This movie screams Hollywood. It makes no mistake in addressing itself as American in everyway. From the patriotic defeat of an alien race by the greatest country on the earth to the numerous 9/11 references, it should come as no surprise that the film also screams Steven Spielberg. I am surprised Dakota Fanning didn't scream his name, it seems like the laws of probability would dictate that sooner or later she would. Now five years old, the film far from stands of one of the director’s best or one of the most important of…ever.
Initial reviews for Spielberg’s retelling of the Well’s classic were mixed. Numerous critics saw through the hyperbolic amalgamation of alien technology, special effects, roaming cameras, explosions, flying cars, and general panic. The film is pure Spielberg, perhaps a collection of may things he has already succeeded at. In that manner, it doesn't really offer anything new. Other critics placed the film upon a pedestal as the director’s crowning achievement. These people must have missed Jaws and Jurassic Park. What this film does offer is almost two hours of non-stop alien apocalypse action rendered a complete failure through the eyes of what we must conclude to be a not untypical American family. It is certainly not an ideal family, but the extra terrestrial invasion sure helps mend it a little. Tom Cruise is right at home in the big action blockbuster, running from things that are about to blow up and managing to find his way front and center in the frame. From what little development there was in this not-quite-character-study, Cruise portrays the failing father turned heroic dad well enough. We can only assume that Spielberg is pleased in mending the estranged American family.
The film doesn't ignore the conventional technical aspects of modern commercial filmmaking. If made today, my money says it would have been a three dimensional extravaganza. The computer imagery is mostly convincing and many of the crowd scenes benefit from an actual cast of hundreds that seem a rare feat when compared to the sword and sandal epics of yesteryear. Spielberg’s camera, while generally documenting in the destruction, still manages to throw in the nostalgic clever angles and easy to miss trick shots. His most successfully taut scene occurs in a dingy basement as a large alien optic-cable snakes through the darkness, looking for blood.
What’s could benefit this 2005 release, although not entirely absent, would be more crowd dynamics. The inconsistency with which the group behaves is startling from one scene to the next. One minute it is mass pandemonium and chaos and the next they are calming walking down a foggy road. In a few instances, we are exposed to skewed action that accompanies survival. The individual is out for himself in an interplanetary battle where only the survival of the species matters. The real threat is not alien but human. The film carefully ignores the fact that social interaction breaks down in order to patch of the individual relations between a man and his family.
Regardless of such an expected piece of cinema, Spielberg remains one of the country and world’s most relevant and important directors. War of the Worlds is far from his masterpiece. But it proves that he is incapable of not grabbing his audience’s attention and holding until the story is over.
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