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War of the Worlds 

Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: David Koepp & Josh Friedman
Starring: Tom Cruise, Justin Chatwin, Dakota Fanning, Tim Robbins, Miranda Otto.
Country: USA

         


Three and a half antibodies

Reviewed by Hal Gray

Mood Indigo 

The story: One family’s personal tale of survival as literally bloodthirsty aliens attack Earth.

After all the hype and the good and mostly bad reviews have come and gone, it will be interesting to see if Steven Spielberg—ever the contemporary trend-setter—will bring A-list evil aliens back to terra firma and its movie screens.

Obviously influenced by the feel-good ‘60s, his Close Encounters of the Third Kind softened the lens on aliens. Also, made in 1977 in the post-Watergate years, it was easier to swallow that aliens might be more intelligent and peaceful than America’s leaders in the White House. (A more serious and equally compelling film with a peaceful alien—The Day the Earth Stood Still—made in the Cold War-era was before its time.) Spielberg followed up with the shameless anthropomorphic E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982, and other feel-good alien movies by other Directors came along like Starman in 1984. It’s no wonder that the fabulously dark Blade Runner (1982) had a hard time of it and wasn’t fully appreciated until 15 years later. People just wanted to feel good about their aliens if it had anything to do with Earth. This feeling lingered into the ‘90s. During this time, primal, violent bad things from outer space either had to stay there (the Alien movies) or, if they visited our fair planet, be funny (Mars Attacks [1996]).

War of the Worlds brings back the dark view of alien life with a vengeance—the scientifically ignorant view of the past two centuries. It’s also interesting that it comes at a time when fortress America is isolated and under attack.

Spielberg has done a very clever thing, however. War of the Worlds succeeds not because the aliens are ‘cool’ or the special effects are ‘rad’—both are true—but because the story is about flesh and blood people whose compelling, cracked relationships with one another are tested under the most trying of conditions. This is helped considerably by a realistic, brooding palette of colours on the screen.

Tom Cruise may be a horse’s ass, as his recent public outbursts indicate, but his wide-eyed sincerity as a failed husband and father trying to protect his children, not just from imminent death, but the visual horrors surrounding them, is spot on. And the fact that he tries so hard to win their trust without an easy outcome is good storytelling. It’s great storytelling when the father has to give up his son before their relationship is resolved. The scene where this happens—on a battlefield amid chaos and despair—is heartbreaking and touches on a universal truth between parents and their children.

Unfortunately, a couple of missteps keeps War of the Worlds from being an even better film:

Perhaps one shouldn’t look too closely at the ‘science’ in science fiction and just enjoy the ride. But if some ‘faulty’ science doesn’t make sense or goes unexplained, then your suspended belief comes crashing down. In this case, the vastly superior aliens—in intelligence and warfare—who’ve supposedly seeded the Earth with killing machines millions of years before humans evolve, are too stupid to figure out their vulnerabilities to a hostile planet that any sixth-grader would know. Actually, when you think about the whole attack scenario, none of it makes sense. And it could have been easily written around.

The wonderful energy of the film comes to a screeching halt with the arrival of Tim Robbins' off-the-grid character. How Dad deals with this guy obviously goes to show to what lengths he’ll go to protect his daughter and to serve as a transition point into the climax and final confrontation with the aliens. But the 20-minute segment throws the film off kilter.

Also, the reuniting of one family member in particular, defeats the overall tenor of what was so painstakingly plotted before. Steven? It’s nothing an editor couldn’t fix.  
 

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