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Bore of the Worlds
27 November 2005
Watched Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds last night. I was truly astounded at how a veteran producer like Spielberg could put together a movie of that length without a plot.
The latest WOTW stands out as one of the best examples of Hollywood replacing dialogue and plot with visual effects. WOTW is a shell, a hollow shell of a film.
Visually it's stunning, as one would expect from Spielberg. The dialogue might all fit on a single sheet of paper, however. That might be a blessing since it offers so little character development that Spielberg could have used entirely unknown actors instead of frontrunners Tom Cruise and Tim Robbins. Neither contribute much in terms of either character or content, but there really wasn't any room left in the film for them to do so.
WOTW is less about an alien invasion than about America's unpreparedness for a disaster. There are no explanations about where the aliens came from, why, what they want, or about their technology. In fact, we really don't get to see their machines or them in any detail very often. We see them more often in the murky background while all the humans run around in the foreground in panic.
In only one scene do we really see anything up close: the basement where the spy-eye pokes in and searches for them, then the aliens explore for a few seconds. Other than that, the aliens and their machines are off in the distance running amok.
It's never explained how the aliens could bury hundreds, maybe thousands of their huge killing machines below the ground under the world's major cities and not one single municipal engineer ever found one while laying pipe or doing road repair. That doesn't say anything favourable about municipal engineers, I'd say.
It's never really explained why they all start dying, except for the voice over at the very end that suggests they got sick. It's never explained who they are, where they came from, what they want from all this mayhem. It's never explained why they want human blood, like some intergalactic vampires. That was just silly.
The basic film story, so far removed from H. G. Wells' original, goes like this: basic working class setting introduction, aliens, panic, run, hide, run, hide, more panic, run, hide, run, hide, dead aliens. Yawn...
WOTW is less a movie than an exercise in showing the latest advances in computer-generated graphics. H. G. Wells must be rolling over in his grave.
The latest WOTW stands out as one of the best examples of Hollywood replacing dialogue and plot with visual effects. WOTW is a shell, a hollow shell of a film.
Visually it's stunning, as one would expect from Spielberg. The dialogue might all fit on a single sheet of paper, however. That might be a blessing since it offers so little character development that Spielberg could have used entirely unknown actors instead of frontrunners Tom Cruise and Tim Robbins. Neither contribute much in terms of either character or content, but there really wasn't any room left in the film for them to do so.
WOTW is less about an alien invasion than about America's unpreparedness for a disaster. There are no explanations about where the aliens came from, why, what they want, or about their technology. In fact, we really don't get to see their machines or them in any detail very often. We see them more often in the murky background while all the humans run around in the foreground in panic.
In only one scene do we really see anything up close: the basement where the spy-eye pokes in and searches for them, then the aliens explore for a few seconds. Other than that, the aliens and their machines are off in the distance running amok.
It's never explained how the aliens could bury hundreds, maybe thousands of their huge killing machines below the ground under the world's major cities and not one single municipal engineer ever found one while laying pipe or doing road repair. That doesn't say anything favourable about municipal engineers, I'd say.
It's never really explained why they all start dying, except for the voice over at the very end that suggests they got sick. It's never explained who they are, where they came from, what they want from all this mayhem. It's never explained why they want human blood, like some intergalactic vampires. That was just silly.
The basic film story, so far removed from H. G. Wells' original, goes like this: basic working class setting introduction, aliens, panic, run, hide, run, hide, more panic, run, hide, run, hide, dead aliens. Yawn...
WOTW is less a movie than an exercise in showing the latest advances in computer-generated graphics. H. G. Wells must be rolling over in his grave.
