I am SPEECHLESS! War of the Worlds!!!!!!

PhilNYC · « **Reply #60 on:** 15 Jul 2005, 02:48 am »

Saw it tonight...was entertained, but this was not a very good movie. Far too many holes in the story, and a little too contrived with some of the "human reaction to world-disaster" stuff". The entire sub-story with Tim Robbins reminded me of the second season of "24" where Kim gets trapped by the paranoid guy in the bomb-shelter...pretty pointless, not very believeable. I wasn't disappointed with the ending (the part where the Martians are defeated) because that was true to the book and original movie...but the last scene had a Boston street that looked a little too pretty to have been thru a Martian invasion.

What I did like was the general perspective of the film...that it was a Martian invasion from the perspective of an every-day person. There was a series of special-edition Marvel comics a while back called "Marvels", which told some of the famous Marvel comic stories, but did so from the perspective of a reporter on the street...this movie captured that very well. I just wish that it was executed a little better...

Visually, the movie was stunning...and even managed to give somewhat of a tribute to the original movie with the look/feel/color of the scenes after Cruise leaves Robbins' basement.

Anyways, that's my two cents...

WerTicus · « **Reply #61 on:** 15 Jul 2005, 04:34 am »

I saw it also - at gold class ( the best cinema around, they serve alchol food and drink and wait on you hand and food in recliners that go flat as a bed)

damn good time

also i liked the movie

John Casler · « **Reply #62 on:** 15 Jul 2005, 04:42 am »

Quote from: PhilNYC

Saw it tonight...was entertained, but this was not a very good movie. Far too many holes in the story, and a little too contrived with some of the "human reaction to world-disaster" stuff". The entire sub-story with Tim Robbins reminded me of the second season of "24" where Kim gets trapped by the paranoid guy in the bomb-shelter...pretty pointless, not very believeable. I wasn't disappointed with the ending (the part where the Martians are defeated) because that was true to the book and original movie.. ...

Hi Phil,

The Tim Robbins part, was "also" part of the original HG Wells story. In the original story an Artilleryman is befriended by Cruise (who in the book is a journalist) who talks to him talking crazily about living underground in sewers.

There is also another part that Speilberg left out about a preacher trying to communicate with the aliens, but it was too much to put in a 2 hour movie.

But......if I had one complaint about a problem I had with the film, it was that one scene showed the crowd walking past a wall of "posters" with people looking for people.

Seems to me the time frame might not be long enough for that to have happened. But it didn't ruin the film for me, but I would expect that many posters would take a few days to accumulate.

I've seen it twice and will go one more time.

The second time I went to a local AMC CinePlex and the sound, while good, was not even in the same league as the Mann Village.

I mean in the scene when Cruise is running and people are being zapped all around him, I could actually "FEEL" the zap in the Mann Village. I mean it was incredibly tactile.

So I have to get to the Mann again before it leaves. It was a real trip.

If anyone wishes to read the original story it is here:

http://pinkmonkey.com/dl/library2/WaroftheWorlds01.asp

wshuff · « **Reply #63 on:** 15 Jul 2005, 05:38 am »

John,

I thought the same thing about the wall of posters. Plus, the aliens were on the move destroying stuff all over the world. It seemed a little strange to me that people would be spending their time looking for others, like the disaster was over, when the aliens were still right there.

But otherwise I enjoyed the movie very much. If the aliens pop up tomorrow, I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up looking much like Speilberg showed it.

PhilNYC · « **Reply #64 on:** 15 Jul 2005, 05:39 am »

Quote from: John Casler

Hi Phil,

The Tim Robbins part, was "also" part of the original HG Wells story. In the original story an Artilleryman is befriended by Cruise (who in the book is a journalist) who talks to him talking crazily about living underground in sewers..

John...I do realize that, but I just didn't find the execution of it believeable at all.

I can usually tell I'm not going to be impressed by a movie if I find myself questioning things too frequently...and this one had a lot. Nothing major in terms of their actions, but small stuff, like why didn't the entire town know that something was horribly wrong after the first Tripod attacked? Why didn't Cruise turn on a TV when he got to his wife's house to see what was going on? How was he able to drive the van thru the rubble of the plane crash? Why was everybody so anxious to get on the ferry? Why didn't the miltary stop to help Cruise and his family or at least tell them where to go? And so on and so on....