Be Excellent To Each Other

Hullo all. It's no secret that I love the book The War of the Worlds to bits, that I was terrified of pylons believing them to be tripods as a kid and that Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds hovers ever between genius and total crap. What is a secret is that I've had this big interest in the 2005 film for some time, and have long itched to do a rambling critique of it. My first ever movie or TV critique in fact. Cripes. I hope you'll indulge me and give it a read, even if you do totally despise the movie. (Cue cries of, "Fuck me, I'm not reading all of that.")

So erm, here it is. Feel free to comment afterwards and stuff, in between parts and all. Even jokes would be appreciated, and Dimrill drawing disparraging pictures of Cruise deflecting heat-rays with his pearly-whites.



WAR OF THE WORLDS

A critique in a terrifyingly unspecified number of parts…

Introduction:

In 2005 War of the Worlds was released. Although garnering favourable reviews and a pleasingly chunky box office, it has subsequently been unfairly neglected in memory by the both the film going audience, film critics and fans of the genre. War of the Worlds was unlucky enough to be lumbered with a lead actor whose increasingly unbalanced off-screen antics left it ripe for a backlash, which was duly and unfairly unleashed. Though the sniping was primarily centred on Tom Cruise, garnering him a somewhat petty Golden Raspberry nomination for worst actor, director Steven Spielberg and writer David Koepp [1] came under a lot of flak as well. And though they made errors of judgement in the making of the film, and failed to make a solid gold science fiction classic, I think that people don’t realise how close they came.

For those reasons I’ll be looking at War of the Worlds and the things it got right, whilst acknowledging its mistakes that frustratingly caused the film to stumble in the latter half. I shall reveal the surprising freshness of the film and the unity it has with the apocalyptic 70’s film Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, and the lessons that need to be learnt from it by other filmmakers and the subsequent influence it had on ‘Cloverfield’.

The failings of the genre:

Tradition in American disaster movies is to follow a maverick and highly personable scientist who holds the key to the defeat of the natural phenomena, invader or monster. For example in the rather terrible 1998 film Godzilla Matthew Broderick plays Doctor Nick Tatopoulos, crushingly never uttering the words “Hi everybody!”. The film tediously follows Doctor Nick’s working out of the motives of Godzilla and how to defeat her, allowing the audience absolutely no tension as to whether she will be defeated or as to Doctor Nick’s survival. At no point does a nightmarish atmosphere arise, which is surely the point of a monster movie.

The same goes for Armageddon. The principles are introduced with their ‘can do’ ethos, trained to go into space and drill bombs into the asteroid and save the day. Since the camera leaps from landmark to landmark for the destruction sequences, and the characters remain resolutely part of the solution, again no tension is built. The script and direction has reduced the cast to such caricatures that no tears are shed at Bruce Willis’s sacrifice, except perhaps tears of uncomfortable embarrassment at his farewell speech.

The sister film Deep Impact fares a little better, focusing partly on pure civilians. Unfortunately it bogs itself down in soap plots and unlikely character decision making. Cripplingly it suffers from the same problem as Armageddon. We want the damn asteroid to hit already. Since the world will assuredly survive, a given due to the film striving to present the characters and civilisation as eminently likable, there is no tension.

Independence Day suffers the same problem as Godzilla. No matter how charming the double act between maverick scientist Jeff Goldblum and maverick jet fighter pilot Will Smith, the film is just plodding from set piece to set piece. Here is the breakdown of nearly every big budget science fiction disaster movie of the decade leading up to War of the Worlds.

1: Looming opening shot of sinister threat or a small action ‘uh-oh’ set piece.
2: Primary expert character’s home life observed and character quirks highlighted. Interpersonal relationship problems with romantic co-lead highlighted.
3: Expert called in to talk about / barges in upon authorities to warn about looming threat. Is ignored or listened to slightly too late.
4: Threat unleashes with pretty scenic destruction. Minor characters are killed off, sometimes with a quip.
5: Authorities realise things are serious as conventional responses fail. Send out expert to solve problem with mismatched team of companions.
6: Squabbling between lead and romantic co-lead immediately followed by mending of bridges in light of catastrophe.
7: A big plan announced.
8: More stuff blowing up to reassure audience.
9: Big plan enacted!
10: Stuff blows up - noble sacrifice by lead/lead survives and cheerily gets together with romantic co-lead.

And finally, unless it’s a natural disaster – THE END…. Or IS it?

And that’s all we got. A rehashed script tweaked for different threats. Even the characters stayed the same. At least Mars Attacks was a comedy, though The Core does earn bonus points for having a witty script and a bonkers imaginative Jules Verne vibe. So as you can see naturalism in disaster or sci-fi movies were dead. The filmmakers never graduated from the cheesy but fun Irwin Allen class, but at least Irwin Allen had big budget stars to kill off. Usually the crooked property developer. With Ernst Borgnine for laughs.

So it was a bit of a shock to find that War of the Worlds dismissed that generic style. The film primarily is a chase movie, with the threat ever on the heels of the protagonists. Compare to the above list, where the threat calmly allows time to have counters planned and deployed against it. War of the Worlds is a psycho with an axe bursting into your house as you run upstairs to lock yourself in the bathroom. The other flicks would have the psycho camping out on your lawn and occasionally lobbing bricks through your window while you assemble a big gun to shoot him in his stupid head.

Instead of these inferior disaster movie efforts, War of the Worlds takes a good look at the start of the under-rated 1970’s classic remake of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, which opens with the ordinary Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams leading normal lives and continues with an increasingly threatening and hostile environment forcing them on a terrified, hysterical and sleepless run. This is what War of the Worlds does, and it is such a relief to have it played out instead of the gumpf listed above. The only difference is that Invasion of the Bodysnatchers has the punch of there being no sanctuary at the end. Instead War of the Worlds gradually loses steam as the chase slackens and sanctuary becomes obtainable, which is a mistake I shall discuss later.

But the influence is an important one, and Bodysnatchers is strong in naturalism. It also reflects John William’s score in the near subliminal eerie throbbing that permeates the early scenes of mounting tension. The leads aren’t heroes and they have no answers, because they’re just people caught in horrifying events, which is what disaster movies need to be.

The film in message and technique:

The film opens with a narration from the novel by Morgan Freeman, acknowledging the strong link to the material. The narration takes place over stock footage of humanity at work, play and prayer around the world. Ironically whilst fan-pleasing, this coupled with the ending narration serves to slightly weaken the film, lending it an omnipresent narrator however briefly, reinforcing the fact that it is but a story.

Fortunate then that composer John Williams is already at work. Lending an eerie sustained pitch over the narration, he follows with an echoing, cold, brutal clang over the opening title. The following score is to prove one of William’s most effective and perfectly suited for the film. Non-existent except in the form of eerie sustained pitches when mounting unsettling tension is required, Williams even reigns it in for the action sequences, never letting the music overwhelm. The horror has to be in the ambience and the visuals, not the score. His most effective weapon is a glissando shriek as people get disintegrated and buildings are torn apart, as if the very last cry of human life or the sound of a energy pulse ripping through the air. Up to the first attack there is not one moment of music score. All music heard is diegetic, that is to say, what would be playing naturally in the environment, from natural sources - for example car stereos, television, etc. This heightens the sense of naturalism. We are not in a movie, we are real life.

Mary Ann drops her kids off with irresponsible divorced dad Ray Ferrier, who never actually seems quite as irresponsible as the film would have us believe. The meeting is fractious, especially since Tim is there – who against type seems a stand-up guy, and to whom Ray acts like an arse. It plays out naturally however. There are no histrionics and they clearly have some affection still for each other whilst it’s made clear that the chances of them getting back together are zero. The dialogue is sparse and to the point. She then leaves for Boston, presenting Ray with his goal later on in the film.

Up to the actual invasion War of the Worlds plays against its genre by limiting the build up and the foreboding. A news report citing strange activities in Russia is skipped through in favour of Spongebob Squarepants. Rachel orders vegetarian food and complains of a splinter. In a neat and subtle bit the scene displays the only bit of foreshadowing in that she explains that the body will naturally push the splinter out, the efforts of Ray unneeded. This sets up the theme of the invader rejected by Earth naturally, regardless of the efforts of man.

So far there have been no scenes with scientists, generals or politicians. The setting is entirely a suburban one without landmarks in a blue collar neighbourhood. This is entirely in contrast to its genre neighbours.

War of the Worlds opening normalcy heightens the growing tension before the opening assault. Previously films had not allowed this tension to develop due to clearly setting out the character roles and thus giving the audience a set of concrete expectations as to what would happen. War of the Worlds basically says, ‘here’s some people’ and leaves it at that. Yes, we know that Ray is going to strive to save his children and take them to Boston, but we know nothing besides that. Since his goal is the basic natural urge of all fathers to protect their children, there is nothing special in this and therefore we are given an agreeably unnerving blank slate as to what is to come next.

Like 9/11 broke upon us without any forewarning and with mounting horror, so the events in the movie break upon the audience. Whilst in every other movie listed above the main characters know what the threat is from the beginning, Ray has no clue other than it’s a big tripod and its trying to kill him and his kids. He isn’t a scientist and he has no time to analyse. The raw response is flight or fight, and against this unimaginable menace fighting clearly isn’t an option. Because the camera keeps closely focused on Ray, and never wanders to show us what he cannot see, we only know what he knows and as he feels panic and fear, so do we. We both don’t know what is coming – we both don’t even know what is happening.

The film kicks off proper when Ray finds that his son has stolen his car. He emerges from his house to find people looking up at the sky. A strange cloud has formed, as eerie as a tornado-spawning super cell. Again there is no music except the passing thumping bass of a slowly moving car. No one knows what is going on.

It’s this scene that highlights the genius behind War of the Worlds cinematography. Spielberg chooses a muted colour palette for a more realist feel, much as he did with Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. Rather than the sepia touch to denote an older time, he instead opts for a cold feel with metallic colours. Its alienating and the colour of a coming storm. His shots in this scene are low to the ground, looking up. A great weight hangs in the sky and everything once again is tightly focused in upon Ray and his neighbours, emphasising their vulnerability. People take photos as people do, and yet upon their faces there is that anxiety and yet a nervous excitement of the spectacular. It’s time to say that the extras work in War of the Worlds is unusually strong. The background people and the crowds behave realistically, and everyone has a destination and an action and an expression. Rather than having CGI hordes plummeting out of skyscrapers, having Times Square taxi cabs smashed around them whilst making stupid quips, War of the Worlds treats each extra like a human being. They’re not meat for the FX grinder, we see ourselves in them. They have stories like Ray, and it’s all the more horrifying when they die through not having the same pure luck as he does.

Ray runs into the back garden down a side alley. You hear the swinging gate hitting the chain link fence in the wind and the pacing is natural, real-time. In the gardens families look up. Ray notices the unworldly nature of the phenomenon, but it fails to move him. He speaks matter-of-factly to his neighbour, who holds a baby in her arms.

“That is so weird.”
“What?”
“The wind is moving away from the storm.”

Ray calls to his daughter, and they watch. Then the lightning begins to strike, sans thunder. Excellently, on the second strike you can hear car alarms beginning to sound.

“That’s enough weather for me,” says Ray’s neighbour anxiously as her baby begins to cry. They’ll both die later as a truck smashes through their house, exploding in a massive fireball. These are people.

As Ray and Rachel run back into the house and hide under a table, the mobile camera and lighting reinforce how flimsy their house is. The silence that follows is unnatural; there are no more car alarms. It’s now that Ray discovers that everything electric and motorised is out. An inspired move that closes in and greatly simplifies his world, and is very unnerving.

He goes outside and meets his son Robbie. The camera work keeps them at a distance, part of the crowd as extras and open car doors get in way of shot. John William’s music quietly kicks in with some menacing tones and discordant ambience with a few cello strings, before fading away again. Robbie goes back inside, Ray too freaked out to properly chastise him. As he proceeds to the location of the lightning strikes he meets Manny the car salesman, and asks Ray what he thinks is wrong with the cars. Ray is seen earlier with an engine on his kitchen table, so we know he knows his stuff. “Try replacing the solenoid,” suggests Ray, which Manny knew all along. It’s now clear that the lightning came with electromagnetic pulse, which effects plugged in solenoids. Replace and you can get a car working again. Information is passed quickly in this film and as naturally as the writers can manage. There are no big ‘scientist explains all’ speeches and for the most part detail is skipped, since when giant killer tripods are after you who cares about the inns and outs of matter transference, interstellar travel and alien weaponry. (Except when the film commits a major sin later.)

On his way to the intersection where the lightning hit theories are bandied about as to the freak weather and electrics, such as solar flares. The point is: unlike in other movies, everyone is ignorant, there are no experts. And it is at the intersection, where the movie leaves the realm of the unnerving and enters the land of nightmare.


Coming up next:

The definitive invasion, the horror of the alien. (“I agree,” - The Daily Express.)


[1] Josh Friedman contributed the first three drafts of the film, which David Koepp substantially redrafted. Koepp's involvement has somewhat ecclipsed Freidman's, which Josh has been pretty sporting about on his blog. For the sake of brevity, I shall refer to the script as Koepp's, to save on finger strain. And also in revenge over Friedman inflicting the Sarah Connor Chronicles upon us.

Nicely written. I too am a massive fan of WotW, although I consider Jeff Wayne's adaptation to be the strongest of the lot (save the original book, natch). Orson Welles' radio broadcast is also rather spesh.

I really, really liked the 2005 adaptation though. Focussing everything on Ray's family rather than having "meanwhile..." scenes was a stroke of genius and, as you say, heightens the reality and gravity of the situation enormously.

There's only one thing that takes me out of the film completely, and I'm sure you'll touch on this later on in your critique. Robbie's apparent death and re-emergence.

One of the things that I really liked about the film was the complete lack of a "everyone lives happily ever after" ending. Although he gets his kids safely back home, he is not welcomed into his ex-wife's open arms while the new man is cast aside. So nice to see a Hollywood film do this for once.

I really enjoyed the Spielberg/Cruise movie, but everytime I see it I feel a bit sad for the wasted opportunity of how they could've done a proper adaptation of the book, set in Victorian England, but with those special effects. The tripods in the movie are genuinely terrifying, especially with the noise that they make.

I'm a huge, huge fan of the book and was at Uni doing a research & scriptwriting course where I had begun adapting the novel as a movie script for one of my major projects. This film was formally announced a couple of weeks into my project and I was absolutely gutted when I heard - I think I was slightly deluded into thinking I could finish my project and somehow actually get it made.

The problem is that most Americans won't watch a film that's not set in America, and they'd also avoid a 'real' WotW, due to its time, which is stupid. Personally, I'd love to see a $60m+ adaptation of the original book, with steampunk aliens versus cannons and the Thunder Child. Simplifying the plot strands as per the musical (or the utterly fantastic comic adaptation by D'Israeli and Edginton, which acts as a prequel to the similarly excellent Scarlet Traces books) would also be good.

Fixed that for you.

Is it just me that thought Signs had a similar sort of mundane build up which made the ending all the more effective (although a bit silly in the final few minutes)?

Oh.

Hmm, I agree that I'd love a period adaptation. Frustratingly, I believe this to be within the capabilities of the BBC currently. My initial reaction to the news of a modern American adaptation was indeed an "Oh noes!" one, but then I changed my mind. The War of the Worlds is all about the fall of the greatest power, about the folly of assuming that you're safe owing to technological and economic supremity and because you live in the comfortable trappings of a settled civilisation. I have a hunch that Wells would set it in America nowadays.

Also, Americans feel that they have a strong hold on a home-soil setting, as they had their own invasion via Orson Welles broadcast which was massively influential. It's worth listening to the Mercury Theatre broadcast, it interestingly mirrors the Spielberg movie in that it has a mindblowing first half, and loses steam in the second as the focus shifts - albeit for completely different reasons.

Also, the current time setting brings the horror home, whilst a faithful adaptation although immensely cool and satisfying to watch would naturally distance us from that. Wells' novel was meant to be contemporary, and adaptations should reflect that. It's a bit unfair saying that it's set in New York too, it is actually set in New Jersey. I once drew a route on Google Earth as to path they take, and it's pretty interesting. This is about suburban America, and does not have any landmarks which is pretty genre defying already.

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. BBC should deffo do a period adaptation, but personally I'm hugely happy with the contemporary Spielberg effort.

Ta for the comic links by the way, I'll give those a read!

Heh.

Signs has one of the best science fiction scenes ever. The bit in the basement with the TV news broadcast showing the glimpse of the alien. That made me jump a mile, really shocking and well directed stuff. And the opening half is quite good. Unfortunately the rest of the film ends up bobbins. I shall be referencing this though. Yes.

Not really. I know plenty of Americans will watch 'foreign' films, but a very sizable chunk of the market simply won't. Even something like Shaun of the Dead got criticised quite heavily for its 'difficult' accents and non-US setting.

Regarding a modern retelling of WotW, the US is the only logical location if you remain true to the original point of the book—complacency, empire, etc. That said, I really wish they hadn't bothered with the modern retelling at all. We've already had Independence Day and a pile of other alien invasion flicks, but there hasn't been a decent aliens vs. 1890s people movie. As for the BBC having a go, I think it could, but the effects probably wouldn't be all that great. God forbid that it would end up like Timothy Hine's garbage.

Oh God, Timothy Hines. The man-mental. I remember his insane antics, threatening lawsuits left right and centre, including against the War of the Worlds forum I was on, when we said his film was shit. He claimed we'd all been bought out by Paramount, the nutter.

Incidently, Paramount's upcoming movie season looks to be a very promising one, with many fine films you will enjoy - including a bundle of hilarious romantic comedies that will get you rolling in the aisles! Epic Lolz all round!111! Paramount, the guarantee of quality, you can count on it. (Thumb up, cockeyed grin-squint.)

I don't know if any of you have seen this movie version, set in the Victorian era.
http://www.war-ofthe-worlds.co.uk/war_o ... _hines.htm

It's very faithful to the book, but unfortunately absolutely terrible, with dreadful acting and laughable special effects.

Search for it on the torrents if you dare.

edit: I missed the last posts, it seems your already aware of it!

The 1953 movie has a certain charm to it, but I don't like how they've converted the tripods into flying machines.

Excellent critique, and I'm glad all the people who actually enjoyed the 2005 version are coming out of the woodwork now. I remember saying I liked in in the WoS thread when it came out and got completely panned for it.

yeah I really hated it, although Im not a fan of spielberg anyway so its probably not suprising im sick of his broken family schtick.

Mrs C and I both liked it - but would both probably agree with the idea that it's a good film but only up until a certain time in (And wher epeople draw that line varies, I think). The ending is definitely a bit flat, especially for a film that started out so goddamned fantastically. I won't go into why, as Pete's already explained it far more eloquentlyier than what I could.

I'd be surprised if I didn't stick up for you in that thread, myp. I'm drawn to WotW threads like a fly to shit.

I enjoyed that a lot Mr Chris (though I didn't read much as I stopped reading once you had convinced me to see the film). That should be front page material IMO,

Though now I need to see it without lining Tom Cruise's wallet. Hopefully it will be on TV soon.

No wonder Pete's nervous!

Whoops sorry!

HA!

If only I could write that well.

Thanks for all the kind comments, everyone! Think I'll put up some more tonight.

Gazchap, I used to be pretty obsessed with the entire War of the Worlds thing, of all incarnations excepting Jeff Wayne's and Tim Hines. Jeff Wayne's was purely down to me not liking the tripod designs, shallowly enough, and getting annoyed at everyone in the forum treating them as the definitive article. (Tsk, they're not even scary, not even for a pylon-fearing six year old me!) Hines because his was shit, natch.

Anyway, after the film came out I did the only fan fiction I've ever done, and even then it was weird. It was basically the Spielberg invasion but as a post war study in a governmental leaflet aimed at explaining what happened to the devestated world's populace, which I estimated to have been reduced by three quarters or something. It started with the origin of the invasion in the Ukraine and went in chronological order. I stopped writing it around Germany, after a good ten pages or so. It included interviews with survivors and authorities, notably Hue Edwards and Gerhard Schroeder. Amusingly, I posited Gordon Brown leading a reasonably competent recovery effort following Blair's death. Ho ho, teh irony! I've still got it knocking around somewhere. ("Keep it the fuck away from us," - BETEO)

Yup, it's my fave sci-fi imagining, all said and done.

Really? That picture of them destroying the Thunder Child totally freaked me out.

My parents played the entire album while we were driving home at night from my aunt's house in Norfolk when I was about eight. I can safely say I've never been more frightened of anything in my entire life.

I absolutely love the Jeff Wayne musical - I went to see it live at the O2 for my birthday last year. But certainly I thought a major plus point for the Spielberg movie was the tripod design - they looked amazing. But they would've been better if they had proper heat rays as opposed to that vapourising ray.

On a related note: has anyone here played the WotW RTS game that came out in the late nineties for the PC? I've still got it somewhere at home. Personally I always found it (like pretty much all RTS games to be honest) way too bloody hard, but it seemed to capture the atmosphere fairly well.

So the other side spent the entire game kicking your arse then suddenly all died of the sniffles?

Yeah, I used to have the RTS. I quite liked it. I could force a stalemate but not win it. The remixes of the music worked really well, and it was atmospheric. My main gripe was that the tanks were called 'armoured track layers' and I ignored researching them for my first two games, figuring they were just railway/road track layers to speed up unit movement. D'oh!

I remember Nigel Hawthorne gave a very spirited narration and played the voice over of the governmental advisor helping you out and warning you about stuff. He was awesome in it. "The martians have invaded Cumbria!" etc. The rendered intro was laughably animated though, with a whole three people inconvenienced by the Wayne tripod. The bit where one of them points at them with a stupid arm flourish always made me laugh.

Hmm, maybe another review beckons... Wish I could give it another go, now.

As for the Wayne art, I loved the general style of the art and the Thunderchild scene was splendid, I just thought the bug eyed martian tripods looked too cartoony. Frankly, it was the heat ray in the 50's version that terrified me of all the adaptions when I was a kid. Especially since lamp-posts looked like it. *THROM THROM THROM!*

Well, I was too dead to see the sniffles bit, but essentially, yes.

Seriously though, the game is solid, even if you play as the Martians.

@ nervouspete: Really enjoyed reading that.

I thought I was one of the only people in the world who genuinely enjoyed the Cruise/Spielberg film, but it's good to see there are others.

For me it was about 85% excellent, which also seems to be the general view here of those who rated it.

Also, I really enjoyed Signs, too, despite the presence of Mel Gibson.

It made sense, however, that they landed in the UK - as an island, they could establish a foothold there and be relatively unmolested by the rest of the human race, until they finished assembling their flying machines. Landing in the USA (a huge country home to the world's most crazed and heavily armed people) seems a bit stupid by comparison.

I'd note that the military response we see in the 2005 film doesn't seem to be enough... we see a few troop trucks go past early on, and then later the 'battle' scene seemed to be a handful of Hummvees and a few Apaches defending Unimportant Hill, Vermont.

I'm also getting a bit weary of panicked evacuation scenes in movies. Resident Evil had one, WoTW had one, I am Legend had one...

Naturally in the novel it does make sense, however not as much as you suspect. The martians aim for the most heavily armed country, Britain. They do so again in the film. By your logic, they'd land in Australia or somewhere.

In the film they have heavy shielding that stops all incoming rounds, they have nothing to fear. Also the battle scene only shows what is on the crest of the hill, it's pretty clear that there's a huge battle going on the other side with many more units. Ray and company didn't get to the hill until day three, which means that the US military would have taken a severe hit already. Also note the number of tripods in the ferry scene, the military would have had the capability of local engagements only with little freedom of maneouvre by that point. Overall I've calculated that the invasion takes place over 14 days, it being the amount of time for Ray to partway drive and finally walk his way to Boston with all the incidents. And that's taking into account no encounters after the escape from Ogilvy's. It's a flaw in the latter half of the film that it doesn't make this quite clear enough. It really needed a montage. (Cue South Park song)

Personally I can't get enough of panicked evacuation movies!

If anyone wants to read the Great Invasion fake history by the way, which is in a reasonably punchy style, I'm happy to post it.

yes please

another vote for yes please, please!

Re: panicked evacuations, would there really be any other response in the real world? No.

Okay, be warned, it's a long 'un! I'll post it in a seperate thread therefore.

No, I thought that too. Its perspective of "alien invasion from point of view of totally irrelevant rural family" was unique, and very promising. How many other alien films are there where none of the protagonists has no effect on the invasion at all?



There's another ver good reason that setting it in Britain worked, and the US less so. Size.

If aliens landed in London, they could be in scotland in less than a day. There're only a couple of major cities, and they're all pretty close to each other - the only thing for the population to do is flee to the coast and hope against hope that they could fit on a boat - which would make them an enormous sitting duck if the aliens appeared at the coast. It managed to make a whole country seem claustrophobic, which you simply can't do in the US.

They should have just made a regular alien film and called it something else, not taken Wells' book and removed nearly all of its most interesting facets. My strongest memory of that book is the humility of the main character and the lack of melodrama about his narration. Towards the end of the book, he's reduced to digging up a garden with his bare hands and eating raw, underripe potatoes. At no point does he run around rescuing small children or having tedious soap opera moments with his boring family.

Maybe, if the tripods were decorated in Celtic colours. That would be pretty awesome - people screaming and hurling molotovs, climbing up the tripod legs and doing the aliens in with bottles of grolsch.

As for I Am Legend, cracked has the original, far superior ending up:

http://www.cracked.com/article_16258_5-awesome-movies-ruined-by-last-minute-changes.html

Hollywood in "not missing entire point of a book" shock! But then followed by Hollywood in "ruining film anyway by pandering to idiots" utter lack of surprise! Bah.

Ahem, second try*,

This is on the beeb right now. So I can watch it without lining the nutjobs pockets.

If it's bad I'll hunt you down Mr Chris!

(Splitting threads doesn't update the subject title, so it gets a little confusing for idiots like me)

Hope you enjoy post Pete-Critique.

And why does Lave keep thinking that Mr Chris wrote this?

GOD DAMMIT WILL I EVER LEARN.

Sorry I work by avatars not names most of the time.

Lave's Review
Lot better than I expected. Really rather good.
Little child didn't make me want to bash her skull in with a rock.
Angsty Teen had relatively acceptable amounts of angst.
Suitably and entertainingly bleak.
Did feature people making a number of stupid decisions though.

But, yeah, suprisingly good. And I expect it will grow on me..

Cheers for the recommendation.=.

Hurrah! Glad you quite liked it!

I find the entire dread of the first half completely amazing personally, shame it goes slightly shonky-yet-watchable after that. Still, chuffed that you liked it.

SLOW DOWN ROBBIE.

I was more than happy to see Robbie die, and disappointed when he'd miraculously escaped (unlike the ENTIRE ARMOURED DIVISION he was stood next to) at the end. I would have been happy for Screaming Child to kark it as well.

The red weed was hilariously 60s American TV sci-fi.

I've never liked the telescope-scout and wandering aliens, although it was done better this time than in the old movie. Well done for killing Biggins. I mean Robbins.

Also well done Auntie for putting that much swearing out before 9pm. Cue hundreds of complaints demanding someone think of the children.

I did like the first half hour though.

Overall: Jeff Wayne 2, Hollywood 0.

There was a mention of how the EMP must have been an effect localised to the lightnings, which affected area presumably grew as more lightnings happened.

Is that why it didn't break the cameras, but stopped Mr Cruise's watch and all the cars?

TOTAL BLACKOUT IN SPRINGFIELD

Very nicely written, and trust me I'm not blowing smoke up your arse here, as I wouldn't have got through it if it wasn't.

It's nice to see a decent appraisal of the film - I watched it recently (I own it on DVD) and enjoyed it though it does go off a little part way through and I think it's the son going off that does it for me. Also, I don't really like Tom Cruise - he's too much of a star for my taste - it's like he goes through the motions of playing difficult characters and then his PR/marketing machine kicks in and tells him to water it down as he cannot possibly risk coming across as anything other than a hero to his screaming fans. I particularly dislike Collateral for the frankly implausible ending - a professional hitman missing a character from pointblank? What is it Tom, you have to redeem yourself in the end no matter what? You can't end the movie as a bad man having started as one?

Anyway, I digress. In frankly terrifying news I see Keanu Reeves in filming a remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still. And no, he's not playing the part his fabulous acting range demands, Gort, nope, he's Klaatu!

The remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still cannot possibly end up being good. It just can't.

Yes.

I thought it was odd as well, but they did at least attempt to cover it. Oh, hang on - I rationalised it to myself; if the cameras didn't have batteries in, they might survive.