Caffeinated Dreams

I don’t know of any other way to explain how great this movie turned out to be. The previews are very decieving, at first glance it looked like fanservice-blow’em-up alien Tom Cruise action. Well, it is, sort of, but there is much more to it. A lot of human elements.

(Spoilers at the very bottom in quote!)

I’m a fan of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, and also enjoyed the radio broadcast done by Orson Welles in 1938 (the broadcast that sent America into panic, thinking there really was an invasion). I’ve seen other films of WotW, such as the 1953(?) version, and it was good enough.

This movie follows the book extremely well, yet I feel it may be under-credited by hardcore book to movie critics (you know, the elitist snobs who scoff at anything not 100% perfect, or for the sake of higher-than-thou). I honestly feel this is the movie that the original should have been like. It doesn’t feel like a remake at all. There is plenty of explosions, deaths, tripod and city-destroying action, but this isn’t a mindless special effect orgy. It’s suspensful, it successfully tricks you into thinking we’re doomed even if you’ve read the book and know the ending.

It starts out in New York, no real surprise there. Ray (Cruise) is going to be taking care of his two children, an adolescent teen and a (too cute) 10-year old daughter, neither of which really enjoy staying at their fathers place. Strange lightning storms begin and soon after a bunch of “wtf” chaos breaks loose. You don’t get any background, you don’t get any special inside-scoops that most movies give the viewers. This one brings you into it and puts you right in the same “wtf” atmosphere as the characters. Then the awesome tripods make their appearance. Insert more “wtf” and the rest of the film here.

While Cruise is a great actor (though I’m not a fan, I can certainly respect his skills), the character of his daughter was amazing. Dakota Fanning played as a scared (more like absolutely fucking terrified) little girl who is always told to covered her eyes when everything goes to shit and to not be exposed to the bloodshed and people getting the life sucked from them. She’s a very tough and intelligent little girl, but if she saw everything that we saw, it’s enough to cause permant mental disorders of some sort to a kid that age. Probably to anyone. She did see the floating bodies coming down the river though, then her father ran up behind to cover her eyes and take her back to the road.

Just as in the book, the aliens die off by disease. The ending was well done; it ended as suddenly as it began. The audiance clapped, but there were some who didn’t know how to react. I guess the audience I was with had all read the book and expected the ending, and we were all sastified that Speilburg crafted this film to show the way the book is meant to be interpreted. Puny man can throw their superpower weapons and still get the shit kicked out of them as if they were flies. Well, that’s one way to think of it. There is a lot more which I don’t feel like going into… too much to write.

What I like best was the way it ends with Morgan Freeman speaking:

“But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro. It was inevitable. By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain.”