by: John,
December 22, 2012.
Copyright: scenebank.com

War of the Worlds (release date: 2005,
rated PG-13, directed by: Steven Spielberg)

About:
War of the Worlds (2005) begins in the New York City area where protagonist Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) is a crane operator in a dockyard. He's capable at his job, and if he's not book-smart, he's certainly a street-smart man with a hobby of repairing cars. The divorced father of two returns to his urban home to find his ex-wife waiting for him. Mary Ann (Miranda Otto) has their two children waiting in her SUV, and she's dropping them off at Ray's house for his child-custody time. Mary Ann is off to Boston to visit her parents, and will be taking her new husband Tim with her. Naturally, Ray and Mary Ann's post-marriage relationship is a little strained, but they seem mature about it.

Above: a stylized outline of an alien 'Tripod' walking robot, inspired by the 2005 movie, War of the Worlds. Above image copyright: SceneBank.com, 2012

Their children are 10-year old Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and teenager Robbie (Justin Chatwin). The two children reluctantly enter their father's house knowing that their creature comfort level will suffer. Instead of cooking them a meal, Ray tells them to just order out for food while he sleeps for his next day's shift at the dockyard. The next day, Ray awakens to find his daughter watching TV. Rachel tells him that Robbie has taken Ray's fancy sports car out for a drive, despite his not having a driver's license. Angered, Ray steps outside to look for his car when he sees a violent churning in the clouds above his district. Many neighbors are outside looking at the strange clouds too. Suddenly bright flashes of lightning streak down toward the commercial area of town. Unlike normal lightning, this strange new lightning causes no thunder, and it strikes in the same place many times. Suddenly, the lightning stops, and the clouds grow less menacing. Even stranger, Ray's wristwatch has stopped working, every car's engine has stopped functioning, and there's no electricity in his house. Robbie has walked home after his Dad's car stopped working, and now he sees his father. Ray is angry about the car, but more curious about the lightning. Since Ray intends to go see what happened at the location of the lightning strikes, he asks Robbie to stay with Rachel inside the house.

Ray walks several kilometers until he gets to some storefront lined streets. He finds several bystanders huddling around the middle of a street intersection. They start talking about electromagnetic pulses (EMP) that are normally associated with nuclear weapons. But Ray has seen no mushroom cloud. Since none of the automobiles is working, the people can just stand there in the middle of the street. Several police officers try to shoo the spectators away, but the public is too curious, and they stare at the manhole-sized puncture in the pavement. Apparently, this is where the lightning strikes happened — all in the exact same place.

Suddenly, the ground starts trembling in a violent earthquake centered on the mysterious hole in the ground. Pavement starts cracking and heaving to and fro. Frightened, the spectators start to move backward, but still gape at the quivering ground. Next, the pavement sinks downward and moments later, it is pushed violently upward as some sort of metallic object sticks up from the ground, and plants a metallic 'foot' at street level that crushes an entire automobile. A larger metal object slowly rises upward out of the ground, and after several seconds stands up fully. At this point, the spectators start running frantically, but it is too late for many of them. The upright three-legged structure, of a technology that Man could not yet invent, starts firing bright blue energy rays at the running people on the ground. It efficiently kills almost everyone on the street. Ray runs for his life and somehow manages to escape to the safety of his home. He's in shock, and his children snap him back to reality. Ray realizes he must save his children. He must flee the city and take the kids to the countryside to his ex-wife's home. He takes Rachel and Robbie out of the house, and goes to a neighborhood auto mechanic's shop. Ray had had an earlier conversation with that mechanic, where he'd suggested replacing a solenoid in a minivan's engine to get it to function. Luckily, the minivan is still there. It even has the ignition keys inside it. Ray gets in and turns the ignition. The minivan works. The father tells his kids to get inside, then Ray steals the van, and drives off toward the nearby interstate. Hot in pursuit is the giant walking metal robot, which effortlessly destroys buildings and people.

Far away from the three-legged robot, Ray drives his minivan on the motorway, but there are thousands of broken vehicles in all the lanes. The car's occupants are fleeing the city destruction too. Ray has the only working vehicle as far as he can see. He nervously weaves in and out of obstacles and people that are on the freeway. Up until this point, Ray has been concerned about getting his kids to safety, and he has not yet told them what he's seen. He is especially concerned about his young daughter, who might not be able to understand what's going on. If she became afraid, it might affect their chances of successful escape.

Ray arrives at his ex-wife's home. All the nearby homes are deserted, but at least here, they still have electricity. Ray had hoped that Mary Ann and Tim had returned to their middle-class suburban house, but they hadn't. Presumably, they were stuck somewhere between here and Boston. So, Ray takes his kids inside the house. He hides the kids in the basement, turns off all the lights in the house and goes to sleep. In the middle of the night, there's a series of strange knocking noises outside the house followed by a mighty crash. Ray hides the kids in a nearby water heater room, and closes the door just as flames begin to engulf the home. Safe for now, they again fall asleep. Ray awakes to find sunlight coming in through a window. He opens the door, and walks up the stairs to the home's main floor only to see a gaping hole in the house. On the street nearby are the remnants of what had happened the night before. It seems that the night's mighty noise was caused by a jumbo jetliner that had crashed right in the neighborhood. Oddly, however, the upper part of the fuselage had been sheared cleanly off, revealing rows and rows of seats. Ray realizes that the robot he'd seen back in the city may have had something to do with this crash.

He stumbles upon a television news crew that's been scavenging the plane wreckage for any remaining food. Oddly there are no survivors or bodies in the plane debris. Up until now, Ray hasn't heard news of what's been happening all around the world. He meets a news reporter who fills him in. Not only is there one giant walking robot, but there are thousands of the so-called Tripods that have been mercilessly destroying every major city on the Earth. The news crew has been cut off from communication with any American city, presumably due to the widespread destruction. But nobody anywhere seems to know exactly what's going on in those cities.

With the ex-wife's house destroyed, Ray drives his kids in the minivan toward Boston to reunite the kids with his ex-wife. As they flee northward in upstate New York along country roads, their van is taken over by an angry mob of desperate refugees. Now without a vehicle, Ray and his kids start walking North when they see the American military launching an attack against several unseen Tripods beyond a large hill. But none of the military's attacks is effective. The missiles bounce off the Tripod's protective invisible energy shields. Robbie wants to join the military battle, but Ray pleads against Robbie's idea to no avail. Soon separated from Robbie, Ray and Rachel take refuge in the basement of a nearby house, and get surrounded by the presumed owners of the Tripods — strange walking three-legged aliens that are about the size of a man. Soon a huge Tripod robot captures Ray and Rachel. However, several minutes later, they manage to escape a Tripod yet again.

Ray and Rachel walk all the way to Boston, where some remaining military members are escorting hundreds of refugees. Ray notices that one of the walking Tripods is moving in a strange wobbly way, and being mobbed by flying crows. The crows seem to enjoy eating a red substance that coats the Tripods. These birds try to land on the Tripod's head and eat the red stuff. Ray points this out to a soldier, saying that since the crows are landing on the Tripod, its energy shield must be down. The soldier is convinced by Ray's logic, and orders a ground-to-air missile attack on the Tripod, which successfully brings it down. Apparently the Tripods all around have been behaving radically lately. When the soldiers and Ray approach the downed Tripod, they notice an alien life form emerges from it. The alien has three legs and three-fingered hands. The creature appears sick, and is breathing its final breath. It dies right in front of them.

Eventually, Ray and Rachel make their way deeper into war-ravaged Boston, where luckily, Rachel's grandparents' house is still standing, and its occupants are all alive. Even Robbie, who was earlier separated from Ray, is here. The entire family is alive.

The film ends with the narrator saying that what destroyed the alien invaders was not all the mighty weapons of Mankind, but the tiniest of microscopic living organisms. Organisms to which Man is immune, but that the alien invaders had overlooked.


Adaptations:
War of the Worlds (2005) is based on a science fiction novel written by H.G. Wells in 1898 called The War of the Worlds. Famously, the book was adapted for a radio-play in 1938 by Orson Welles, and later, a Paramount color movie in 1953. The new Spielberg film War of the Worlds is similar to the 1953 movie, but with modern special effects, and the backdrop of the Cold War with the Soviet Union (1953 film), or the upcoming Second World War (1938 radio play) replaced by a backdrop of more recent historical events.

Positives:
The film showed many exciting high-action sequences. At first, humanity seems powerless against the invading aliens' superior technology. The Tripod weapons sliced through homes and buildings like a hot knife through butter. The sound effects used for the aliens' deadly ray beams could have easily been louder and more menacing. Instead film director Steven Spielberg chose to make the weapons sound more subdued, as though they were highly efficient products of a technology that used exactly enough energy to destroy things, but not a drop of energy more. When the energy beams strike people, the humans vanish into puffs of ash, leaving behind only their clothes. This makes for a very frightening start to the movie, and an image that is hard to forget. Throughout the film, human clothes are often seen floating down from the sky, showing the scary lethality of the Tripods, even if the Tripods are not in sight.

The production design was excellent, and the visual effects were fantastic. Spielberg set the movie during the colder months of the year. Sometimes it snowed, and sometimes there was water on the ground. This made Nature be a part of the film's mood, since the protagonists had to contend not only with deadly aliens, but also the cold temperatures. The moisture on the ground during much of the film made for interesting visual reflections too.

The handheld camera style used in War of the Worlds is something that Spielberg used to good effect in two of his other movies — Saving Private Ryan(1998) and Minority Report (2002). This handheld style helped make this movie more believable, as we feel we are along for the ride.

In one scene, there was a huge river ferry. The very bright lights on the ferry caused a beautiful effect. The lighting suggested comfort since it was a piece of human technology that was still working during the alien's attack. It seemed like the lights were the subject of the scene, rather than just part of the infrastructure that the actors walked around.

The acting by the main cast was excellent. Tom Cruise did a great job portraying Ray. It's rare to find good child actors, but Dakota Fanning was excellent, despite her youth.

John Williams' fine music score was chilling.

This 2005 film was released only four years after the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City. It was a good time to remake War of the Worlds for modern audiences concerned about the uncertain times they lived in.

Negatives:
In one scene, actress Dakota Fanning is seen at the edge of a rural river. The gentle water was photographed in a way that showed the shimmering sunlight reflecting off it. The same reflected river water light is seen during a close-up of Fanning's face. The effect was beautiful, but the flickering light on her face was a bit too strong to be realistic.

At both the start and end of the film, there's narration while a green leaf on a tree branch is shown onscreen. The computer graphics were unrealistic here, and slightly stylized. Perhaps the leaves looked fine on the big-screen, but on a TV screen, they didn't.

As with any big production, there were many film extras in this big-budget movie. Most of the extras were fine, but some extras stared into the camera instead of up toward where the attacking Tripods would be.

Question:
One has to wonder why the aliens didn't just 'nuke' human cities, since they likely had that sort of technology long before humans ever did. Perhaps it was because they didn't want to contaminate the very planet that they wanted to inhabit. Maybe the death rays were the aliens' version of 'conventional' warfare? Anyhow, including nuclear weaponry would have made for an entirely different movie.

DVD Bonus Features:
There was no director's commentary on the DVD "Full Screen" version reviewed here. But, luckily, there was a featurette called Designing the Enemy - Tripods and Aliens. The featurette included quick interviews with production staff including screenwriter David Koepp, and the grandson of H.G. Wells, Simon Wells.

Favorite Part:
My favorite part was when the first alien Tripod pokes its head out of the ground, stands up on its three legs, and begins firing its energy rays at people in the nearby streets. This was unlike most Sci-Fi movies where the alien's weapons are loud and bright. The Tripod's energy rays destroy two houses by sheering off their tops in a split-second. But the sounds of the falling debris — wood panels, siding, windows, and plywood — is actually louder than the energy beam that caused all the destruction in the first place. It established the alien's technological superiority from the outset, and set the stage for the rest of the movie.

Summary:
Except for a few minor technical things, this film was quite good. The acting was fine, and it was one of Spielberg's best action movies. The modern CGI special effects helped to refresh the original 1953 movie for today's audiences. War of the Worlds was a very entertaining movie.