War of the Worlds (2005)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Ray Ferrier is a divorced dockworker and less-than-perfect father. Soon after his ex-wife and her new husband drop off his teenage son and young daughter for a rare weekend visit, a strange and powerful lightning storm touches down.
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35 films that influenced War of the Worlds
What critics say influenced War of the Worlds
Some might say it was accomplished with the film "Independence Day" less than ten years previous, but, sadly, the Emmerich movie is far too campy when compared to the expertise of Steven Spielberg.
It's visceral, it's psychological, and it comes more from the terrified performances of Tom Cruise and the remarkable Dakota Fanning (the angelic 10-year-old from "Hide & Seek" and "Man on Fire" ) -- as a dock-worker deadbeat dad and his daughter on the run from 100-foot alien killing machines -- than from the film's hyper-realistic special effects and monsters (which aren't that different from the ones in the shamelessly corny "War of the Worlds" rip-off "Independence Day" ).
A 1996 film called The Arrival provided one of the smarter cinematic variations, though it was dwarfed that year by the silly popcorn actioner Independence Day.
The movie is a thought-free breeze of summer cineplex air, and is far and away the definitive screen adaptation of Wells' work, acing out the rickety 1953 Byron Haskin-directed version as well as "Independence Day"(1996), which stole from Wells' book without giving credit.
Now, one might have delusions of "Star Wars" and "Independence Day" and imagine that what happens next is the Ewoks trip the AT-ATs and Will Smith pulls the driver out by the scruff of its neck and kicks its sorry extra-terrestrial ass back to its own solar system.
It's all familiar, whether first experienced in 1938, when Orson Welles distilled it into ersatz news reports on nationwide radio and caused a panic; in 1953, when George Pal's big-budget version terrified a baby-boom generation just out of its diapers; or in 1996, when you had green hair and pins in your lips and it was called "Independence Day."
When you compare it with a movie like "The Day After Tomorrow," which depicted the global consequences of cosmic events, it lacks dimension: Martians have journeyed millions of miles to attack a crane operator and his neighbors (and if they're not Martians, they journeyed a lot farther).
However, unlike The Day After Tomorrow where the action is the draw, it’s the biggest weakness of War of the Worlds .
Now think of the other disaster/destruction films, like "Independence Day," "The Day After Tomorrow," "Deep Impact," whatever.
Perhaps that gets him away from copyright infringement claims from Ridley Scott since their bodies also resemble slow moving Alien creatures.
These fiends from another planet, which are closer cousins to the creatures from Alien than those from E.T., aren't out to make contact or colonize; their goal is extermination.
The aliens and their tripods have a look reminiscent of old cover illustrations of Well's novel (production design by Rick Carter ("Jurassic Park," "Artificial Intelligence: AI") combined with ferocious sound effects (sound design and effects editing by Michael Babcock "Starsky & Hutch") that render them forbiddingly modern.
Spielberg calls upon his entire bag of tricks for War of the Worlds, and fans may notice visual cues to Jaws , Jurassic Park and Saving Private Ryan , among others.
The unsatisfying combination of freeze-dried family troubles and enormous, thudding monsters is reminiscent of "The Lost World," Spielberg's mediocre "Jurassic Park" sequel, but the pervasive paranoia in "War," not to mention its recurrent theme of a doe-eyed child in peril, recalls his ambitious failure "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence" (which, oddly enough, debuted in theaters exactly four years ago today).
He takes the kind of menace previously found in the terrestrial-based monsters of Jaws and Jurassic Park and applies it to life amongst the stars.
The screenplay, by little-known writer Josh Friedman and the excellent adventure scribe David Koepp ("Jurassic Park," "Panic Room," "Spider-Man" ), makes a bold decision that proves to be the film's single greatest strength: It shows everything from Ray's point of view.
Not that Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise and screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park) seem interested in making a political parable.
Spielberg's version -- which references everything from the George Pal 1953 version to the director's own canon of thrillers, particularly Jaws and Jurassic Park -- adheres to the basic Wells framework.
The buildup to the first eruption is classic Spielberg, harking back to the days of Duel and Jaws.
It’s Spielberg’s best and truest action film since Jaws, relentlessly paced, pitch-perfectly acted (the young Fanning is almost certain to get a Best Supporting Actress nod come Oscar time), and rife with moments of such horrifically poetic imagery that it’s all you can do not to stop thinking about them long after the film has ended.
This is the harshest, most terrifying film in Spielberg’s canon, and this is the guy who made Jaws.
There’s direct comparisons to be made to the relative mystery of the invaders á la Jaws , mass carnage and saturated cinematography from Saving Private Ryan , a scene strikingly similar to the raptor kitchen hunt in Jurassic Park and the list goes on.
Although the special effects are elaborate and expensive, "War of the Worlds" has some of the stripped-down ingenuity of "Jaws" and "Duel."
The big-budget follow-up to the successful Jaws (1975), which became the number one box office hit of all-time, by Steven Spielberg ("Jurassic Park"/"War of the Worlds"/"E.T.
There is no doubt the man who mastered the philosophical with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the poetic with E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial wanted to make, in his words, a ?kick-ass alien movie?.
His pictures Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and E. T. (1982) presented a different viewpoint by showing peaceful visitors from outer space.
In Steven Spielberg's unofficial trilogy Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and A.I. Artificial Intelligence , kindly, curious aliens visit earth and gently explore our mysterious ways.
After his ex drops the kids off for the weekend, towering, laser-firing tripod machines – which are powered by aliens who have traveled to Earth via lightening, and which emit moaning sounds that slyly recall the musical tones from Close Encounters of the Third Kind – begin rising from the ground.
In Spielberg's earlier "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," benevolent visitors from the far reaches of space brought everyone together.
The buildup to the first eruption is classic Spielberg, harking back to the days of Duel and Jaws.
Although the special effects are elaborate and expensive, "War of the Worlds" has some of the stripped-down ingenuity of "Jaws" and "Duel."
The characters, a failed father (Tom Cruise, wearing his blue collar on his sleeve), his rebellious teenage son (Justin Chatwin, channeling a young Mr. Cruise) and his precocious daughter (Dakota Fanning, filling Drew Barrymore's shoes from "E.T.") have all been done to better effect in other films.
In Steven Spielberg's unofficial trilogy Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. and A.I. Artificial Intelligence , kindly, curious aliens visit earth and gently explore our mysterious ways.
That may come as a surprise, considering that "Worlds" comes from ace director Steven Spielberg, whose previous alien visitation movies ("E.T.
If Spielberg is through making instantly classic films like E.T. or Saving Private Ryan, we'd be plenty lucky to have him finish out his career churning out a yearly dose of glossy, empty, blockbuster entertainment like this.
In total contrast with earlier Spielberg creations, E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, that illustrated his long held fascination with the heavens and other worlds that exist out there.
There’s no sign of the cute and cuddly alien-loving Spielberg of E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind; instead he pulls out all the stops and gives us almost two hours of solid Earth-trouncing action, albeit sprinkled with a Tom Cruise sub-plot about parental issues.
Sporting a Yankee cap when forcing his Red Sox cap wearing son to play catch, Ray further emphasizes the father-son gap by calling him a "dick," so we know that an obligatory reconciliation scene must occurâ??more than one does, with the better one being reminiscent of Saving Private Ryan.
Its explosive, non-stop action brings to mind Saving Private Ryan's indelible opening battle sequence.
If Spielberg is through making instantly classic films like E.T. or Saving Private Ryan, we'd be plenty lucky to have him finish out his career churning out a yearly dose of glossy, empty, blockbuster entertainment like this.
There’s direct comparisons to be made to the relative mystery of the invaders á la Jaws , mass carnage and saturated cinematography from Saving Private Ryan , a scene strikingly similar to the raptor kitchen hunt in Jurassic Park and the list goes on.
It's a moment of clarity as prescient as Spielberg's view of war as hell in Saving Private Ryan or the Holocaust in Schindler's List.
To be fair, Spielberg has never traded in mindless spectacle (with the exception of the hideous Temple of Doom installment of Indiana Jones and, to a lesser degree, 1941 ).
This is really the first whack Spielberg has had at depicting mass destruction since 1941 over twenty-five years ago, and he shows all the summer-movie whippersnappers how it's done.
Spielberg is such a fantastic director -- and this is just another example, along with "Jaws" and "Raiders of the Lost Ark," of his preternatural ability to tell thrilling, technically superior adventure stories -- that he can make "War of the Worlds" intense and frightening without battering our senses into submission.
It?s hard to imagine the same man who gave us the climaxes to Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark did the climax to War of the Worlds.
But while it works wonderfully in that genre, showing an utterly intimate point of view of a "War of the Worlds" situation and terrorizing us thoroughly without flashy special effects or grand scale action sequences, this is just the toppings.
Writer/director Shyamalan's take on the War Of The Worlds scenario is certainly thrilling and contemplative, with plenty of his trademark style elements (previously seen in his films The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable ), including deep, meaningful silences, minimalistic use of music, jump scenes, and people with inner powers they don't fully understand.
This is a bona-fide alien invasion story, think War of the Worlds and Independence Day, told entirely from the vantage point of a family that decides to board up inside their farmhouse and ride out the storm.
"It's like War of the Worlds," Graham's brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) whispers, and the film elegantly toys with our fears that he may be right.
By leaving most of the menace to the imagination--and by borrowing from classics like "Night of the Living Dead" and "War of the Worlds"--he ratchets up the tension to nearly unbearable levels.
The alien invasion movie pre-dates War of the Worlds, but it's fallen out of favor in the last few decades.
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Some of the spectacular visual effects — like an enormous bridge crumbling and a capsizing ferry hurling passengers and cargo into dark churning waters — recall the skeltering big-budget chaos of such '70s disaster epics as "The Towering Inferno" and "The Poseidon Adventure."
The references are eye-rollingly obvious, as are most of Spielberg's minitributes to "The Thing," "The Abyss," "The Birds" and even his own back catalog, particularly "Jurassic Park."
The crowding of a car, the cat-and-mouse games that he made textbook in Jurassic Park and Minority Report and a sound design that amplifies the horror to a perfection we haven�t seen since Robert Wise�s The Haunting.
In this way, War of the Worlds is as much the inverse of John Carpenter's alien invasion B movie They Live.
Spielberg and Carpenter have always been bastard cousins since cuddly E.T. emerged at the same time as Carpenter's scabrous The Thing .
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The references are eye-rollingly obvious, as are most of Spielberg's minitributes to "The Thing," "The Abyss," "The Birds" and even his own back catalog, particularly "Jurassic Park."
Unfortunately, like James Cameron’s Titanic, Spielberg’s film only highlights the ugly side of human nature under pressure, without managing to celebrate the capacity of ordinary human beings in crisis to put others first and even risk their lives to aid strangers.
Time and a number of equally irony-free blockbusters in the interim (including Spielberg's War of the Worlds and the entire Lord of the Rings weep-cycle) have dulled its impact somewhat, but Titanic was Cameron's strike against technophiliac hyper-masculinity in adventure features and a splashing, pre-millennial introduction to a premonitory brand of earnest, new-age spectacle.
Witness the ferry-boat sequence, which plays like a mini-Titanic.
Spielberg also alludes to Titanic, Signs, and a host of other disaster and science-fiction movies, in the course of making a spectacular movie.
Ray is amazed by his eldest's instincts when Robbie assists strangers during a disastrous ferry crossing, then faces his own kind of "Sophie's Choice" moment when Robbie begs to leave while Rachel is being pulled away by misguided strangers.