War of the Worlds Thrills and Enlightens

Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds is not without its flaws, but overall it’s a cinematic experience of such intensity that the flaws can be excused. As Scott Weinberg of Efilmcritic.com says, “96 percent of the movie works so damn well that you’ll be more than willing to forgive the 4 percent that does not.”

True that – the 4 percent involves some questionable screenwriting which tests the viewer’s suspension of disbelief, but not so severely that it stops Spielberg’s runaway thrill train. It’s tough to make a film that is enjoyable as truly scary these days – the post 9/11 paranoia about terrorism is something most seek to escape at the movie theater. But by importing the terror from another planet, the film achieves a distance that allows viewers to roll with it and appreciate the mayhem on a vicarious level.

The destructive melee wreaked by the giant mechanical alien tripods is an exhilarating site to behold as Spielberg shoots it in a way that is akin to having a front row seat at a concert or sporting event. The film does have a disturbing element, but it comes from the human behavior in the face of a societal breakdown.

Spoiler alert – some plot elements are about to be revealed. This review is geared more for those who have already seen the film and are debating the merits therein.

Spielberg is at the height of his powers for most of the film. The lightning storm scene with Cruise and his young daughter, played superbly by burgeoning Spielberg protÃ?©gÃ?© Dakota Fanning, skillfully sets the stage for what’s to come by introducing a mixed sense of amazement and dread. The lightning storms are accompanied by an electromagnetic pulse which disables all electronic devices, including cars. Just like that, humanity is back in the stone-age. Chaos ensues.

The opening alien attack at which Cruise winds up with a front row seat is nothing short of astonishing – in the same way that James Cameron put us on the deck of the Titanic, Spielberg puts us right there in the middle of the apocalyptic mayhem. Many action flicks suffer from an overload of MTV-style cross cut editing that disrupts the “you are there” feel. But
Spielberg has mastered the art here, utilizing documentary filming techniques, such as hand-held cameras, that he also used to relay realism in Saving Private Ryan.

The special effects are mind-blowing because they are so vivid and, for the most part, real-looking. As other critics have alluded, the destruction in WOTW makes 1996’s “Independence Day” pale in comparison. This footage is more akin to if a documentary news crew had been on the scene. There’s an emotional intensity in WOTW that the campy Independence Day lacked. And once the story gets going, Spielberg keeps the pedal to the metal. The apocalyptic mayhem remains at a gripping level throughout.

Those who look forward to Spielberg’s sci-fi flicks for some underlying socio-political/cosmic commentary won’t be disappointed either. Ever since 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” Spielberg has been suspected
by many to have a government pipeline to top-secret information about the UFO cover-up and more.

Former President Jimmy Carter has long been rumored to have served as an executive producer on CE3K, as his way of keeping a campaign promise to help get UFO information to the public. (Carter is the only American president to have gone on record as having seen a UFO, and CE3K is believed by many in the UFOlogy community to have been based on real events in files that Carter slipped to Spielberg.)

Spielberg was also executive producer of the “Men in Black” films, as well as the twenty hour Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, Taken, which served as a de facto sequel to CE3K in portraying the history of the alien abduction phenomenon and UFO cover-up from 1947 to the present day.

Some may scoff at the notion that the “MIB” films have any serious message, but camouflaged within the guise of the wacky Hollywood summer fare is the deeper cosmological notion that Earth has been visited for a long time and that humanity is on the verge of learning this soon. The overlying message in Taken was that there has indeed been a ruthless Air Force cover-up of ET visitation and that our visitors’ intentions are benevolent, even if they can at times be misconstrued as otherwise.

So what message is Spielberg sending in WOTW? His track record – let’s not forget about 1982’s ET – makes it hard to believe that he now subscribes to a message of alien threat propaganda. WOTW plot aside, if any advanced beings wanted to take Earth over, they could have done it a long time ago. For Spielberg, this is simply a chance to relive the Saturday afternoon fun of his youth on a more epic scale. But he does slip some serious messages into the mix.

When Cruise and Fanning are beckoned by a stranger to hide out in his basement to take shelter from the current attack, it turns out to be none other than Hollywood activist Tim Robbins. While discussing their options, Robbins states that when aliens occupy a country, “occupations always fail.” In the same way that Spielberg’s pal George Lucas used Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith to draw comparisons between Darth Vader and George W. Bush, this line is clearly a patriotic attempt to awaken the American public from their blind support of Bush’s unjustified occupation of Iraq. (For skeptics who think
that’s reading too much into things, I counter by saying that if even the New York Times can recognize, then you should too. See the op-ed from July 3 at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/opinion/03rich.html?ex=1121227200&en=7f281df5bc9263a6&ei=5070&emc=eta1)

The other public service that Spielberg offers is to paint a very disturbing picture of the way that many human beings can be expected to act toward each other when society breaks down. The scene where a mob attacks Cruise’s vehicle – the only working automobile due to his knowledge of how to fix cars – is one of the most disturbing scenes in recent cinematic
memory.

It’s truly chilling, but the scene isn’t there gratuitously. It seems as if Spielberg is serving up the scene as a warning to hopefully prevent similar scenes from taking place in real life. Aliens aside, if the power-grid goes or the oft-speculated Peak Oil disaster hits (see http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/), a scenario where the many are ready to kill for what the few possess isn’t beyond conception. But hopefully, millions of people will have found this scene so upsetting that they will remember it and not act in a similar way if such a dire scenario ever occurs.

Despite its PG-13 rating, scenes like this are why I wouldn’t dare take my 10-year-old niece – about Fanning’s age – to see WOTW. It would give her nightmares for months. There’s a big difference between this type of PG-13 fare and that of Jack Black’s School of Rock or Nick Cage’s National Treasure (two films I did take my niece to see that she loved.) I have an adult friend who didn’t care for WOTW for precisely these scenes. In this case, I’d say it’s a sign of quality filmmaking. Spielberg is sounding a warning with these scenes and calling for people to focus their energy on creating a kinder, gentler humanity.

As to the 4% of the film that doesn’t work: Some find Cruise’s deadbeat dad character hard to sympathize with. I felt so too
initially, but in retrospect, this is by design. When the chips are down, Cruise’s character responds with great courage and earns redemption. Spielberg is sending a message that even the downtrodden can rise to greater heights when
pushed to test themselves.

Then there’s the cat and mouse scene that verges on serious overkill where Cruise, Fanning, and Robbins must evade alien scouts. The scene is a derivative take on Spielberg’s own work in Jurassic Park and it tests viewer suspension of disbelief in a severe way – these aliens can travel across the galaxy and wreak all this destruction, but they can’t create heat-sensors to identify living beings hiding in a basement? That’s technology we already have here on Earth! It doesn’t jibe with what people expect from intelligent science fiction, and the screenwriters should know better.

The other main issue I had was with the character of Cruise’s teenage son. I don’t care if he is a typically brash 16-year-old, his decision to desert Cruise and Fanning to try and follow the National Guard into an explosive confrontation with the alien invaders just doesn’t ring true – at all. That moment disrupted the narrative and did not service the storyline. It became even more preposterous when the son miraculously shows up safe at the end. This defies every convention of Screenwriting 101 and not in a good way.

But outside of the few scenes that don’t seem to quite logically fit, this is one fine piece of Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking. It grabs the viewer on an intense visceral level and doesn’t let go, entertaining on a grand scale. But as with the best works of art, it also leaves the viewer with a little something to think about regarding society and how we can make it better by taking a more compassionate attitude toward our fellow mankind.