obligatory spoiler warning:

Saw "War of the Worlds" last night. To be completely honest with you, I'm totally on the fence with this one. I have a couple of friends that say the more they think about it, the more they like it. I think I'm the opposite, the more I think about it, the more I pick it apart.

I really liked the movie. But the moments I liked the best were the ones where you didn't even see an alien or a tripod. Some of the best alien/holocaust movies (yes, they're often the same thing) deal more with how humans treat one another, than how the oppressor is wiping people out. In "WotW," my favorite scenes were just that. You'd have a scene of people fighting over the only working car in the city, or a scene where a father kills a loon right next to the room where his daughter sits. Or you'd have a scene where floods of people try to board a ferry, and how the army had to make decisions on who gets on and who doesn't. It was these scenes that kept WotW from being just your average "alien take over" movie.

The scenes, while memorable, were a bit few and far between. Well, now that I think about it, the movie breaks down like this. The first half is a top class movie that had the potential to be the greatest "alien invasion" movie of all time. As soon as he gets "to the basement," it starts to venture into your average run of the mill Alien invasion movie territory.

I'm writing a post right now (you'll know it when you see it), that's taken all of my writing energy away. So I'm going to simplify this.

Favorite stuff from the movie:

-The emergence of the first tripod was done really well, and was surprisingly believable. I liked how the lightning seemed to both activate the tripods, as well as inject "the pilot" into the tripod as well.

-It was neat seeing how the ray turned people into dust and ash. That was well done.

-The scene where Dakota Fanning sings her favorite song while Tom Cruise killed the man in the next room was almost beautiful in its intensity. The fate of that little girl totally rested on who came through that door.

-Tom Cruise did his usual top notch job. I do have some complaints with Mr. Cruise (I'll get to it later), but he gave yet another good performance.

-Tim Robbins had the two best lines of the movie. He got all political (surprise, surprise) with his "Invasions are always doomed to fail" line. Thought that was a not so subtle dig by Robbins and co. His line about comparing the alien invasion to the way mankind feels about maggots was bad ass as well.

-Dakota Fanning was alright as well. My complaints with her, which I'll address later, were more with the script than anything else. She's a talented beyond her years actress.

-I liked how campy the movie got after Cruise and Fanning left the basement. As I said yesterday, it must really suck to get sucked up the Tripod's anus and shot out over the landscape. Who knew that Spielberg had this type of gory edge in him?

-I've already addressed the nature of how humans interact with one another earlier, but I particularly liked the scene where the masses fight over the van. It's vintage Spielberg to be able to capture a scene like that. It works only because there's a truth to it that we all like to think doesn't exist.

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I've addressed the good stuff, now with the bad...take a seat, this could be a while.

-I'm going to write a post about this, but Spielberg cannot make a hard edged movie. It's almost physically and mentally impossible for him not to muck up a dark movie with his over sentimental sensibilities. My biggest complaint with this movie, is that this invasion took place where over a BILLION people (or more) lost their lives. A movie where people with babies in their arms are shown evaporating into thin air. A movie where families have loved ones killed before their very eyes.

YET.......

the very last scene of the movie is of Tom Cruise and his family, every single damned one of them, safe and sound in Boston. Hell, the grandparents almost looked as if they should have had a pan of cookies, or a pitcher of lemonade in their hands. I'm sorry, but that's just bad story telling. It's over sentimental nonsense seeping into a dark movie. Ugh, it pisses me off. He's already done the family sticking together through aliens thing. This was different. Have some family members die, shake it up a bit.

-Can someone please write a script for Dakota Fanning where she ACTS HER FRIGGIN AGE? This one doesn't even need explaining. There were quite a few scenes where she was "creepy" Dakota, but luckily, Spielberg obliged my need to see an 8 year old child actually act like an 8 year old child.

-Tom Cruise always rises to the level of the script, and did a fine job in this movie, but I was not buying him as the "every man" that Spielberg wanted him to be. When you cast a star like Tom Cruise, you get all the baggage that Tom Cruise brings. It's sad but it's true. That's the great thing about Johnny Depp. He disappears so far into every role that he does, that I dont' see him in "Sleepy Hollow" with the same eyes I saw him in "Edward Scissorhands." But it's impossible to see Tom Cruise in ANY movie, except for maybe "Born of the 4th of July" and "Interview with the Vampire" and not think of Maverick, Jerry Maguire, or the dude from Vanilla Sky. If you want an everyman, there are plenty out there. If you want a movie star like Tom Cruise, don't cast him as an everyman. It didn't work with me.

There were also a couple of scenes where Tom Cruise fell into his typical action movie mode. There were a couple of scenes where Tom Cruise was running down the street, avoiding the Tripod lasers, while everyone around him was incinerated.

-I vote for either cutting the son out of the movie altogether, or having him die when it was 100% logical for him TO die. I mean, he basically ran head first into a huge wall of fire. And he survived???? UGH! Either write him out, which is the best option because this is really about a father and a daughter, or have him die when he was supposed to die.

-The tripods looked AWESOME, but the aliens that drove them looked...almost cute and cuddly. I kept expecting one of their fingers to light up like E.T's. How can you make a scary movie about aliens, and not have scary aliens? Hell, the benevolent aliens in Close Encounters were scarier than these aliens, and all they did in Close Encounters was Do Re Mi.

That's all for now. I think I'm going to write a Spielberg post later, with some issues I want to address.

matt out