H.G. Wells?s ?science fiction classic The War of the Worlds was published in 1898, when England was getting a little uneasy about all the mischief Germany seemed to be up to over on the Continent. ?In 1938, Orson Welles enacted a radio drama based on the book. ?It ran as a mock news report detailing a Martian invasion of New Jersey. Once again, those Germans were making people nervous. ?In 1953, Byron Haskin brought the book to film, adding the A-bomb and a lot of modernized scientific jargon to make us believe aliens could indeed invade, and there?d be nothing that could stop them. ?This time our fears were of the Soviet Union and communist ideology destroying our American dream. ?Flash forward to the present and enter Steven Spielberg (the guy who used to make cool movies).
Spielberg has stepped right up to the plate with his film adaptation of Wells?s book. ?But who is the remorseless enemy the aliens represent this time? ?Of course, of course, it?s the terrorists.
To accomplish his goal, Spielberg has to change some things around. First, they?re still aliens, but they?re already here. ?Apparently they dropped off some of their tripod war machines a long time ago when they were in the neighborhood. See? ?The invaders don?t come down in space ships. ?They?re among us and we never saw them until they attacked! ?Who else have we been taught to fear in recent years that acts that way? ?Hmmm?
In truth, I don?t want to spend much time reiterating what many other reviewers have said about the use of 9/11 imagery and general anti-terrorist propaganda. ?Oh, it?s in there: when the tripods zap people they turn into ash, and their clothes fly up into the air and then drift down like papers spewed from the Twin Towers. ?
The invaders were already here, among us, hidden. ?Open fighting against them has no effect. ?In the one scene where you see the military attacking the tripods, all the tanks, fighter jets, attack helicopters, and artillery are useless. ?They do have one effect, however: they exalt the selfless spirit of ?the troops." ?You hear a commanding officer telling one of his officers something along the lines of, ?We have to keep them busy until the refugees have a chance to escape.? ?He knows they can?t win, but they?re going to buy us, the American people, a few extra seconds to flee with our lives. ?
But really, every review I?ve read about this movie tells you about the 9/11 imagery, playing on fears of terrorism, and adding some schmaltz about how this movie focuses on families instead of generals. ?So lets? take that as a given and I won?t have to parrot everyone else. ?Let?s talk about how this movie fails to do all that in a way that doesn?t suck.
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How might it not have sucked? ?Acting! The good kind, anyway. ?Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, and Justin Chatwin are, for all intents and purposes, the only people in this film. ?Tim Robbins shows up long enough to be a crazy crackpot who tells us the aliens have been here for a million years until Tom gets worried he?ll endanger his daughter and offs him with a shovel. ?The film?s about family, right? The best scene about family in this thing is when the three of them are tearing down the highway, all of them freaked out, all them screaming at each other at the same time, and no one hearing or learning anything from each other. ?That made me horribly uncomfortable in a completely familiar, summer family road trip way. ?I wanted to jump right in and start screaming, too. ?The rest of the time you?re getting smacked on the head with how Tom is being a bad dad, how Tom is trying to be a good dad, or how Tom is risking everything to be a good dad. ?Acting. ?Bluh.
How else could we overlook the flaws of this allegory-with-a-hammer? ? Special effects, and tons of ?em. ?If you can?t come up with good acting, wow us with amazing special effects. ?Look at this summer?s Star Wars. Don?t get me wrong, the special effects in this movie were pretty good. ?They weren?t Revenge of the Sith, but they were good. ?Unfortunately, there weren?t enough of them. ?Let me take you back to that scene with the military sacrificing themselves heroically. ?Here was a terrific chance to see a knock-down, drag-out slugfest between earthy ordinance and alien death rays. But no. The characters themselves were even crying out for it. ?Ray has to choose between which of his kids to save. ?Robby is trying to get to the top of the hill where the military folks are. ?Ray has told Rachel to stay a short distance away while he catches up to Robby to bring him back. ?While he?s arguing with Robby he sees some refugees trying to take Rachel. ?Save the girl! Don?t let the old lady grab the 10-year-old (hanging out by a tree all by herself in the middle of a war zone) and take her to safety! He leaves Robby, who says, ?Please. I have to see this.? ?Which leads me to my original request: ?Show us the big human/alien dukeout! ?Unfortunately we see very little of it. ?
And finally, another method to unsuck this movie would be to make the premises of the film believable. ?I know, I know, make an alien invasion believable? It can be done. ?Take all the previous incarnations of this story. ?Where are the bad guys from? Well, yes, Germany and then later, Russia, but I mean internally in the story. ?They?re from Mars, our closest planetary neighbor. ?The invaders can?t come from the moon; it?s too familiar. ?But Mars was mysterious. ?Scientists had told us that Mars seemed, through telescopes to be very similar to Earth. ?So naturally humanity?s imagination began conjuring up denizens, fair and foul, to populate it with. This was the case in 1898, still strong in 1938, and even in 1953 no one was certain that there weren?t a race of people hiding out beneath the surface. ?
Times change and the scientific and public sector?s understanding of the universe has changed with them. ?Speilberg altered some of the details of Wells?s story to make it a bit more believable to us, but in doing so he actually created more difficulties to verisimilitude. So if you will, humor the scifi fanboy in me and let?s examine them.
The aliens placed their machines o? death under the ground ?a million years ago? (thank you crackpot Tim Robbins). Then they jumpstart them with weird lightning that shoots down form weird storm clouds. ?The aliens themselves are riding this lightning. ?Somehow. ?There are red-tinged views of Earth from space that hint at Mars, but they never say Mars because we all know now that there?s no life on our red neighbor. ?But of course an invasion from outside the solar system doesn?t make sense, either. ?How?d they shoot their lightning bolts across the interstellar gulf? And if those aliens (the ones riding those lighting bolts, don?t forget) could survive the journey through space from wherever, you?d think they wouldn?t drop dead from catching a cold. And for the love of gravy, why didn?t they just conquer the planet the first time they were here?
Now focus your critical lens on those death rays. ?The pale green rays blow bridges apart, smash buildings, set trains spectacularly ablaze, and blast airplanes out of the sky. ?When they hit people, though, the people become ash, but their clothes remain intact. In fact, the clothes get a certain buoyancy so they can fly up and do their 9/11 homage.
And the aliens themselves! The aliens look silly. ?Their heads are straight from the invaders in Independence Day. ?They drink water like thirsty dogs. ?They don?t appear to have any sort of verbal language. ?And before you say, ?Perhaps they are telepathic,? like in Haskin?s 1953 movie, you see them trying to clue each other in to something, but all they can do is grunt and breathe heavily. ?They?re naked. I won?t complain about them not having the foresight to don a spacesuit before wandering around on an alien planet (and even we know that when you visit a foreign country you don?t drink the water), because that is a key aspect of the how earth survives. ?But still, except for everyone calling these critters so intelligent, you never get a hint that the aliens are anything but primitive tool users. ?Granted, their tools are giant death-ray-shooting war machines, but they?re still pretty lame.
What?s up? ?You say. ?Why so picky? It?s just a movie. ?Yes, but it?s big ol? bucket of anti-terrorist, pro-American family/right wing values so thinly veiled beneath the guise of a science fiction movie that I couldn?t just sit back and enjoy the fun of watching aliens trash cities. ?We don?t even get to see them trash good ones! Even Independence Day, that crock of schlock, blew up the White House. ?If Spielberg is going to try to deny blatantly using 9/11 imagery to evoke reactions or capitalize on this country?s force-fed fear response to otherness, then he needs to make a film that at least appears to be trying to be believeable. ?He might not be trying to deny it though; my sources (read as: the Internet, that bastion of integrity) have mixed responses. Spielberg should have redone Jack Finney?s Invasion of the Body Snatchers instead.
To sum up: Wait for the DVD. ?Go see Star Wars again, or Batman Begins. Review written by guest reviewer, Nat "The Grey."
