I'm not going to say that I'm some sort of film critic or that my opinion should be valued above anyone elses when you're going to see a film, but I got a chance to see War of the Worlds last week and there were a few things about the movie that really bothered me. Keep in mind that these are relatively spoilers to the film, and as such can be easily avoided by humming the Bridge over River Kwai theme to yourself. Give it a go, it really works.
I'll put these in chronological order, not that it makes much of a different.
1. Like every movie with a single father, Tom Cruise's kids seem to hate him for not being married to their mom any more. It's formulaic but that isn't my problem with how it works in this film. In the first half hour it's established that the son really isn't all that happy with his father, which is fine. Then the "War of the Worlds" begins. Tom's character does everything he can to get his kids out of the city safely and avoid the mass of destruction that the aliens are causing. Finally, when they get out of town and are driving towards their parents house, the kid rips into him. I'm sorry, if the entire world is under attack and you've just recently seen hundreds, if not thousands of people dying, I think the fact that daddy hasn't been around for your little league games might get pushed to the back of your head. I spent the next hour and a half hoping Cruise would just smack the kid silly.. it was that bad.
2. Eventually all of the people bunch up and start walking towards a ferry. Don't ask me... I would have thought some bridges might still be intact between New York and Boston... but perhaps not. On the way, they cross this one bridge where they show a "9/11-esque" board filled with "Have you seen this person" type materials. 9/11 is something that Americans, and a good deal of people around the world will never forget, but I thought this was done in very bad taste. To me, it seemed as if it was a heavy handed tribute to the memory of what happened in New York. If you look at it objectively, there is no way that something like that would happen in a end of the world disaster.
I thought about it seriously after the movie was over and decided that if I got seperated from my wife and daughter in an apocalyptic situation, I would do everything that I could to find them and make sure that they were safe, but I sure as shit wasn't going to head to the scrapbook store and put together a collage. Also, where in the hell would the pictures come from? It's not like you would see people getting evaporated by lasers and would think... "Hmm... I need to go back to the house and get a picture of little Timmy for a 'missing' poster."
3. When they're hiding in the basement they use a mirror to escape from one of the searching creatures. A mirror fools them? Are Kodos and Kang directing the invasion party? Jesus...
4. Boston survives this massive onslaught of aliens and looks to be virtually intact when they arrive there. First the Red Sox win the World Series... now this?
5. **major movie spoiler** I'm warning you... I'm going to talk about the ending... run away now....
If you're still reading, you either don't care about the ending or already know how it ends, so here goes.
Fucking miniscule organisms kill the aliens? How lame is that? They've been plotting this invasion for millions of years (as their ships are buried underground) and they can't think to do an air and soil sample? Hell, I couldn't get a well at my house without having the water checked out. You don't think an invading alien race wouldn't want to give the air a sniff before trying to take over the place. Hell, even Star Trek ships could do that. We're an 'M Class' planet, remember? We're prime for takeover by everyone.
Man, just writing this column makes me even more upset for sitting through the movie. There were some good points to the movie, but on the whole I really disliked it... can you tell?
