War of the Worlds - the unreality of it all

[Harvey Chartrand]

This is going to sound totally crazy, but here goes anyway...
I couldn't buy into WAR OF THE WORLDS.
Not because of the absurdity of invaders from outer space burying their death machines on planet Earth for one million years, waiting that long to activate them and not spending a few years researching our planet's microorganisms and developing vaccines against them...
Not because the towering tripods are vaporizing thousands upon thousands of people, when the aliens are here to harvest our blood (so why disintegrate everyone?)...
Not because Spielberg weakens and loses his nerve, letting Tom Cruise's son survive. The lad turns up at the end. He's staying with his mother at Gene Barry's house in Boston. This happy reunion is tacked on after a hugely emotional moment when we all thought the boy had decided to run headlong into the advancing tripods because he had to die facing them, instead of running away... He's an American, dammit!
No, what I can't buy into is that these events are taking place in a parallel universe where no one has ever heard of the story THE WAR OF THE WORLDS. Not once in the entire film does anyone say, "Hey, this is just like what H.G. Wells predicted in his novel THE WAR OF THE WORLDS!" Nor does anyone observe: "Remember that old Orson Welles radio play – the Martian invasion broadcast that had half the population of the Eastern Seaboard heading for the hills? It was just like this, like what is happening before our very eyes! Welles was predicting the end of humanity!"
So for this simple reason, I couldn't suspend disbelief.
But WAR OF THE WORLDS is a good picture anyway. Summer popcorn fun at the air-conditioned multiplex. Everything Welles hated in the modern-day cinema. Go see it anyway.

[etimh]

Yikes! Harvey, you've got to warn of SPOILERS when you post about something that many have not had the chance to see.

Excellent points nonetheless.

But I guess I don't need to go see the film now--just kidding. :p

Tim

[Chirpy_Sabz]

hehe.

well I havent seen this film yet, I saw Batman Begins last week which was okay, nothing special.

[Orson&Jazz]

That would have been a trip if one of the characters mentioned the radio show!


"Why are the martians attacking? Why haven't we been informed of such an attack ahead of time?"

"But sir, we were warned. Remember the Orson Welles radio show back in 1938?"

"Oh right. But, I thought it was all a hoax?"

[Tony]

I must compliment you Harvey: that's a fantastically astute observation- really great. They should have had some old codger say "this is just like that old radio show by Orson Welles' and some kid would reply 'Who???'.

Great thought you've had. As for the movie, I bet Tom Cruise had no problem with suspending his disbelief, as he actually believes the Thetans came to earth 25 million years ago, and they infested humans, and the clearing process in scientology is to get rid of the thetans. So obviously therapy and antidepressants won't work, as it's those nasty thetans causing the problems...

gee.... Speilberg's film sounds positively realistic after thinking about that!

[Chirpy_Sabz]

That would have been a trip if one of the characters mentioned the radio show!


"Why are the martians attacking? Why haven't we been informed of such an attack ahead of time?"

"But sir, we were warned. Remember the Orson Welles radio show back in 1938?"

"Oh right. But, I thought it was all a hoax?"

haha yea that would have been great! surely would have made the film better

[etimh]

Wait a minute, wait a minute. I realize you guys are just having fun with this idea but you've actually raised some serious philosophical questions about the nature of reality and representation that should be considered further.

First, addressing the adaptation issue: there is a significant problem with assuming that cinematic narratives should somehow be "aware" of the source material in which they were based. Why, then, wouldn't the fictional world of any narrative drawn from another source be, in fact, conscious of itself? Why wouldn't the characters in, let's say, a film adapted from a Stephen King book, say, "Hey this is just like that Stephen King novel."

But further, one of the fundamental mechanisms of narrative cinema is its ability to displace lived reality with the world of the fictional narrative. This process of differentiation is essential for spectator identification and the resultant "suspension of disbelief" allows us to become sutured into the world of the narrative. That, as they say, is entertainment, folks.

There have been numerous cinematic experiments that play with this phenomenon (as well as endless theoretical attempts to explain the philosophical ideas behind it). But conventional narrative films are dependent on us NOT questioning this process. Even film realities that are purely fantasy based, like Star Wars, for instance, depend on this process of creating a "reality effect."

All of this would be philosophical, of course, if the issues raised didn't have such profound relevance for our contemporary media saturated condition. In a world where film seems to immediately incorporate historical actualities and in turn, real, lived events become almost cinematic, it is important for conscious individuals to be able to critically differentiate the "real" from "representational reality." But don’t lose sight of that other function of film: to entertain. And this depends, sometimes, on forgetting that we are simply watching a movie.

Tim

[Roger Ryan]

Actually, the Welles' radio "War" concept was used in "The Adventures Of Buckaroo Bonzai" - at one point in that film it is revealed that Welles was the only person to warn the public about an invasion from outer space, but was later brainwashed into believing he had simply done a radio drama!

Apart from setting the new movie in New Jersey and the use of television reports heard early-on, Spielberg's version bears virtually no resemblance to Welles' radio show. The new additions to the story don't really gel with H.G. Wells' original concept (which is actually followed fairly closely plotwise), but the direction is often brilliant. For just maintaining the horrific tone throughout and not allowing comic relief or romance to interfere, Spielberg deserves commendation. Watching "War Of The Worlds" is a bit like witnessing 9/11 again; Spielberg has the knack to make the spectacle not just spectacular, but frightening and unnerving as well.

[Glenn Anders]

Sorry, Roger. I was so unnerved by Spielberg's WAR OF THE WORLDS that I did something that I've never done in nearly 70 years of going to movie theaters: I asked for my money back.

Interestingly, after some hmming n' hawing, an assistant manager at the San Francisco Metreon hauled out a long yellow pad and asked me to sign it, in order to explain the refund. There were about 80 other names on the list!

I went in wanting to like the film, but within ten minutes, I was muttering under my breath: "This is b--l s--t.

When I began to shout it, my frail grip on sanity suggested that I leave. A typical blockbuster audience sat, zombie-like, staring at the screen without the slightest emotion, with scarcely noticing my cry.

Harvey Chartrand's brilliant observation is not a tenth of the failures of logic and story telling. The problem of CGI is that it robs a film of continuity, and creates the zombie movie goers I refer to above.

Go demand your local theater show THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES: THE RISE OF THE POLITICS OF FEAR. Now there is a movie which tells us how the Martians have taken over the World!

Glenn

[etimh]

Couldn't agree more Glenn. I finally saw it just today and it is j. u. n. k.--JUNK.

Tim

[dmolson]

Can't say I thought it was spectacular, but it was pure spectacle, especially the first third -- he emerged into the 'War' with the same steady march as 'Saving Pvt Ryan', and it froze me. The mass sight of people stopped in their tracks, then suddenly thrown into a vat of fear, where panic and then mob survival ties in a lot of today's issues (and the 9-11 parallels were shoutouts, certainly). I thought Spielberg was building a very intense and fascinating map of man's weaknesses until we reached the basement grotto with Tim Robbins, where after some slow-moving plot moments, it cracked open the 'suspension of disbelief' bubble I had partitioned myself in... kind of like when Max and the Chief would hunker under the 'Cone of Silence' but never realize that it was a party gag invention... The ending was pure crap, although I don't mind it when films leave more questions than answers. But how did the kid survive? That would seem like a possibly thrilling side-tale in itself, if it wasn't virtually impossible, considering the massive mechanical laser breathing, blood vacuuming, eating anuses that were the 'monsters from outerspace.' He did a good job of camofluaging his 'anti-Iraq War' beliefs to the point where I can imagine GWB chawing away on his jerky, loving this film to bits.
Like Harvey said, in the end it was a pretty decent escapist flick in what's been a fairly bad summer of films.

[etimh]

Yeah, cruise being sucked up into the monster-anus was the best part. And then he gets pooped out--total comedy. :p

Tim

[Lucy]

I agree that Cruise's kid at the end was a total copout, and the Tim Robbins scenes were kind of dull, but the effects were great and there were alot of chilling 9/11-like images throughout. Noone does spectacular mayhem like Spielberg, and this picture shows he hasn't lost his touch. There are many ways to pick a film like this apart in terms of logic, but I'd rather just sit back, relax, and stuff my face with popcorn and candy. It's not a great movie by any means, but I found it entertaining for the most part. As for you guys that hated it, I can't imagine what you were expecting from it. Descriptions like "junk" and "bullshit" don't tell us much.

[etimh]

Well, Lucy, I don't expect much from Spielberg films except big, bloated, sappy, melodrama--occasionally overburdened (as in this film) with technological gimmickry and special effects to the point of distraction. But all kidding aside, here are some point by point problems with the film, IMHO:

First, I could begin with questioning the wisdom of digging up this Victorian xenophobic fossil as a narrative for a film project in the first place. Orson's unique re-visioning of the original H.G. Wells story aside, the original WOTW is actually considered a fairly primitive and unsophisticated work of alien invasion science fiction. It was, I understand, a product of the imaginations of its time and should be respected in that context. But as a jumping off point, Speilberg had nowhere to go with his narrative but to fill it with all of the dopey extraneous and completely absurd plot elements that litter this mess. And I don't think the parallels to the realities of 911 were clever or insighftul, either visually or metaphorically.

On to visual style. Glenn is absolutely correct when he cites the problems with the CGI in this film. Complete breakdown in continuity and a total distraction from the narrative flow. Contrast the scenes involving conventional real-life scenarios and its even more painful--the cinematography and production design is TERRIBLE. Look at the sequence in the underground bunker with Robbins: where are the light sources coming from, for god's sakes! It looks like the lighting set-up in a bad student film! And don't even get me started on the incredibly cheapo set design work--that "red weed" set piece that Cruise stumbles out on to is only the worst example. Another thing I notice in particular is editing and the cutting in the film throughout was just plain clunky. I mean, I literally noticed myself several times saying, "Ouch, that was a painful cut!" And the list goes on and on.

While it can be assumed that Spielberg has more auteurist control over the total vision of his films than other directors, the one thing that he absolutely has control over is the performance of his actors. He had some good people to work with here, Cruise included, who could cry nicely on cue. But the direction of character interaction was stiff, awkward, and frankly unbelievable at times. I actually felt creepy whenever Cruise and that actor playing the son interacted in any way. And not just at the beginning when it was supposed to be uncomfortable, but at the end too--I just burst out laughing when the kid appeared and went to hug his old man in the middle of the street. Duh. Way to go Stevie!

I've got to stop, but those are a few of my very personal gripes with the film. As I've said earlier, I actually like a couple of Spielberg's films, but this is certainly not one of them.

Tim

[tony williams]

These are all very interesting comments by discerning members of this group and not entirely due to payback against a rich director who refused to help someone he supposedly admired. Everyone may wish to access today's SUNDAY TIMES U.K. and read an article about a low-budget film about penguins being more popular than Tom Cruise. If he ends up temporarily in an alien anus in Speilberg's films, these delightful creatures are walking over him in the box-office and probaly depositing certain items relevant to his status as an actor!