LeaderOfThePack
Bluelighter
/rant #2
Atlas, I'm with you!
War of the Worlds is a flashy but tedious movie which feels cobbled together out of scraps from the space invaders junkpile from which it liberally steals.
It’s got the unwashed working classes (as if Spielberg would recognize them if they ran up and polished his limo) meandering for their imperiled lives, it’s got devious, long-term plans for the hostile takeover of America and The Whole World, and it’s got rude, ugly creatures who seek to annihilate and consume everybody who isn’t on their team.
Any CNN report about the Bush or Howard administrations will give you a bigger scare.
This isn’t to say that War of the Worlds is a terrible movie. It’s not. There’s loads of energetic CG Sturm und Drang and
some shallow family drama which may seem adequately “meaningful” to summer audiences -- though there’s more depth
in Married: With Children. (Also, however Spielberg backpedals now, it felt much more honest in Close Encounters
when Roy Neary abandoned his family to take up with the galactic rubberheads. Just as it felt honest when Indiana Jones
used his cowardly gun to kill the elegant Arab swordsman. In movies, gut-responses play true!) I could almost let this
thing squeak past without panning it, but it’s a matter of perspective.
If this movie had been created with a modest budget and released with any degree of subtlety, it would be, simply, a very redundant but adequately engaging sci-fi
action romp.
But since it’s being pushed as The Movie To See (and no offense to Paramount or Dreamworks – they both release some fine movies), expectations going in are forced up much higher. And those expectations simply are not met.
So let me make fun of it a little, via dialogue which should be in the movie, but, alas, isn’t. First the humans:
“Hey, let’s drive our stolen minivan through that enormous throng of desperate pedestrians – that sure won’t cause us any hardship!”
“Y’know, since those multiple, unstoppable, fast-approaching death machines are mercilessly attacking us, let’s all climb aboard this extremely vulnerable ferryboat – they’ll never catch us then!”
“Gee, let’s all scuffle about behind this 48-inch tall antique mirror – then that persistent, evil, well-lighted camera-sensor- tentacle thingy certainly won’t notice us!”
(Come on, screenwriters. Come on, Writers Guild. Please.)
And now for the Martians (or whatever they are – basically an uninspired cross between the ID4 aliens and the CG
Gollum):
“Gosh, it sure was smart of us millions of years ago to plant one of our giant death machine thingies directly under what would become a popular intersection in contemporary New Jersey!”
“Goodness, how’s about we just leave most of rural Connecticut alone – I mean, it’s not like there are any humans there
or anything!”
“Wow, we sure are scientifically advanced and everything – but just for kicks, let’s go roam that bluish planet sans
spacesuits and see what happens to us!”
Egad. See, the problem with this War of the Worlds is that under the slightest scrutiny it collapses into nonsense!!
One minute they’re frying people to ashes with laser beams, another they’re simply killing them (we don’t
know how, but this gives us a quiet and effectively eerie scene at a river), the next they’re drinking their blood through big flexi-straws, and then suddenly they’ve got ‘em in big mesh cages – presumably en route to a big Martian wok? One can sense Spielberg straining to ramp up the tension with multiple kills and louder effects and Big Metaphors, but he’s
repeatedly undone by the silliness and inconsistency of the writing. Starship Troopers – also a very flawed sci-fi
adaptation – is a better alien onslaught movie: Meaner, smarter, more disturbing.
Since this year is the thirtieth anniversary of Jaws – a near-perfect thriller which holds up beautifully three decades later – it’s worth taking a minute to ask: What’s up with blockbusters nowadays?
Surely someone with Spielberg’s power would at least recognize the importance of elegance and character-development and enchanting storytelling over bluster and blam-blam – if not, whenever possible, struggling to implement these qualities of a Great Movie.
But like many Hollywood stews with way too many cooks, War of the Worlds adds up mostly to a big kettle of tepid overkill.
One rubber shark, Steven – that’s all it took before. One rubber shark.
/rant #2
Atlas, I'm with you!
War of the Worlds is a flashy but tedious movie which feels cobbled together out of scraps from the space invaders junkpile from which it liberally steals.
It’s got the unwashed working classes (as if Spielberg would recognize them if they ran up and polished his limo) meandering for their imperiled lives, it’s got devious, long-term plans for the hostile takeover of America and The Whole World, and it’s got rude, ugly creatures who seek to annihilate and consume everybody who isn’t on their team.
Any CNN report about the Bush or Howard administrations will give you a bigger scare.
This isn’t to say that War of the Worlds is a terrible movie. It’s not. There’s loads of energetic CG Sturm und Drang and
some shallow family drama which may seem adequately “meaningful” to summer audiences -- though there’s more depth
in Married: With Children. (Also, however Spielberg backpedals now, it felt much more honest in Close Encounters
when Roy Neary abandoned his family to take up with the galactic rubberheads. Just as it felt honest when Indiana Jones
used his cowardly gun to kill the elegant Arab swordsman. In movies, gut-responses play true!) I could almost let this
thing squeak past without panning it, but it’s a matter of perspective.
If this movie had been created with a modest budget and released with any degree of subtlety, it would be, simply, a very redundant but adequately engaging sci-fi
action romp.
But since it’s being pushed as The Movie To See (and no offense to Paramount or Dreamworks – they both release some fine movies), expectations going in are forced up much higher. And those expectations simply are not met.
So let me make fun of it a little, via dialogue which should be in the movie, but, alas, isn’t. First the humans:
“Hey, let’s drive our stolen minivan through that enormous throng of desperate pedestrians – that sure won’t cause us any hardship!”
“Y’know, since those multiple, unstoppable, fast-approaching death machines are mercilessly attacking us, let’s all climb aboard this extremely vulnerable ferryboat – they’ll never catch us then!”
“Gee, let’s all scuffle about behind this 48-inch tall antique mirror – then that persistent, evil, well-lighted camera-sensor- tentacle thingy certainly won’t notice us!”
(Come on, screenwriters. Come on, Writers Guild. Please.)
And now for the Martians (or whatever they are – basically an uninspired cross between the ID4 aliens and the CG
Gollum):
“Gosh, it sure was smart of us millions of years ago to plant one of our giant death machine thingies directly under what would become a popular intersection in contemporary New Jersey!”
“Goodness, how’s about we just leave most of rural Connecticut alone – I mean, it’s not like there are any humans there
or anything!”
“Wow, we sure are scientifically advanced and everything – but just for kicks, let’s go roam that bluish planet sans
spacesuits and see what happens to us!”
Egad. See, the problem with this War of the Worlds is that under the slightest scrutiny it collapses into nonsense!!
One minute they’re frying people to ashes with laser beams, another they’re simply killing them (we don’t
know how, but this gives us a quiet and effectively eerie scene at a river), the next they’re drinking their blood through big flexi-straws, and then suddenly they’ve got ‘em in big mesh cages – presumably en route to a big Martian wok? One can sense Spielberg straining to ramp up the tension with multiple kills and louder effects and Big Metaphors, but he’s
repeatedly undone by the silliness and inconsistency of the writing. Starship Troopers – also a very flawed sci-fi
adaptation – is a better alien onslaught movie: Meaner, smarter, more disturbing.
Since this year is the thirtieth anniversary of Jaws – a near-perfect thriller which holds up beautifully three decades later – it’s worth taking a minute to ask: What’s up with blockbusters nowadays?
Surely someone with Spielberg’s power would at least recognize the importance of elegance and character-development and enchanting storytelling over bluster and blam-blam – if not, whenever possible, struggling to implement these qualities of a Great Movie.
But like many Hollywood stews with way too many cooks, War of the Worlds adds up mostly to a big kettle of tepid overkill.
One rubber shark, Steven – that’s all it took before. One rubber shark.
/rant #2
