.
   
   Spielberg, however, really doesn't make it work at all. The invaders' destruction gets set up and occurs all in the last ten minutes or so of the film. And the scene where the military opens fire and destroys a Tripod (with a pilot who the plot has established is already dying) seems to have been shoehorned in just to please certain elements in the audience who, otherwise, would have balked at the military's utter impotence in the face of the invaders.
   
   It seems all so very... perfunctory.
   
   Additionally, if the invaders' machines had been buried here for eons, surely they might have noticed how deadly Earthly bacteria was to them? This works in the original, where the invaders never set foot on Earth until they invade, and until then have only viewed us from afar, but it doesn't work at all here.
   


2. Tom Cruise's character suddenly turning into action hero.
   The scene where he saves himself, his daughter and a bunch of other human captives from becoming, literally, alien fodder by wrecking a tripod just doesn't quite fit into the film, and also doesn't quite fit the character that has been established for him. He isn't a great father, he isn't a particular great guy, and we sympathise with him all the more because his reactions seem fairly believable. Apart from this scene.


3. The opening and closing narration by Morgan Freeman.
   It doesn't really fit the film or the time the film was made and is set in. Narration works in the novel, because, duh, it is generally a first-person narrative. It works in the fifties version because it was still a common cinematic device then. But it doesn't work in 2005. It just feels tacked on, and patronising.

I did like the bit when Ogilvy (ably played by Tim Robbins) refers to the fact that three tripods were destroyed in Osaka.

Obviously Godzilla got them. Cute little ILM created forcefield or not, one almighty burst of radioactive breath and BAM!

^_^

Fantastic Four next, I suppose. Word of mouth isn't at all good for this either...