I went and saw War of the Worlds last night. It’s the first movie that I have went to the theater and watched in quite a while. Overall I have to say that I was not impressed. Enough that I am now going to write about how much the movie sucked, and how I have lost respect for Steven Spielberg as a director and as a man.
First things first. I am throwing out my disclaimer now, and that is that I haven’t watched the original. So I don’t care if the movie sucked because it was based on a movie that already sucked.
Tom Cruise
I can’t say that i’m a big Tom Cruise fan. I mean he has had his moments (Top Gun, Vanilla Sky, and Eyes Wide Shut) but now he has stepped in the role of “the guy playing the guy in the really hyped up movie that actually sucked” I look for his career to start on a downward spiral from which he will never recover. Anyway about his acting. Is he the tough dock worker who is protecting his broken family, the bad father who turns into the great father at the end, or the scared nervous guy who gives up when the aliens attack. I don’t know. I can’t decide. There is just to much inconsistency in acting that it is hard to tell.
The Overall Plot
Is this a movie about aliens attacking or a movie about a guy trying to save his kids? Sadly enough in these times of “the more demographics you cover, the more money you make” it’s about both. All in all it’s a roller coaster ride of hills and valleys between “spectacular special effects” and “sappy reunited broken family”. I would also like to mention that this movie way overuses the “everybody be really quiet so the aliens don’t hear you, but then somebody makes a noise and alerts them” mechanism. I bet it was used at least 15 times in this movie. In one scene which I like to call “the hiding in the basement scene” it is used at least 10 times while the people all run around a 10 foot by 10 foot basement avoiding some kind of alien probe that about as useful at probing as Helen Keller would be.
The Ending
When I saw the end of this movie I wanted to ran up to the projector room and burn the film to save others who might have expected at least a good ending. The aliens die because they get sick, not because we beat them. The stupid ass son that ran off to fight aliens magically reappears. And most of the earth is covered with a red plant like substance that is never really explained one bit. It just “looks cool”
Final Words
If I had just one word for War of the Worlds it would be: Refund. As in, I want my money back. I was tricked into watching this movie by the shoddy half-assed trailers that explained to me that this was going to be a “war of the worlds”, and not a “bore of the worlds”. I think in any law firm around the world they call this fraud.
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