What Tom and Stevie did back in 2005. Must try harder. (War Of The Worlds (Special Edition, 2 DVDs))

Member Name: paranormalhandy

Product:	War Of The Worlds (Special Edition, 2 DVDs)
Date:	15/05/09 (12 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The first half hour, a badly needed update of an old classic

Disadvantages: The last hour, plot holes you could drive a tripod through

The hyper-reality of the original HG Wells novel "The War of the Worlds" really is the key to the success of this century-old tale of alien invasion, and quickly establishing a suspension of disbelief is something which has exemplified good science fiction ever since. Steven Spielberg's 2005 adaptation (merely called "War of the Worlds") manages in (only) its early scenes to echo the hyper-reality of the book: nineteenth century Surrey becomes twenty-first century New Jersey; and late colonial decline is replaced by post-911 paranoia.

In many ways, "War of the Worlds" is a negative of Spielberg's 1977 movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Both films are set within realistic family situations, shot in a rather bleached, social documentary style. Fans of his films will recognise recurring shots that are signature in earlier features, such as the motif of round holes cut through glass (both by a baseball and an alien handling arm) or an alien abducteee bathed in light (a malevolent echo of the little boy Barry's disappearance in "Close Encouters").

Spielberg seems to have picked a day, and town, for its very ordinariness. Despite being only six or seven miles (as the crow flies) from lower Manhattan, Bayonne NJ seems quite unremarkable - apart from its distinctive, arching bridge (which has the effect, much like the geographically-specific houses blown up in the original novel, that it is possible to pinpoint Ray Ferrier's home to the nearest two or three front doors on Google maps). Every scene in Bayonne is bathed in the dusty golden light of an autumn day (even when Ray sleeps for a few hours, the light does not seem to change in the meantime) and everything seems, in the words of Wells himself "so safe and tranquil". Which is probably the point.

The basics of the story are that Ray (played by Tom Cruise) has been forced under duress to look after his two kids, Rachel and Robbie, after they are dropped off at his house in Bayonne by his estranged ex-wife, for one whole weekend. The trouble is, during this particular weekend the Earth is invaded by a species of alien being who, having first catapulted into the Earth in dart-like spaceships shooting out of EMP-producing thunderstorms, tunnel their way up onto surface level in two-hundred-foot-tall metallic tripods (which they buried under the ground many millions of years before Man ever evolved) and start maurauding all over the world, using laser fire and heat rays to turn the fleeing humans into clouds of grey dust. As a plot it certainly has more holes in it than the original novel, which was explicity worked out with an eye on conventional scientific plausibility; and at the time of the film's release in 2005, there was some talk amongst fans and critics that the Martian invasion story had been altered to more fit in more with Cruise's Scientology beliefs (despite a brief shot of an unnamed red world at the beginning of the film, the planet Mars is never mentioned by name, for example). Spielberg himself has said that the story was updated partly to take into account new scientific discoveries, but also to better reflect the affects of an alien invasion/mass panic of a modern, urban population. Still, at least the film has tripods, and not those awful stingray things from the 1953 George Pal version!

The scenes when the first tripod arises from the ground, shocking the rag-taggle group of onlookers into a stunned silence before marching through them and massacring them, is one of the best of Spielberg's career - another negative of "Close Encounters", echoing the group watching the mothership at the end of that movie. And yet, Spielberg does not let the reality slip (video cameras miraculously still working not withstanding) and it genuinely feels that real streets, real lives, real businesses are being extinguished in the blink (or blinding flash) of an eye. As Ray arrives home, struck dumb with fear and the urge to flee, he frantically rubs the grey dust of fellow human beings into the bathroom sink in panic (at this point, it is impossible for the view not to make comparisons with the 9/11 tragedy). He grabs his kids and runs ...

... At that point, which is about thirty minutes into the film, the action suddenly seems to jump down a gear, and start to rattle. The coincidence that Ray would contrivedly find the only working car in town, and somehow managed to drive away from an exploding, collapsing Bayonne with only half a second to spare, is just stretching things too much. The reality collapses, and we suddenly realise we are watching an action movie - and not, as could and should have been the case, an atmospheric horror. The subsequent scenes in Ray's ex-wife's house, when a 747 jumbo crashes into the living room (and Ray and both children survive, and the car is miraculously perfectly intact within ten feet of the burning fuselage) only add to the insult - and to the disappointment following the opening, brilliant half hour. Some of the unnamed aliens' motives are unexplained throughout the movie, which is intended to add to the reality and the mystery of these creatures - but in actual fact, when put next to too many coincidences and "with one bound, he was free!" moments, this lack of clarity in motiviation just muddies the water further.

The film does contain a few other remarkable highlights - Dakota Fanning watching hundreds of bodies float down a river, tripods running up and down a hillside exterminating people like sheep (why do all these scenes have to take place in torrential rain, by the way? Are they easier to animate in CGI?), and the eerie - but rather unrealistic, set-like - farmhouse covered in Red Weed. But it's not enough. Each incongruity rips the viewer further away from any real empathy or excitement about the movie. It's one of those films where you drive away from the cinema, or return the DVD to the rental company, and find yourself thinking five days later: "Hang on, that doesn't make sense ... "

It's worth it for the first half hour, I would say, which contains some of Spielberg's finest work ever, but you can quite happily turn it off if you get bored or confused after that. The DVD set includes some interesting extras too, but the lack of any kind of feature commentary just reinforces the impression that the film gave at the time - that it had been made during a window in Spielberg and Cruise's work schedules, and was and is a bit of rushed job.

Summary: A missed opportunity that could have been a classic.