War of the Worlds *SPOILER WARNING*
I flipped on the tv this weekend and got sucked in to War Of The Worlds starring Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning. I only saw maybe half the movie from the part where they are in the house and they come out to find the wreckage of a 747 strewn about the neighborhood.
I will say on principle I have generally detested TC, but I thought his acting was rather good at moments - will wonders never cease?
Anyhoo, my beef is with the creative choices the film makers made in depicting the aliens as particularly menacing and terrifying.
Number 1: All those people wouldn't have survived the fall from 100 meters in the crab basket. I'm just saying. We're not some jelly blobs full of free-floating goo - there's some structure in here and it's breakable.
Number 2: I realize they'd probably run over budget and had to wrap the whole mess up, but it sucked that when a group of humans finally figured out how to dismantle the alien monster machines, that the aliens suddenly die anyway of the common cold.
Number 3 - and this is the biggie: When they drop a human to earth and stick that proboscis in to his abdomen to suck out the innards, blood, and/or whatever - they were hilariously channeling the straw scene from Killer Klowns From Outer Space, the 1988 Sci-Fi satire. You see, the Klowns have come to earth to collect humans and they wrap them in these coccoon thingies and when they are ripe, they stick a straw in and suck out the . um. whatever.
Ok.
I'm grossing out, now.
Anyway. I'm just saying. You've got a budget of, like, $100million to make a film, you ought to take a day for research and try to avoid the established cliches of the genre. Ya know, just for the pleasure of the movie-going audience - I mean, it's supposed to be entertaining, right?
7 comments:
Haven't seen this movie, but Number 2 made me PIP - with a budget like that, couldn't they at least have made it measles or mumps?
Yep, Spielberg could have done tons better with WotW if he had simply had a better script. I suck as a writer but still could have come up something more interesting than what we saw on screen. Although I do have to admit the effects and cinematography were excellent. And too bad Dakota Fanning was wasted, just give the girl a good character and a few decent lines and she will make the movie worth watching.
How could beings with such appendages make such intricate machines? Never understood how we were supposed to believe that!
I failed to muster enough willing suspension of disbelief to really enjoy it. I liked the 1950's version much, much better.
Regards,
Rabbit.
meg - or haemophilia? Sickle cell bulimia? Something creative.
otto - It's a pity - they should have hired Larry McMurtry to punch it up - throw in a few gay cowboys and it would have swept the awards circuit! Dakota Fanning is just plain fun to watch - she's such a good actress
mushy - *L* Well, remember, in the movie they said the ships were planted beneath the soil millions of years before? Well, I s'pose it took them millions to build anything that intricate.
rabbit - Well, since I started from the middle and from the position that I generally despise Tom Cruise on principle, it had nowhere to go with me but up. :)
phleghmmy, I deleted my previous comment because blogger mangled the links I tried to insert. So here it is without links. Just go to imdb.com and search for War of the Worlds if you want to follow along.
I'm with rabbit. I watched the new one with TC and then a week or so later the 1953 version with Gene Barry was on. Just checked them out on IMDB. Fun factoid here. My cousin, Ann Robinson who played the leading female roll of Sylvia Van Buren in the 1953 version played the grandmother in the 2005 version. And she also played Sylvia Van Buren in 3 episodes of the 1988-1990 TV series War of the Worlds. She also played Dr Van Buren in a couple of other less than spectacular space aliens are gonna take over the world movies.
And she's not really my cousin. I don't think. But my mom's maiden name was Robinson.
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