CORPORATE LINE: On June 29th, 2005, Earth goes to war. From Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures comes “War of the Worlds,” directed by Steven Spielberg and starring international superstar Tom Cruise. A contemporary retelling of H.G. Wells’s seminal classic, the sci-fi adventure thriller reveals the extraordinary battle for the future of humankind through the eyes of one American family fighting to survive it. The film also stars Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Justin Chatwin, and Tim Robbins.
Cruise stars as Ray Ferrier, a divorced dockworker and less-than-perfect father. Soon after his ex-wife (Miranda Otto) and her new husband drop off his teenage son Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and young daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) for a rare weekend visit, a strange and powerful lightning storm touches down.
Moments later, at an intersection near his house, Ray witnesses an extraordinary event that will change all their lives forever. A towering three-legged war machine emerges from deep beneath the earth and, before anyone can react, incinerates everything in sight. An ordinary day has suddenly become the most extraordinary event of their lifetimes – the first strike in a catastrophic alien attack on Earth.
Ray scrambles to get his children away from this merciless new enemy, embarking on a journey that will take them across the ravaged countryside, where they become caught in the desperate tide of refugees fleeing from an extraterrestrial army of Tripods.
But no matter where they run, there is no safety, no refuge … only Ray’s unconquerable will to protect the ones he loves.
THE GOOD: By connecting terrorism to his version of War of the Worlds, Spielberg has created a marvel of fear. The entire unknown enemy brings chills and it’s almost surprising no one else has managed to tap into terrorism for its unknown and bring such fear—it’s no surprise that Spielberg did it so brilliantly.
The first hour is amazing and unparalleled in film today. So many films try hard to scare us and yet Spielberg does it so seamlessly. As with Jaws, Spielberg messes with your mind and teases you with terror. There is so much suspense that you almost explode. Spielberg leaves it up to his cast to express the fear and make us believe that the world is coming to an end.
Cruise is damn good as usual. Fanning is like clockwork—she never misses no matter the emotion. This is one dynamite cast that has to translate fear and express terror. So much of this film is CGI that the cast are actually looking at a green screen and yet still translate that terror–brilliant.
THE EXTRAS:
“Revisiting the Invasion” is an interview with Spielberg and Cruise as they do their best pouring on their affection for each other. It’s just a little over seven minutes so don’t get excited if you want to listen to Spielberg discuss the film in depth—it doesn’t happen.
“The H.G. Wells Legacy” is quite interesting as it looks at the life of Wells and his work. Also included are interviews with his grandkids.
“Steven Spielberg and the Original War of the Worlds” finds Spielberg discussing the original film and how much it influenced his movie. He also gave cameos to some of the original stars.
“Characters: The Family Unit” is an underwhelming featurette about the characters and how they were cast. The actors discuss their rolls in the movie.
“Pre-Visualization” shows how Spielberg and his team came up with the look of the film.
The most interesting featurettes from the bonus material are the “Production Diaries.” The diaries show much of the behind-the-scenes goings on. We watch as sets are begging put together and how the special effects work from the ground up.
“Designing The Enemy: Tripods and Aliens” gives us the idea behind the aliens.
“Scoring War of the Worlds” goes behind the scene of the making of John Williams score. It’s interesting to find out that he didn’t see the entire film when creating the score.
THE BAD: The ending ruins any chance this version of the War of the Worlds had at being timeless. It was hard going into the final scene with such pleasure only to have it implode.
FRANKLY: As a viewer you can only sit and wonder what you’d do in such a situation. The aliens are scary—seriously scary. Just sitting there wondering what I’d do in a similar situation is actually terrifying. It’s too bad such a brilliant movie self-destructs. It’s not like Spielberg to drop the ball this way—even with that said its still the must see film of the year.
+ Charlie Craine
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