+3
War of the Worlds (2005) - 4/10
A halfway watchable disaster flick when viewed on its own merits, but not worthy of being spoken of in the same light as the book, the album, or the 1953 film. War of the Worlds has had incredible luck when it comes to adaptations up to that point, but you're gonna have to drop these expectations if you wanna enjoy this thing.
The pros:
-It's more faithful to the book than the '53 flick, with how it's told through the subjective point of view of a civilian, so in that way, it justifies its existence.
-The production design and cinematography are quite good. It's Spielberg's biggest talent imo, he cares about visual storytelling. You can tell he wasn't just half-heartedly recording the actors. The sets and their spaciousness, colour, etc are all very considered, and he knew exactly how to have something pop into frame to startle you.
-They included the red weed.
-As generic as it was, the score was not bad.
-Some of the CG is good.
-That part in the ayys' basket was silly, but cool and imaginative.
The cons:
-It's generally too silly, and not in a good way. It tries to be a serious disaster film, but the dialogue, the characters' behaviour, the action scenes, the mechanics of teh alains, it's all impossible to take seriously. It lacks the book's cold pragmatism and attention to consistency and believability.
--Chalk it up to the movie trying too hard to look cool, or scary, or serious, depending on the scene.
-It fell victim to the two great cancers of dialogue writing: Joss Whedon's disaffected quipfests, and grimdark gravelly repetitive whispering. Individually, they'd just be cliche, but together, as polar opposites, they're tonally crass on top of that.
-The aliens are not even remotely scary. The book clearly had the best ayys. The ones in the first movie weren't as good, but were still scary due to how they make no earthly sense. These are just grey monkeys. Their machines have the same problem.
-It uses CG where it isn't necessary, such as for broken windshields.
-The CG technology afforded it the chance to include the Flying Machine and the Handling Machine, but it didn't.
-The pacing is [i]freaking poop[/] when compared to the 1953 film.
-The script drastically loses focus after the first act.
-The book showed the aliens were vulnerable very early on, giving you a slim, slim hope of victory. The first movie made them completely impervious to all our weaponry, making them more of a puzzle to rack your brain over. This one tries to have it both ways, reusing the energy shields idea from the last movie, but having the humans figure out a way to take it down in the last 15 minutes. And then they still die of the coof. Then what the flip were we doing for the last 2 hours? Smelling our farts?
--Also, the military didn't resort to any WMDs or guerilla tactics. In the end, it seriously does seem like the humans lost because they didn't try hard enough.
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I'm the Yugoslav cinema guy. I dig through garbage. I look for gems.