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| War of the Worlds |
War of the Worlds
2005
Science Fiction4.0 stars out of 5
Sometimes I watch movies solely to deconstruct them, and
Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds is a great one to take apart. The movie
states it is based on the 1898 novel by HG Wells, but I think they might well have
given more overt credit to the 1938 Halloween radio broadcast by Orson Welles
(funny how he and HG almost share a surname)
and his Mercury Theatre compatriots.
Just watch the first five minutes and count the number of
homages to Orson; the style and tone of the opening narration by Morgan Freeman
being the most obvious, the long tracking shot being another. Spielberg and his
writers also make extensive use of foreshadowing during these opening sequences
that become quite clear by the movie’s end. Consider the camera fade from a view
of Earth that slowly turns into a blood red planet and then into a red traffic
light - all pretty easy to puzzle out, but still pretty cool in my opinion.
Another aspect that I like is the aliens’ (Martians if the red means anything)
tripod machinery. From their bull-like bellowing to a 19th Century vision
of machinery (watch the steam, clanking, and water expulsion as they rise from
the ground) to the sinuous movement of their tentacles; these mechanical
creations seem clearly designed by Spielberg and company to evoke something
unearthly but also something Victorian.
Another aspect of this movie worth watching is to see Tom
Cruise play Ray Ferrier, a car
loving longshoreman. At first we see him
as he sees himself, manly, capable, and every woman’s desire. But his children
played by Justin Chatwin as Robbie and Dakota Fanning as Rachel soon show us,
Ray is less than a capable dad. We know this story arc because we’ve seen it so
many times before. We expect to see Ray mature from his Peter Pan version of an
adult into a real adult that earns the love of his children. Yes, we’ve seen it
before, but in this movie, we have a chance to see some unusual forces that
re-shape Ray: the panic, the near catatonia in some, the withdrawal and
disassociation of many of the people undergoing an alien assault. The psychological
effects from invasion are not usually addressed in such movies. It was
refreshing, if hard to watch for the pain of the sufferers. In the end, we see
what we expect to see from Hollywood, but quite frankly, if you watch the movie
for the little things, you can really enjoy this film.
Some violence
that would be quite inappropriate for children under 10, but a good science
fiction movie with deep roots in radio and literature than is worth seeing.
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