War of the Worlds
Jul. 11th, 2005 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerIf you know the original story then you can happily read all of this up until the nitpicks without worrying.
So, there you are, living a perfectly reasonable life, living through the same mixture of peace and inter-tribal conflicts that punctuate history, safe in the knowledge that most of the trouble is far enough away that you can get on with the day to day moments of everyday life.
And then, as if from nowhere, come huge machines, piloted by remote creatures that seem to show no wish except death and destruction. They arrive in a blare of noise and death. Oh, yeah, they've got your Shock and Awe _right here_, indiscriminately killing multitudes for their own mysterious ends.
So you flee, terrified, taking those things that are most precious to you and heading for anywhere that might be safe, only to find that _nowhere_ is safe - the invaders can appear at any time, impervious to your attacks. You hear rumours from far-off lands, but nothing really makes any sense, and whenever you see conflict between your own troops and the alien machines it ends with annihilation.
And then you discover that they aren't just here for the death - they want your land - they want to make it there’s, make it unrecognisable to you, and uninhabitable to you. Soon your world will be their world and they will have all of your natural resources.
You fall to bickering over survival, becoming a threat to each other more as much as anything else, the ownership of anything useful being as much a threat to the owner as it is a help to them.
And you have to hope that somewhere out there someone is looking out for you - that someone is leading a successful resistance, or working on a secret weapon, or that the invaders have overlooked something vital that will mean their doom, because there's nothing left for you to do.
The first 9/10 of this movie are great - Spielberg does a great job with the direction, using Cruise as a viewpoint character, you get to see nothing he doesn't see himself and you get to live through the sheer lack of understanding and powerlessness that all of humanity is facing. There's no learning experience, there's barely any character development, there's just someone dealing with the problems in front of them, one tiny step at a time, trying to survive on a human level, because dealing with things on the larger scale is completely beyond them.
The problems I have with the film are in the penultimate section, and if you didn't want to read them, you should have stopped reading by........now.
Suddenly the whole mood of the film changes from something approaching realism to what seems to be a dream sequence. The whole sequence starting from the pair waking to see Tripod eye watching them up until their arrival in Boston is completely out of keeping with the rest of the film. The most glaring example of which is that Cruise, having failed to be instantly killed by the tripod, is in his car when it's flipped upside down, from where he looks out and sees his daughter standing _exactly_ in front of his car, highlighted through the only hole in the car windscreen, as she stands highlighted perfectly on a rise with a huge moon right behind her. The scene looks gorgeous - but it's from a completely different movie, and I spent a good 5 minutes waiting for Cruise to wake up from a dream sequence.
The ending is also abrupt, and we could have done with a little more time between leaving the house and Boston, to get some idea of the countryside and how they coped - I'd even have settled of a montage of them hiding out and moving carefully from place to place.
However, this apart I'd definitely recommend seeing it for the first 9/10 of the film. The movie was originally written 'about' the effect of the British Empire on the countries it colonised and it's just as applicable to events now as it was then (and to events throughout history - if you wanted to read it as a metaphor for Napoleon's invasion of Russia, falling back only because of the freezing winter, that'd be easy to justify).
8/10
ObQuote: This is no more of a war than there is a war between men and maggots. This isn't a war... this is an extermination.
So, there you are, living a perfectly reasonable life, living through the same mixture of peace and inter-tribal conflicts that punctuate history, safe in the knowledge that most of the trouble is far enough away that you can get on with the day to day moments of everyday life.
And then, as if from nowhere, come huge machines, piloted by remote creatures that seem to show no wish except death and destruction. They arrive in a blare of noise and death. Oh, yeah, they've got your Shock and Awe _right here_, indiscriminately killing multitudes for their own mysterious ends.
So you flee, terrified, taking those things that are most precious to you and heading for anywhere that might be safe, only to find that _nowhere_ is safe - the invaders can appear at any time, impervious to your attacks. You hear rumours from far-off lands, but nothing really makes any sense, and whenever you see conflict between your own troops and the alien machines it ends with annihilation.
And then you discover that they aren't just here for the death - they want your land - they want to make it there’s, make it unrecognisable to you, and uninhabitable to you. Soon your world will be their world and they will have all of your natural resources.
You fall to bickering over survival, becoming a threat to each other more as much as anything else, the ownership of anything useful being as much a threat to the owner as it is a help to them.
And you have to hope that somewhere out there someone is looking out for you - that someone is leading a successful resistance, or working on a secret weapon, or that the invaders have overlooked something vital that will mean their doom, because there's nothing left for you to do.
The first 9/10 of this movie are great - Spielberg does a great job with the direction, using Cruise as a viewpoint character, you get to see nothing he doesn't see himself and you get to live through the sheer lack of understanding and powerlessness that all of humanity is facing. There's no learning experience, there's barely any character development, there's just someone dealing with the problems in front of them, one tiny step at a time, trying to survive on a human level, because dealing with things on the larger scale is completely beyond them.
The problems I have with the film are in the penultimate section, and if you didn't want to read them, you should have stopped reading by........now.
Suddenly the whole mood of the film changes from something approaching realism to what seems to be a dream sequence. The whole sequence starting from the pair waking to see Tripod eye watching them up until their arrival in Boston is completely out of keeping with the rest of the film. The most glaring example of which is that Cruise, having failed to be instantly killed by the tripod, is in his car when it's flipped upside down, from where he looks out and sees his daughter standing _exactly_ in front of his car, highlighted through the only hole in the car windscreen, as she stands highlighted perfectly on a rise with a huge moon right behind her. The scene looks gorgeous - but it's from a completely different movie, and I spent a good 5 minutes waiting for Cruise to wake up from a dream sequence.
The ending is also abrupt, and we could have done with a little more time between leaving the house and Boston, to get some idea of the countryside and how they coped - I'd even have settled of a montage of them hiding out and moving carefully from place to place.
However, this apart I'd definitely recommend seeing it for the first 9/10 of the film. The movie was originally written 'about' the effect of the British Empire on the countries it colonised and it's just as applicable to events now as it was then (and to events throughout history - if you wanted to read it as a metaphor for Napoleon's invasion of Russia, falling back only because of the freezing winter, that'd be easy to justify).
8/10
ObQuote: This is no more of a war than there is a war between men and maggots. This isn't a war... this is an extermination.
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-11 05:12 pm (UTC)Also, did you notice how that hole in the window theme repeated itself? It's in the movie at least three times that I can recall, if not more. I wonder if he was trying to make a statement that the martians are the ball, and we're the glass, and we can't do shit except let them by. Alternatively, it may have been a statement about safety, what with all of our protection amounting to ultimately just a pane of glass.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-12 08:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-11 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-11 10:02 pm (UTC)As regards abruptness etc, even big directors have to do what audiences want or are perceived to want. People generally have short attention spans, and will fill in the blanks in plot/continuity themselves. Watch a kids film and see how short every scene is... Most big films either have lots cut out before release, or chunks cut out of the script before they even get filmed to save time, because people aren't -really- paying full attention in the film...
Also, the point where you say it looks like a dream sequence - I'd say that's intentional. From where they first see the red moss, to the closing scene, the world of the film is dreamlike (see the red moss, the capture and escape, and the slow dreamy tide turning in Boston. At that point, the world has changed a second time. Essentially, people have woken up to find a new world, shaped by the red moss. So I imagine it -should- look like a dream sequence as alien Stuff takes over. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-07-12 12:00 am (UTC)Your review has me captivated....don't make me go to a cinema to find the ending! :P
no subject
Date: 2005-07-12 08:46 am (UTC)Or read the book - the ending's the same, and it's on project gutenberg.
Alternatively, select the text below.
The martians die from an earth-based disease which they have no immunity to.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-20 11:12 pm (UTC)I am sold on the idea that this is Spielberg taking Wells's intent and updating it to "This is what it was like to be in Iraq or Afghanistan when we invaded. And it isn't so unlike how it felt to be a Jew when Germany turned Nazi, or a NYer in 9/11. All invasions (including an internal rise to power in the Nazi case) feel like this to the person with no power."
Did you notice the person Cruise stole the working car from at the start was clearly Jewish ("Manny") and very like the Jews in Nazi Germany who said, oh, it's ok, we'll stay, nothing happening here? Even when told he'll die if he stays?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-21 07:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-21 10:02 am (UTC)