Film Review - War of the Worlds

A Movie About Family and Alien Invasion
By: Rianne Hill Soriano
Starring: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Official Movie site

A movie about an alien invasion, but not really about the war of the worlds, the story has focused more on the family bonds, relationships and protecting the ones you love. I have never really seen enough of the “war of the worlds”– just a slight glimpse of some American tanks and aircrafts mercilessly incinerated by three-legged, tripod-looking alien machines and extraterrestrial tentacles grabbing humans to the worst end. This movie is a contemporary retelling of the 1898 classic novel of H. G. Wells, a sci-fi adventure thriller about a Martian invasion (though in the film, there’s no clear presentation of whether the aliens are Martians or whoever and whatever) and the battle of the human race through the eyes of a simple American family struggling to survive it. Some arresting words to quote as Morgan Freeman effectively narrates the movie’s intro (and end) from the book: "Across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."

With some blatant 9/11 overtones, Spielberg immerses the audience in the confusion and panic the invasion brings in a more distinct fashion. This is through the point of view of a family fighting for survival and the external conditions of desperate human struggle as they mob around, hit and kill each other to save their own lives.

A wave of mass destruction shakes a not so perfect father’s (Tom Cruise) small town life by the arrival of aliens exterminating the human race. When a freak light storm happens, the ground cracks from deep beneath the earth and that simple New Jersey neighborhood is turned into an incinerating space for laser attacks vaporizing every human body in sight. But unclearly though, questions are left unanswered: whether the lightning strikes actually send the mean alien machines to the underground (somehow, in some scientific ways of extraterrestrials) or they have been completely buried underground for years and the lightning strikes are the ways to unleash them? If the latter is so then, why haven’t the scientists, geologists, acheologists or even the civilians ever gotten a chance to sense them through a radar, by accident or something else? Well, it’s a movie. But things left unclear with so much possibilities to thread along as this makes the film weak still.

Our times prove how far technology has brought CGIs into greatness. Personally, this movie “almost” fell into a b-movie appeal. But thanks to a big budget, the special effects are well done. The cinematography gives that coldness, that fear, and that feeling of helplessness. The lightning storm seems so real. Clever shot construction and exploration are brilliantly executed. The visuals and the actions are intense. There are thrilling and suspense-filled moments, eerie and freaky, which have been all mastered by Spielberg basing it from his filmography. However, the catastrophic aliens seem to have been stereotyped in the way they generally look though they have evolved in different roles in various films all these decades: extremely large eyes, domed-heads, insect-like appendages and long skinny limbs. Weird enough, I remembered General Grievous of Star Wars Episode 3 in this movie… maybe because it’s the most recent alien-stricken film I have watched before this.

The zombie-like mob of desperate people fighting for their survival gives a striking and gripping situation where the audience can really empathize. The panic in this scene’s ravaged countryside is realistic enough. And as Tom Cruise defends himself and the kids, the hearing of the low-tone sound of the menacing aliens signaling another attack creates a dread of fear.

Cruise’s character tries to make a good father out of him amidst the danger and the distillation of fear by not exposing his daughter to violence and brutality as much as he could. His performance is effective. He and the child star Dakota Fanning have a good chemistry. They exude the feelings of being terrified and shocked – such believable acting filled with sensation and familial relationship issues. But the rebellious teenage son’s character (Justin Chatwin) is an inevitable cliché. Miranda Otto (remember LOTR?) and Tim Robins live by the scope of roles given to them for the story.

The ending comes a bit suddenly and without much explanation. The resolution gets in directly from the climax where the aliens are defeated, thanks to the crows… that has removed the force field of the alien mothership?? (Now, I have to watch it again to confirm if I got those things right… I haven’t read the book too…) And from there, the family is reunited. The end. I think it has become too quick...

With the Cruise-Spielberg tandem, personally, Minority Report is better – more solid, more establishing, and more engaging. In the latest in the long lineage of adaptations (in different formats as radio drama and film) of H. G. Wells’ novel, Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds” is nothing new to the roster of alien invasion movies having an extraordinary battle for the future of mankind. It’s quite a heavy film to watch. Nevertheless, the film has that fear factor that can get the viewers screaming at the edge of their seats at times. It is a fast-paced movie of family relationships taken into account in a story of alien invasion.