Review of "War of the Worlds"

In an earlier review of "The Longest Yard", I asked why remakes always try to remake "good" films, ones that didn't really need any "punching up" or "reimagining". I said that if the original film can stand on its own and was successful that the act of remaking it is really an exercise in futility.

In reference to "War of the Worlds" I stand by my thesis.

Mind you, there's nothing particularly "bad" about WOTW. It follows basically the same script as the 1953 original (which was itself based on a 1938 radio play by Orson Welles). Atmospheric disturbances are felt around the world, terrible magnetic storms that behave in a way that baffles scientists. These storms awaken huge lumbering death machines from underground that are piloted by aliens (Martians in the original) who begin systematically eliminating the human race with powerful death rays. The craft are impervious to attack because of force fields that repel all attempts to slow or destroy them. We see death and destruction on massive scale, as humans try to survive and come up with some way of fighting off these seemingly indestructible foes.

In this version, the story is seen through the eyes of one family, specifically Tom Cruise and his teenage son and pre-adolescent (read: "Spielberg precocious") daughter. All of the early scenes worked quite well for me. Cruise's character is a divorced dad who has a good relationship with the daughter but a terribly strained one with the son. He is a New Jersey dock worker, apparently middle class and rather rough around the edges. Once the strange stuff starts happening, Cruise projects a gradually growing sense of dread about what is happening and his instinctive protection of his family comes across just fine. I thought the whole ambiance of the neighborhood reacting as one against the power outages, the storms, etc. was very realistic and quite frightening actually, with obvious echoes of 9/11 as the frightened residents flee the death rays.

So far, so good. But again, besides the family angle, there were no huge deviations in the script or reinterpretations of things that made me realize why this movie had to be remade. Yes, it was good, but I didn't particularly need to be reminded of its quality. Why not take the money spent on redoing an already successful script and make a brand new one?

After the inital destruction of New Jersey, the film is pretty much Cruise's family running away and stopping from time to time, befriending people (or not) and trying to stay together. Uhm, that's about it. The military angle was played down here until the last half hour or so, in order to focus things on the family. Again, this was fine but the question kept being begged..."why"??

There are a few examples of glaring illogic that I noted as well. Cruise's son transforms from a selfish, lazy, video game addicted brat in the beginning to a selfless hero ready to risk all for others WAY too quickly for me. Likewise the transformation of the Tim Robbins' character, a guy who offers shelter to Cruise and his daughter, seems like a decent Joe, then like fifteen minutes later is a raging lunatic who is so intent on killing the aliens he is ready to shoot Cruise. He later has to be killed by Cruise in order to silence him so the aliens don't discover their hideout! This whole very distasteful scene was indicative of a kind of underlying theme I really didn't care for. That theme was "well, it's really too bad about the rest of them, but the important thing is that WE made it...". Yes, it's true that Cruise's son (much more so than Cruise's character) helped people at different times, but besides the family and the Robbins character, there were really no other characters that were developed enough for us to care about their fate. They were just "People Who Got Killed" rather than living breathing fully developed individuals who we felt that we knew. The sequence near the end where the family's neighbors have to be left behind is gruelling and well done, but after that we never hear them mentioned again, and the whole finale where the family meets up with Cruise's in-laws has such a "well, it's all OK now" feel about it I was truly shocked. Yeah, the aliens are dead and defeated but how about a least a casual nod toward the massive death and destruction that they left in their wake. How about the fact that your son was just in a war and your daughter was practically witness to you murdering someone?? I don't imagine that Cruise just went back to work the next day, for example!! It would be nice to have had one scene, or at least the hint of a future scene, where the family tried to deal with the enormity of what had just happened to them, rather than go off into the sunset, the victorious Human Family...

There is one other scene, again near the end of the film, where Cruise manages to "fight back" against the aliens that just struck me being very hollow and unbelievable. It just seemed as though they inserted it because at some point it was necessary to have a big movie star like Cruise "kick some ass" and not be just a powerless Everyman on the run from omnipotent aliens.

I have to say that the characterization of the daughter got under my skin too. Yes, I know that kids are sometimes wiser than their years, but Spielberg doggedly insists on making ALL of his kid characters little George Burns; wisecracking, ridiculously mature and knowing little elves who seem to always be more knowing and mature than their befuddled parents. Yes, Fanning's character does realistically freak out several times, but there are a few lines she utters that are just so far beyond what a normal kid her age would say I had to cringe.

Eh, I guess when I get to picking on the kids I'm kind of revealing my hand...

If you haven't seen the original "War of the Worlds" this is NOT a bad film by any means. There are lots of truly frightening scenes and Cruise is fine in the role. There just doesn't seem to be any real reason to have made it. You come away with a kind of empty feeling; is the moral that we are powerless to stop an alien invasion? Well that's pretty much a truism. If they made it this far, they are probably far beyond us and could pretty much do anything they want. And whatever updating this film does is kind of cancelled out by the leaps in logic and the occasionally disturbing thematic undercurrents.

For all the strum und drang, I say, "bring back Dana Andrews."