War of the Worlds (2005)

I had a more in-depth review of this rental, but thanks to GoLive taking a dump during the spell checking before I could save this, I have to go with a more succinct posting (that might be for the better since brevity is always appreciated).

Spielberg and Cruise take HG Wells’ best story and make their adaptation a disaster-type movie instead of an action, adventure or science-fiction film. It only makes sense, the Martians were invincible so they were really exteriminating humanity like humans exterminate insects. The story’s protagonist, the narrator, is left intact through Cruise but he’s a blue-collar divorced guy with two kids instead of a reporter. It’s also a movie so the audience follows along with Cruise trying to stay alive and protect his children instead of him giving the play-by-play as the novel (and awesome 1978 Jeff Wayne album) did. Spielberg and the two writers also keep the bulk of the novel’s story path (for lack of a better word) intact from Cruise witnessing the invaders’ arrival, the invaders’ demonstration of their superior weapons, so on until their inevitable defeat by microbes (everyone knows the ending to this story so I didn’t give anything away). Tim Robbins does an effective job as the creepy former paramedic with delusions of beating the invaders at their game (originally a soldier in the novel). Dakota Fanning is either a great young actress or a midget because she was perfect as the daughter Cruise is trying protect at all costs. She was neither precocious nor smarter than the adults which is a common annoyance in most films and TV. On the other hand, she wasn’t a constant problem for Cruise to rescue or move the plot along. The teenage son played by Justin Chatwin had the disaffected grunting role down but I couldn’t buy into his sudden patriotism once the soldiers appeared.

This take of War of the Worlds is definitely worth renting if you’re in the mood for a good natural disaster movie since Hollywood really hasn’t produced anything truly interesting nor credible in several decades.

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