Just saw the War of the Worlds movie, circa 2005. A perfunctory enough retelling of the story, quite pulse pounding intense at times, but what otherwise seemed as mechanical and unplausible in many respects - it had just too many unlikely plot contrivances.
It was acted well enough, but that wasn't the source of what I saw as some of ít's inherent problems - that what prevented it from going into the classic category.
There could, I might add, have been more acting in it in terms of a few more characters ( close-up personal interaction of strangers become compatriots ), just to add more of a rounded view of general individual folk's awareness and reaction to the invasion ( more than just from one very - and quickly.., since the invasion seemed less than a week old - ...crazed whack character played by Tim Robbins ) .
Could one expect to believe the working man Cruise character would be the one guy in all of New York to know how to get a EMP whacked car to re-start? (and how come he never told anybody else that helpful knowledge along the way as he wove by countless disabled cars).
Again the CGI graphics didn't look real 'real' to me ( especially the broad panoramic type views ) - something about the fuzziness inherent in these (the alien craft) didn't have the sharp lines or subtle features that define an absolute object moving through the real world, within it's air turbulent, gravitous, environment. The crafts' dangling arms whipping about too fluidly, without "weight", stresses, didn't seem worldy also. The spindly, bendy, multi-story-tall, three legs of the walker/airships didn't appear to support their main bodies' weight - not a practical source of locomotion in any case.
Then that a plane just happens to crash almost on exact top of the out of town home Tom C. and family flee to, that was a bit much. Kind of hard to believe they would also have a nicely clear path to drive their car out from amidst all the strewn about wreckage.
And how come one of the alien craft would decide to surface from below water and ram headlong into the ferry boat - just for dramatic license. The alien craft must have real tough front bumpers perhaps. ( The point is, it could easily just have blasted it all to heck. )
Then the whole "spewing" out business seemed incredulous and super gratudinous - meant to present the disturbing sweep of a naseating setting for the one to one encounter scenes rather than much of a realistic scenario. Evil Aliens - they're gigantic slob guys? Sure they might waste the enviroment some, but the whole blood and insides spurting about everywhere ( as evidenced by all the red liquid or stringy stuff lying on the surface area everywhere) was way overboard.
Weren't they ingesting folks and wouldn't just spurting out stuff everywhere just be one gigantic wastefulness of their seeming protein food source. First of all, their ray canons vaporized people into dust in the cities (would leave things dusty only), til, in the countryside, they got about to, from ahigh, stabbing down for individual folk for supper, unless, they rather instead decided to just pick one up for convenient fast food storage later.
One curious plot contivance also, did the aliens have so untold many of their "underground risen, walker/airships" that they could go around plodding through the wrecked foundations of every countryside home everywhere - including the one which just happened to shelter Cruise and his daughter. If these had been hidden underground a long time, all about the world, surely people would've stumbled on at least one of them sometime ages ago.
The ending though was the most unreal of all. Kind of like the conclusive homecoming scene ending from some everyday holiday time, Thanksgivings Day like movie - with the homestead, and homestead street and local neighbourhood looking totally intact, and the ( ex) wife, prim, proper, unchanged looking!, waiting at the screen door like nothing much at all adnormal had happened since the couple had last seen one another, just there waiting for their kids to be dropped off. Even the wayward son is back safe and sound, fully intact - none the worse for wear despite having been frontline amidst an army armoured array position at the business end focal point of an all incompassing firestorm of an alien counter attack.
Generally too much a grab for a guey landscape setpiece, and continual perilous action suspence, at the expence of an overall haunting and eerie reverance as what might hang in the air, amid a world of loss, dispair, but also of resilient anger. What's missing is the essense of the hope clinging, defiant mindfulness and clever resourcefulness of a humanity that's greater than mass mobs in mote surrender raving, or an occasional individual who's become unhinged.
The aliens' being brought down by lowly Earth bugs, that could have been played up, not so quickly dispenced with, with say, instead of Cruise just getting the word from someone else, it would've been nice to have him discover this for himself as one of the mightly alien airship falters as it closes in on him, cornered, for a fate that before had seemed totally doomed. Wild wondrous awestruck elation of emotion to follow, then the manyfold reactions that erupt from all the fellow huddled humanity nearby. Hee haw! The ironic given it's full due.
Talking about hee haw, I'll be looking into some things the next week to advance posssible new superhero Sunman developments. We'll see how it goes, then get on back to you if something of noteworthyness transpires.
Til then, hey, on the softer side of things, the movie Elizebethtown looks like it may be good viewing, from the impression left by it's trailer. But the whole commercials before movies thing though is getting out of hand. Trailers are okay, some are cool, but everyday commercials are a real turn-off that's maybe impacting cinema attendance - too darn much like seeing regular old, commercial strewn, TV viewing - so why go to the theatre, and spend lots of your cash, at all huh, if you got to endure all the commercial crap there too, that you can at least remote roam zap at home for free?
Talking of zapping off... .
