Our ongoing series looking at movies that took the blockbuster genre into the realms of excess. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
By John J. Joex
Rating: 1 out of 5 Stars
War of the Worlds is of course H.G. Wells’ infamous alien invasion novel and a seminal work of Science Fiction literature. It received the big screen treatment back in the 1950’s with George Pal’s well-remembered film and Steven Spielberg decided that it needed a twenty first century updating which resulted in the 2005 film that he directed and that Tom Cruise starred in. This film sets the story in contemporary United States, as did the George Pal movie, and focuses on the character Ray Ferrier (Cruise) who is a divorced dock worker and the father of two. One day, as he is watching the kids while his wife is out of town, a strange lightning storm approaches which disables all electronic devices in the area, including cars. Then, monstrous tripods emerge from the ground (they had apparently been buried there by the aliens many years prior) and start to destroy everything in the area with their heat rays. Ray and his kids manage to escape in a car that he gets working and they flee from the town trying to find someplace safe from the alien invaders and also trying to understand what has happened to cause all of this.
Many people consider George Pal’s War of the Worlds from 1953 a classic of science fiction cinema, and that film definitely has its merits. But that one also had many flaws, one being its overly religious tone which it did not draw from the book (and for technical flaws, just take a look at the very noticeable wires holding up the Martian war machines). So whereas some classic Science Fiction movies are poor candidates for a remake (see last week’s Planet of the Apes review as an example), War of the Worlds actually could have stood up to a movie updating. Unfortunately, Spielberg’s take on the story added nothing that Pal did not cover (except superior special effects) and actually failed to even measure up to that earlier film.
H.G. Wells’ tale is one of the all time greatest Science Fiction stories (and one of my personal favorites) and a faithful adaptation that followed close to the setting (Great Britain in the late 19th century) and structure of the novel would make for a great movie. Still, I understand where film-makers want to bring it forward to a contemporary timeframe to make it more accessible to their audience. But much of that story could still translate to a more modern setting, and the United States six years ago had some particularly interesting parallels to Great Britain at the end of the 19th century. Wells’ novel very much acted as a comment on British society and their arrogant, imperialistic nature at that time. The British Empire was at a high point and he used this story to turn the society he lived in on its head by making them the victims of a crushing, unstoppable enemy (much as they had done to smaller nations through their imperialistic ventures). The United States in 2004-5 could be seen in a similar light and adapting War of the Worlds in that setting offered many opportunities to explore the same themes that Wells had presented in his original novel. Unfortunately, Spielberg’s movie did none of that.
Instead, this film gave us little more than an sfx-gasm affair that paled in comparison to the film that preceded it and the original novel as well. It did not try to give us a more faithful adaptation of the book nor did it really inject much in the way of substance to the tale that it did deliver. Instead, it gave us basically a chase film as Tom Cruise’s character and his kids spend much of the time running from the marauding aliens. True, the original novel did this to some extent as well, but it also used that structure to give the main character opportunities to comment on British society and the horror and degradation that this once cocky people must have felt at the heels of this insurmountable invading force. You’ll find none of that in Spielberg’s film, though. And not that he had to use this to make any grand socio-political statements. War of the Worlds works equally well as an engaging, horrific Science Fiction tale. George Pal picked up on this with his film and where he did succeed was in making the audience feel the dread and helplessness of the film’s characters in the face of a monolithic enemy. Spielberg did work some of this into his film, but all too he often resorted to manipulative film-making techniques like the dreaded child-in-jeopardy ploy (a well that he has drawn from far too many times in his career).
So in the end we get a film that seems to have little other purpose than to dazzle the audience with special effects and fill up seats in the theaters. And it definitely did that. Made on a budget of $132 million, it earned back nearly $600 million worldwide during its theatrical run. So on that basis, it was a success. But it’s definitely not as well remembered by Science Fiction fans as George Pal’s movie and it did nothing to advance the original classic tale that H.G. Wells crafted over a century earlier.
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