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By
WAYNE KLEIN
Spielberg's take on "War of
the Worlds" isn't a remake of George Paul & Byron
Haskin's 1953 film (although there a number of
homages to that film in this film) but an attempt
to revisit and reinterpret Wells' source material
and find its relevance for the post 9/11 21st
century. These alien ecoterrorist have decided
that Earth is too good for us. Thousands of years
ago they had their destructive terraforming
machines buried beneath the ground sort of a
sleeper army to take Earth. This film is very
suspenseful and does live up to its PG-13 rating.
It's definitely too intense for some children.
Ray Ferrier (Cruise) struggles to keep his life
together after his the messy divorce from his wife
and separation from his children. When his wife
drops the kids to stay with him over the weekend
while she and her new husband visit with her
grandparents, Ferrier finds himself thrust into
the role of reluctant father again. That's when
all hell breaks loose. A nasty storm brews
overhead and lighting zaps the ground
continuously. What's odd about the storm is that
the wind is blowing towards it as if the vortex of
clouds is sucking things into it. Shortly after
the storm clears giant tripod machines burst
through the ground incinerating everything in
their path. Ray makes a frantic effort to escape
with his teenage son and daughter (Dakota Fanning)
in tow.
"War of the Worlds" (somewhere along the line
"The" got dropped from the title) is an edgy,
suspense thriller from Spielberg with Tom Cruise
playing a bitter father who can no longer relate
to his kids. It's an unusual role and he plays Ray
as a stressed out parent who doesn't want to be a
hero; he just wants to save his kids. Everything
is told from Ray's point of view. If he couldn't
see it, we don't see it and that personalizes the
story much more. Any disaster or war can be seen
only from how it affects that individual
personally if they don't have the communication
equipment to tell them everything else that's
going on.
The DVD transfer looks terrific with great clarity
and a top notch DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
soundtrack. The colors are vivid and even in
sequences where most DVDs have problems (when
there's swirling smoke, mist or dust) the images
capture the essence of the original theatrical
experience.
The single disc edition has one extra, a
featurette entitled "Designing the Enemy." The two
disc edition has a number of other featurettes and
extras worthwhile for film buffs but probably
pretty useless for the average film fan.
Spielberg, producer Kathleen Kennedy and writer
David Koepp discuss their approach to the
material, why they wanted the design for the
aliens and their ships as portrayed in the film.
"Revisiting the Original Invasion" features
Spielberg discussing why he wanted to make Wells'
novel again with a contemporary spin. Since
Spielberg once again doesn't do a commentary
track, this addresses what inspired him to do the
film, why he went in the direction he did for
casting and why he pushed certain themes in David
Koepp's script. Tom Cruise also appears discussing
why he chose to make this vs. a couple of other
potential Spielberg projects (luckily he stays on
topic here and doesn't bounce around on the coach
or discuss his expertise on post-partum
depression).
"The H.G. Wells Legacy" had the potential to be a
great featurette. It provides a little bit of
biographical background on Wells, how he fell into
writing and features interviews with Wells' grand
and great-grandchildren including film director
Simon Wells (who remade "The Time Machine" a
couple of years ago). If you combined this
featurette with the Wells featurette on the 1953
"The War of the Worlds" DVD you'd have a great
short documentary on Wells.
"War Chronicles" is a multi-part featurette
discussing everything from pre-production and
pre-visualization to shooting on location and
rebuilding the town seen on the studio backlot for
the invasion sequences. It's a fascinating glimpse
into the complexity of shooting a film both on
location and in the studio. The challenge of
destroying the town is also featured as well. We
also get a sequence that discusses
"Previsualization" where Spielberg notes he had
always resistant previz because he felt it would
hamper his on set creativity. He also felt that
they'd have to change everything when they went to
the set and had to compromise based on what was
constructed. To make sure the previz could be
useful he did previz even before sets were
designed and built so that the sets could be shot
just as the previz sequences looked.
There's also a fine featurette on John Williams
score with the composer discussing his inspiration
for the score and the feel he tried to impart. We
also get a short featurette "We Are Not Alone"
that discusses what could happen if there were an
alien human interaction. There's also production
notes for the film included that go into quite a
bit of depth and duplicate some of what we see on
the second disc of featurettes.
While flawed, this intense suspense thriller
manages to pay tribute to the film, radio play by
Howard Kotch & Orson Welles and H.G. Wells
original novel while maintaining a believable
intensity as the story unfolds. I've seen some
criticism about things that don't make sense (the
red vines, what the red spray is why there are
bodies floating in the river, etc. If you think it
through actually all of these make perfect sense
within the context of the film). Writer David
Koepp has explained he doesn't want to try and
explain too much of the aliens' reasoning for
suddenly showing up. His take is that their
reasons just like their technology would be too
alien for us to understand. Koepp and Spielberg
felt that understanding the aliens and their
motivation would make the film less visceral and
emotionally terrifying. On the whole "War of the
Worlds" is a satisfying thrill ride that also
deals with a lot of different themes and still
manages to entertain. |
