The
Film: War of the Worlds (2005) BUY IT
The Principals: Cruise. Spielberg. Koepp. Robbins. FANNING.
The Premise: Tripods come from the ground and ruin the world. Tom Cruise does everything he can to keep his family from being turned into dust or blood spray. You may have heard about this film or the radio play, book, TV shows, and films which preceded it.
“These themed hotels get on my nerves.”
Is It Good: It’s better than good. It’s huge and terrifying. It’s beautiful and utterly Spielbergian. I cannot believe how many great little moments there are in this movie and though I feel like Janunsz Kaminski’s probably the wrong D.P. for this project (the shimmering lights on Dakota during the river sequence for example) it all works so well. The movie has all these giant moments and yet still takes plenty of opportunities to get small and quiet. It works tremendously and because people let the size of the project and the presence of Tom Cruise override their common sense when it comes to good mainstream movies, it’s kind of underrated. If a movie that over $150,000,000 can be underrated.
Cruise has a tough task here, and he plays sort of a loser who is forced to become a man of action. It’s tough to buy him in the part initially, but it escalates quite well and when the big sequences in Tim Robbins’ basement happen, he’s proven once again that regardless of what you think of his real life, the guy is just about the best there is at what he does.
Furthermore, that sequence is the most controversial in the film. But it does so much with so little. The aliens’ goals, their methods, the extent of their damage is handled in some nice and somewhat subtle exposition. That scene ultimately is probably the meatiest in the film and it allows Spielberg to have some really nice little moments. Hitchcock would have been proud.
Middle America had it coming.
Is It Worth A Look: I was a little worried about revisiting this, but am glad I did. It’s still great and I think Christopher Nolan got some sound and music ideas from it. And it’s far from toothless, with the thousands of onscreen casualties and the fields of blood and carnage. If you’ve seen it and dismissed it, grab the Blu-Ray (from our link preferably) and revisit one really raw and vicious event film from Hollywood’s best and brightest.
It really is sort of a classic.
The Witness theme park never caught on.
Random Anecdotes: Kenny from Rescue Me is the pilot of the barge! Justin Chatwin is really not a very good actor. The alien designs, which I remember folks complaining about, are awesome. This film was written, shot, and delivered in record time, which should be taught in the fictional school of BIG BUDGET FILMMAKING. If this really were to happen, I’d survive. Because I’d have no interest in being a hero.
22 comments
One of the few movies I've watched twice in theaters in the past decade. I had too see it at my favorite LA theater(The Vista) after catching it when I was out of town.
Must agree! I thought Cruise did a great job of playing an ass that's forced to re-jigger his attitude. I also thought Dakota Fanning did a great job with a part that felt more like a type (the phobic, maladjusted kid), while Justin Chatwin was really hard to watch as the asshole son (I hoped for his ultimate demise as alien plant fertilizer). Visuals were great and my only real complaint was the ending (see fertilizer above).
Besides the annoying muppet running around and being an overall nuisance with her "I'm allergic to peanut butter" and "I can't sleep on that, I have back problems", then yeah pretty decent movie.
I'm happy to see this movie get respect. So many people shit on this simply because it's a Tom Cruise Joint–but there are moments in this film that are scarier than any scene in any recent horror movie. The first tripod attack, where people are literally turned into ashes/dust, is horrifying. I will concur that the ending is kind of a cop-out, but other than that, this is a pretty amazing film that does not get the love it deserves.
Sorry dude. No. I know you're trying to play Hollywood Nice these days, but no. If you ever score a shot in the chair yourself, stay away from this turd if you're looking for cues. Seriously, the only good thing is the fog horns and that's stolen from CE3K. Spielberg phoned this one in.
This is a bit of a mixed bag for me. It got some fantastic moments (almost any moment with the tripods is pure cinematic gold), Cruise is very good in this, John Williams surprises by delivering a good creepy score and the sound design is out of this world. On the other hand there's the awful 15 minutes with Tim Robbins and a feeling of the script being just one or two rewrites from finished form. (where was our motherfucking HMS Thunder Child scene!?) Overall, a very watchable movie, especially for the beautifully staged Tripod scenes, just shy of being among Spielbergs best.
The remake..? >close tab<
the issues i had were Fanning was a disobedient brat and the son surviving an explosion. Also how were the tripods buried a million years ago and we never noticed AND the aliens were still unaware of germs. but other than htat it was good. Also making humans scary was a genius scene.
Great movie over all. I do think it needed more battle scenes, the tripods were the stars afterall. I heard there were scenes cut out of Cruise and Fanning running away from the initial tripod attack at a nearby apartment complex as the tripods puncture away humans from their dwellings.
Hated. Tim Robbins was terrible. The kid should've been dead. So much of it simply didn't make sense. I have no problem with Tom Cruise but he certainly didn't do anything to make this movie worthwhile.
You are quite right Nick, it IS underated regardless of its Holywood magnitude. I am not afraid to say that the build up of the tripod's first appearance was electrifying and genuinely had me on the edge of my seat.
It has big moments and small moments yet they all gel in a very satisfying way. And I think Cruise is great, and I mean in general, there I said it.
I think with 2/3 more action beats and Spielberg having the balls to kill off Robbie, this would have been a superb film, not just a great one.
The fact that the 'Berg saw fit to make this and release it in Summer 2005 was one of the things that finally made me realise that he'd turned into an asshole. Summer 2005 was when we started to reap what we sowed in the illegal 2003 war on Iraq. We realised that terrorist attacks might become a fact of life. (Indeed they did, with the July bombings in London.) At the same time, our governments were using our consequent fear to pass draconian laws – endangering the very liberties we had been fighting for. This is the context in which Spielberg released a film not just designed to capitalise on those fears of attack, but also one that proposed that we would very quickly cease to behave in a civilised manner – as in the 'gun' scene by the river crossing. It was a horribly cynical film. (Interestingly, two other blockbusters that summer – Revenge of the Sith and Batman Begins – actually saw fit to discuss fear, and the use of fear by governments, criminals etc.)
I really didn't like this movie. Apart from the truly offputting and annoying offspring there was nothing to actually hate about the film but it just just left me feeling indifferent.
Agreed. Would make a great double feature with The Mist.
I remember hating this movie in the theater (it was very different from what I was expecting) but I caught it again on TNT about a month ago and I was surprised by how great it really is–exciting, scary and extremely well-paced. My only complaints are Justin Chatwin's terrible acting and the aliens themselves… sorry, the designs are essentially knock-offs of the aliens from INDEPENDENCE DAY, which already sucked. Spielberg would have been better off not showing them at all…
It sucks. Nick may think he is Joe Hollywood these days but that does not stop this film from sucking hard. Cruise is never ever believable. You are tool.
2005 was probably the darkest there has ever been for summer blockbusters – batman begins, revenge of the sith and war of the worlds – 3 'dark' or moreso 'not happy' films. pretty awesome I think. Memorable summer. Also I think this movie is fantastic, forget the cop out ending or the 9/11 imagery, just the raw filmmaking was what made this movie, it was so eerie up to and including the tripod attack, I'd say that from the beginning to when they get to Miranda Otto's house is a masterpiece – the rest of the film is pretty awesome too.
Like AI, Spielberg lost his nerve and gave us a gloopy happy cop out ending. It would have been far braver for Cruise and his daughter to join a handful of survivors who would form the resistance like John Chrstopher's Tripods novels.
Jesus #12, let it go…
On another note, I always liked this movie despite the crap it got when it was released. However, some comment above did just get me thinking. How can everyone and their dog grip about how stupid the aliens were in Signs and them give the aliens in this movie a pass?
It's already been said a few times, but it needs re-iteration: the alien designs are terrible, cliche crap! They look nearly identical to ID4! I really wish the aliens had just been floating brains with stems and segmented eyes, or some such craziness. Something OTHER than a version of an alien nearly every movie-goer had already seen countless other times when this flick came out.
Oh, it's THIS version. A handful of legitimately strong scenes does not a good movie make. I'll take the original over this any day of the week.
Other than the sappy ending, this is an absolutely terrfic film, and easily one of the best remakes.
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