Going to the Wells for a Drink

Well I got back Monday afternoon from my extended Fourth of July vacation, and promptly took a nap. I guess staying up until 4:50 AM in the morning can do that. All in all I had a really good time getting to see friends and ate way too much meat and too little fiber.

While in Atlanta (Dang it was hot) some friends and I went to a late showing of War of the Worlds. As you would guess it’s based on the story by H. G. Wells, the 1938 Orson Welles radio adaptation, and maybe the 1953 movie adaptation. I read the story years agoand listened to the broadcast on tape, after I had seen the 1953 movie. For anyone that likes classic Science Fiction or good storytelling I recommend reading many of Wells’ works. I liked the broadcast and the movie from ’53, but the book was just an enjoyable read of the imagination of a different era.

Anyway, I found the movie to be highly enjoyable and entertaining. Spielberg does an excellent job of maintaining suspense throughout the movie. I like a lot of the camera shots and angles. There was some shaky-cam that got on my nerves a little, but at least it didn’t make me sick. Tom Cruise shows that he can still act, even if he can’t give a coherent interview anymore. Dakota Fanning continues to impress the hell out of me with her acting ability. I hope she does well and doesn’t have all the problems that other child stars have. It’s also nice that there are a lot of extras and short screen time actors in this movie, but you only really follow 3 people without cutting away. It gives you lots of time to see and know them. And of course that frees up a lot of budget for special effects, which kick ass. One of the biggest guys I know said he realized he was about to start pulling his knees up to his chest. Now I think that’s good suspense for a movie that you know what’s going to happen.

What follows are spoilers. Highlight the text to view.

First of all you know that they will live in the end and the invaders will be stopped, big surprise. I think they did a good job of working around that. Some people complained about why the machines were buried for a million years. First of all, that is the unsubstantiated ranting of what can be described as a mentally unstable man, in the movie. In fact most of the machines could have arrived as late as 500 years ago, a lot even after that. They could have dropped several on San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake without notice. My guess at an explanation would be that they have very limited resources and so it took decades to build a machine and produce enough energy to send it to Earth. Therefore they needed to seed the earth for centuries with enough machines to ensure swift victory and to have a large enough ground force to make a transport facility. The machines were pretty mice. I like how they looked like the aliens themselves, 3 legs and toes, large ray shaped head, small hands under the small torso. Is it me or did their horn sound like a giant Wagner Power Painter? Were the things powered by people (he he Biodiesel) or was it was converting the organic mass of the people into a substance to help with the terraforming? I still think they died of Athlete’s Foot.

Overall I found it a thoroughly enjoyable summer movie. I know of at least one person that hated it, and thought it had too much running and was just a disaster movie. He also thought Wells wrote the book from an original radio transcript. Take his opinion as you will. My opinion says to go see the movie on the big screen. It’s worth a full price ticket and possibly a matinee viewing as well. I’d wait for the extended or special edition on DVD though. I expect nice extras.