War of the Worlds - Spielberg Debate

It's ok; if I need to find the nearest Krispy Kreme all I have to do is stick my nose in the air!

Totally forgot to look for Jack Black! Oops

This time I watched the film in a very small cinema with excellent accoustics. When the 'invaders' came crashing up out of the ground and started doing their thing, I forgot about looking for Jack. Did spot the 1950s couple though.

Anyway, I've seen it twice now and I still think Cruise made a good job of it. Over all, I'm impressed with the first half of the film, but why oh why the ending?
It's like Lassie come home or something.

I mean, there's 3 generations of family there at the end, all smiling, all unscathed. Even the house is untouched.
The eldest son is resurrected from the flames and this near death experience convinces him that his father isn't such a bad lad after all. (smacks forehead)

Agreed. The son really shouldn't have been alive at the end.

Speaking of accoustics, am I the only one who had flashbacks of Close Encounters when the 'tripods' made that sound right before attacking?

So Spielberg couldn't resist the sentiment that also made the ending of "AI" a dissapointment, and made the final scenes in the creator's office an anti-climax.

SPOILERS

Spielberg is a master filmmaker, when he wants to. He often wanted to, in "The War of the Worlds". I will not dwell into that, but he conveys the more than human grandiosity, the monstruosity of the war and the sense of fear and helplessness.

But he's a prisoner of his own let's-please-the-American-audience device.

The happy ending is terrible.
Just about everybody agrees on that. Some one told me the Martians spared Boston because they're Red Sox fans.
In both the novel and the aura of the film, it was clear that those who survived were the ones who moved. Well, there is one block in Boston where nothing happened and Granma had time for putting her nice make-up on in the midst of chaos. And the son not only survives a certain blast, but goes back to mamma unscarred.

What is not clear for all American audiences, I think, is the absurdity and the morals of the Spielberg film.
First, it is a freaking "family history" in the midst of war, just like in "Saving Private Ryan". Can't wars be personal and collective for once?
What we see is a family fighting exclusively for themselves, and let the other humans by. I hardly sensed a moment of human solidarity from the Cruise character towards their fellow Americans. Yet he is supposed to be heroic.

There is also a lack of common sense. If mobility equals survival opportunity, then a moving car is the most valuable, coveted and desired commodity. You have to be both selfish and stupid to not carry several people like yourself with whom you can forge a survival alliance.
But in the movie, most of the people who flee move like zombies, letting the (supposedly)legitimate owner of a car pass by. Hours pass before the car is taken for what it's supposedly worth. Is the value of private property in America, so important that it would be sanctified even in those moments?
[And I wonder, do all kids who attend rock concerts in the US travel in their own car? Doesn't anyone somehow force fellow music lovers to give them a ride?]
Finally, there is this ridiculous thing about child rearing. The girls screams, is claustrophobic; the boy is plain obnoxious. And the freaking blue-helmet father is unbelievably uncapable of slapping them, showing some authority, even if to save their lives, lest some well-thinker say "Spielberg condones child beating".

You can be a master filmmaker and yet make films that are caged in a non-obvious, but quite distinguishable, ideological trap. That is why Spielberg, a master of cinema, has never, in my opinion, made a true masterpiece.

I know what you mean. I believe that 'Empire of the Sun' comes close.

Spielberg is a great film maker. The Duel, Close Encounters, the first half of Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List... the list goes on.

One of my favorite scenes from any of his films is the scene from Jaws, when Robert Shaw is telling his story and comparing scars with Richard Dreyfuss. Spielberg has a way of getting great things out of an actor and he's a great storyteller, but he is overly sentimental.

The other night I watched 'The Pianist' (A Roman Polanski film) for the first time. Half way through the film it struck me:
I was in the presence of a pure genius (Polanski).
I think I'll always be a fan of Spielbergs - just for giving us the Indie films to watch when we are growing up... but when I saw The Pianist I realised that sometimes only the truth, without false sentiment will do.
I see The Pianist as being a film about dignity and courage.
That seems to be missing in War of the Worlds.
Great special/sound effects though.

Peace,
E

"Shindler's List" is not to everyone's taste but it has to b e his masterpiece. It does end on a sentimental note but it's not a false note. It's genuinely heart wrenching.

"Jaws" is a close second, better than "Empire" which suffers from a mild case of edifice complex.

The tacked on personal story in "War of the Worlds" is not H. G. Wells and just what's the matter with pure Wells? Nothing.

Agreed. If the film had been true to the author - the whole damn drama would have taken place just up the road from where I was born. :wink:

Also, the story was written in 1898 - when the invaders were called Martians.

If Spielberg had really wanted to accommodate Wells AND bring the whole story up to date, he could have made Well's version up to a point - then shifted forward to 2005, when humans are still living under alien rule - before the common cold finally strikes. You could make it work by portraying the aliens more as harvesters than destroyers. They do not destroy mankind outright, but use earth as a farm and feed off us for generations.

A hundred years of united humanity fighting to save their planet and themselves from hostile aliens!

That would have been more of a tribute to Wells. Showing just how a story written over a hundred years ago still has the power to inspire.

Peace,
E

Okay, let's agree to agree. You're making my head swell and believe me it's too large already. If anyone on this forum agrees with this, incidentally, I will have to kill them.

I haven't remember I haven't read Wells since college but it's not difficult to forget he was an intelligent and entertaining writer. I can still watch the too grainy, old black-and-white of "Things to Come" and get a thrill out of it, especially the prophetic ending (yes, it advocates a technocracy and I still believe scientists would make ineffective and probably ridiculous politicians).

I will probably try to see the movie on wide screen and I hope I'm only mildy dissapointed. I like your idea of the updating of the plot -- it could be it's too bad Spielberg didn't have your input before he started the film.

Yeah, the poor bastard. :wink:

That idea of the martians having won and controlling the earth was already explored in the Tripods trilogy (Christopher).

Why didn't Spielberg choose another novel instead, The Kraken Wakes (Wyndham, 1953), which also features aliens harvesting humans, except that the threat comes from the sea this time (Jaws meets Close Encounters, just when you thought it was safe to go into the water again).

Yeah, Paaskynen, I like the idea of deep water aliens - as long as they're nothing like the ones in the Abyss. (Glowing and angel-like, with soppy grins and puppy dog eyes).

I think the best (and most frightening/believable) aliens are the ones that don't look humanoid.
(Alien/Aliens) Now there were aliens you could trust to kill you.

I'd like to see more SF set in space. Well actually, I'd just like to see more SF fullstop. Maybe Spielberg's War Of The Worlds will trigger a new genre of SF films.

Lets hope so.

Peace, E

The box office waned 59% on the second weekend. Not a good sign. It may rack up enough numbers for the DVD to swing a profit. I haven't checked the foreign box office yet and as I dropped the box office thread, I expect those interested will look online at the various box office sites (I believe, including Roger Ebert's own site).

The ultimate non-humanoid alien must be "The Blob"

The most frightening alien threat in my book was not any alien being (be they bloodsucking martians or parasitical facehuggers, or Riply worms) but the crystalline lifeform in The Andromeda Strain. That film was altogether believable, because the scientists acted as scientists, the military as military and the hayseeds as, well, stupid hayseeds (no offence meant).

In too many films it is the scientists who act stupid and irresponsibly, the military who mean well or evil, but are too rigid to be effective, and the hayseeds save the day with a remarkable combinattion of insight, luck and heroism (and often a substantial array of firearms).

From the extreme of the hayseed heroes to the dubiously pragmatic concept of technocracy in "Things to Come," sci-fi has yet to really be served well by the movies (although I still love "Things to Come" which could be updated if they wouldn't just blow it like the 1979 terrible version with Jack Palance as Omus).

I like The Imposter - directed by Gary Fleder 2001 -based on Phillip. K. Dick's short story - with Gary Sinise and Madeleine Stowe.
Not in the same class as Blade Runner of course - but still well done.

Of course Madeleine Stowe stars in another of my favorite SF films - Twelve Monkeys (inspired by La Jetee - Chris Marker). Maybe she's a SF fan too. Knew there was something I liked about her. :wink:

Hey....What about a remake of The Day Of The Triffids?

Oh there are good sci-fi movies. Bladerunner has already been mentioned. So has The Andromeda Strain. I would certainly add Close Encounters to the list. 2001: A Space Odyssey? Hmmm? And that's only if we're talking about 'hard' sci-fi (though, admittedly, Close Encounters is borderline).

ENDYMION : Have you seen Brazil? (Also directed by Terry Gilliam).

I liked The Day of the Triffids, but they can, after all, be defeated by mere salt water.

Brazil was a wonderfully spooky and absurd distopia.

The triffids aren't defeated by salt water, that was merely a lame invention of the film makers in order to get closure.

You should see the BBC miniseries instead (is available on DVD, if I'm not mistaken), it is much more faithful to the book and even if the triffids look plastic (what can you expect on a BBC budget) there is much more character development and exposition on the dilemmas of survival. The film 28 Days Later is reminiscent of this, although much more focused on the action.

Yes, I am a bit of a Gilliam fan. I respect him for his bravery as a film maker. I think that Brazil really made him. It is quirky - (anything with Michael Palin in it tends to feel that way). It's also political, dark and strangely tragic.
The ending of course is....very thought provoking.
(I like the Time Bandits, too).

I saw Jonathan Pryce (Brazil) in a British film recently, called Re-Generation - WWI drama about combat trauma (he plays Dr Rivers, Siegfried Sassoon's psycyatrist). The man is still a great actor. (Johnny Lee Miller was very good in it too).

Anyway getting back...

How about yet another re-make of Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

I'm not looking forward to anothe remake of "Snatchers."

"2000," "Bladerunner," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," and really only a handful of sci-fi films that are comparable to the best written sci-fi but film has been around for over one-hundred years and that's all they have to offer? The genre has had way more than its share of bad movies. Probably a time for a top ten sci-fi films? Or top twenty? One would be hard pressed to come up with even a top fifty.

So many really great sci-fi novels, novellas, novelettes and even short stories which could be made into great movies. "2001" is based on "The Sentinal," an Arthur C. CLarke short story.

I have "Brazel" in my collection -- it's an amalgam of "Brave New World" and "1984," assembled by a true auteur. I laugh to myself everytime I think of the "enforcers" tearing into the walls with all those absurd-looking conduits go here and there and the mother getting stretched by the machine until...

SPOILER AHEAD

...she looks like Jonathan Pryce's daughter.

It's the theater of the absurd and has some of the most cinematically powerful scenes in all of cinema.

"12 Monkeys" a like a lot but it has its problems, especially the way the last half-hour is handled with it's Hitchkockian twist ending.

I've listed the sci-fi novels I can't imagine why nobody will tackle, each of them at one time or another owned by a studio or individual to put on film. That would be another engrossing topic to explore:

Sci-Fi Literature Aching For Filmation