Monday, July 04, 2005

War of the Worlds: Family Values and Extermination

What would you do if aliens beamed down to our planet in lightening bolts, into clumsy tripod-driven machines they had long buried, and started mowing down everyone with “frickin’ lasers”. I mean after you got done wondering why they couldn’t just blow us up. Or maybe just use those lightening bolts in the first place. Or, well, if you start asking technical, scientific, or even tactical questions, you won’t get far with this movie.
The “what would you do” question is more about character and family. Do you steal the only working car in the neighborhood? Cajole and bully your alienated children? Become a man instead of the childish absent father you’ve always been? Would you kill a man to keep him from revealing your daughter’s location? Would you let your son go off to fight? I don’t know what I would do, not exactly. I’m not really sure what Tom Cruise would do, but I’m pretty sure he would take his shirt off at least once. Dakota Fanning, apparently, would scream a lot. Oh, and use those haunting eyes to fell enemies and advance the plot.
If aliens were going to blow up the planet tomorrow, and I had time to watch ten movies before we all died, this one would not be on the list. If the extermination was scheduled for one year from now and I could watch 1,000 movies, I still would not watch this one again. If I wake up one day knowing that someday I will die, one of my resolutions will be not waste two hours watching Tom Cruise ran madly through an apocalyptic landscape with no clear direction or purpose, waiting for the Deus Ex Machina to fell the Aliens in the Machines.
Horror, and this movie should be properly classed as horror, works as a bootcamp for the mind. We live through the unthinkable, letting our minds and bodies turn new corners and create new pathways. Back in the real world, where things are less grim, we find ourselves ready for that long line at the DMV.
But nothing in here is new. The best scenes are straight out of Jurassic Park, except that Velociraptors are far more menacing. The play of ideas is played out, and the inner lesson, the graduation of boy to man, has been done better in many other Spielberg movies. I could mention Spielberg’s obvious father issues, but he’s making a lot of money off of them, therapy is probably a bad idea.
Is this movie authentic in any way? Well, it’s certainly not as frightening as the H.G. Wells story or radio show. The alien machines are retro in a way that refers back to the 19th century. But everything else is very 21st century. A few scenes hark to classic Japanese monster movies, but there’s no guy in a rubber suit stomping on cardboard buildings. Just CGI everywhere.

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