December Movie Review

War of the Worlds (2005)
by Hersius

CAUTION: This review is a spoiler! If you have not yet seen this year’s War of the Worlds, you might want to watch it once BEFORE reading this review and once AFTER reading.

War of the Worlds was hyped as being director Steven Spielberg’s best movie yet and as being Tom Cruise’s best performance yet. This reviewer believes that it is probably the worst effort by both Spielberg and Cruise. The movie has just been released to DVD, and since it may be making its way into Christmas stockings, now seems to be a good time to suggest an alternative Christmas Day surprise.

As everyone knows, the story itself comes from a novel by H. G. Wells, which suggests that it should in many ways remain faithful to the premises and story development. What the viewer discovers part way through is that one of the premises has been messed with in a way that lowers the plot believability.

In the original story, apparent meteors hard-land, invaders from space build spohisticated machines from their landing crafts, and the rampage begins. In this version, the premise is convoluted. Aliens visit Earth a long time ago, decide to not colonize it at that time, bury a gagillion attack machines that can be activated thousands or a million years later, then, later, none of the humans building cities or doing subsurface surveys ever discovers one, and then, since the microbes did not, in fact, kill them (in spite of Morgan Freeman’s excellent narration to the contrary at the end of the film), the invaders come back eons later and transport down below the surface to begin their belated takeover of the planet. One is left wondering why the aliens stockpiled arsenals ages ago rather than simply occupying the planet way back when.

The movie is, of course, a remake, which means that it has to offer something fresh (in a positive way) to the interpretation. Spielberg’s forte has been the ability to tell a story from the point of view of a child or other innocent. Here, he had two chances to do so, and he missed both opportunities. The Spielberg tale centers not on one individual but rather on a family. In this modern update, the father is a divorced American guy who is having parenting time with his two kids, one of whom is a teenager and the other of whom is much younger. As the young girl, Dakota Fanning offers the best performance in the film. This is perhaps not surprising, since she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for her role in I am Sam. That combination of Shirley Temple and sophistication that has kept her in front of the camera or doing character voices, whether in scary, dramatic, or lighthearted roles (Man on Fire, Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, Hide and Seek, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, Sweet Home Alabama, Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch has a Glitch, Trapped, Uptown Girls, etc.), was wasted here by limiting her to mostly squeals and demands to be taken to her mother. As the teenage son, Justin Chatwick, who has had recent roles as well (The Chumscrubber, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, Taking Lives), had the most character development of any of the protagonists. Spielberg had the chance to focus on the transformation of a brooding, selfish loner teen into a young man trying to become part of a global mobilization against the greatest challenge to ever threaten humanity, and yet in terms of camera time, Justin Chadwick’s character comes in a distant third.

The movie is a Tom Cruise vehicle, and even the special effects take a back seat - more camera time is spent on the family interplay than on alien tripods and their havoc.

The special effects themselves give one a sense of deja vu. We liked the way that people sort of turn to dust and then explode ... when we first saw it on the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We liked the underwater view of the upside down ship ... when we first saw it on The Poseidon Adventure. We liked the particular appearance of the aliens ... and got flashbacks to Independence Day. We liked the snaking mechanical eye ... just as we had liked the water manipulation “pseudopod” in The Abyss and the giant serpentine creature in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The disappointment lies in the fact that Spielberg should be inventing groundbreaking special effects, not stealing from the classics.

As with most special effects movies these days, the illusion of believability has to be a given. One set in this movie, however, is unintentionally unbelievable. Tom Cruise’s house has furniture incongruous with his portrayal of an immature “jock” kinda guy. OK, you first think, maybe his ex-wife bought it all during their marriage and then left it when she divorced him and traded up to her new husband. But then you notice that the kitchen floor is spotless and that, aside from a car engine being in the house, the place lacks the clutter needed for verisimilitude. So either Dakota Fanning is being worked to death as the cleaning lady, or the film crew was overly tidy - take your pick. Whatever the backstory is about the furniture, even the aliens seemed more believable than the interior sets of Tom Cruise’s house.

The truly disappointing aspect of the movie, however, is the protrayal of modern American masculinilty, and in this regard, perhaps unwittingly, it painfully illustrates one of John Norman’s themes: that men have surrendered their leadership.

The Tom Cruise character is one of those men who are, in current U.S. culture, considered to have a prolonged adolescence, and who, in the opinion of many pop-psychologists, can now never grow up emotionally. Such men are being thought of as permanently emotionally juvenile even in their thirties, and it is assumed that they will be forever dependent on their parents and on women. When the ex-wife and her new rich husband drop off the kids at Tom Cruise’s house, the Cruise character acknowledges the new husband’s financial success, apologizes to his ex-wife for his house not being up to her standards, compliments her on how good she looks pregnant with the other man’s child, and spends the rest of the movie trying to get himself and his kids to the ex-wife’s home where they will all be supposedly safe and taken care of. (The Dakota Fanning character charges that he is taking them there merely to dump them off so that he does not have to take responsibility for them ... either way, he looks to the pregnant female and her new male to solve his inabilities to deal with the situation.)

The Cruise character is given chances to grow up, and he fails each time. His son challenges him to join the military’s efforts to fight back, and he chooses to flee to his ex-wife. The Ogilvy character challenges him to form a resistance, and he kills Ogilvy out of fear of being discovered by the aliens. A woman friend pleads with him to allow her and her daughter to join him, affirming his male leadership, and he lets her slip away as he flees. Faced with a breakdown in order, he allows a mob to take the car he had stolen to get his family away in. He is driven only to seek protection from his ex-wife and her new husband. He never once, in this crisis of a lifetime, grows beyond himself. If this is the representative modern Earth male, you begin to think that perhaps the aliens should win.

When Norman’s characters ask Tarl Cabot whether or not Earth men will ever regain their manhood, Cabot can only muse, “Perhaps.” After watching this version of War of the Worlds, one can only add, “But not likely.”