Channel surfing tonight I came across Spielberg's War of the Worlds just in time for the scene that ruined the movie for me.
Understand that, overall, I think they did a really nice job of updating the story, making it contemporary and relevant without losing any of the major beats of Well's original. The aliens and their machines evoke Well's story while not feeling out of place in our era, the human drama is foremost and, as it's told exclusively from Ray's (Tom Cruise's character's) point of view, immediate and often chilling. But I just can't get past the set-up to this great big bug-eyed monster from outer space extravaganza.
The aliens are first revealed as one of their war machines corkscrews out of the earth, underneath a main intersection in Ray's neighborhood. He watches, stunned, as the ground begins to rotate, shearing off the fronts of buildings and collapsing structures as the ground falls into the center of the hole that's being created. The alien machine rises to tower over everything, then opens fire, disintegrating people right and left, turning them into so many clouds of ash. I watched that scene, wondering what the hell they're doing coming up from underground. After all, this is War of the Worlds, not Attack of the Mole Men.
Later, Ray watches a video showing how the aliens were inserted into their war machines via the intense lightning storm that presaged the attack. And we're told that they must have been planning this attack for millions of years… that they "planted" their machines here, just waiting for their chance to invade.
And at that point, I'm out. I've gone "huh" to "what the fuck?" I mean, we've now got aliens that knew, millions of years ago that they were going to invade earth. This, of course, begs the question of why they didn't just invade then, rather than plant their war machines and wait. (Maybe dinosaur blood won't work for them.) Then we've got to accept the idea that they were prescient enough to know where to plant their war machines so they'd be conveniently located near 21st century population centers (taking into account, of course, continental drift and the vagaries of plate tectonics). And finally, there's the end of the damn movie which, while it follows Well's ending, IS kind of hard to swallow today. But if they've been planning this invasion for millions of years and didn't know to protect themselves from alien microbes, well, now we've got some incredibly stupid aliens on our hands.
What cinched it all for me was when I checked out the DVD extras a while back, hoping I'd find out why they made this bonehead decision in the first place. Amazingly, I actually got an answer, as they discussed it in their "Designing the Enemy" feature. Turns out Spielberg wanted to "do something different" since aliens are always coming from space. So they thought it would be cool to have them invade from underground. Never mind the fact that, almost by definition, aliens would HAVE to invade from space and, lest we forget the lightning bolts, they're STILL coming from space. But hey, we got that whole cool "corkscrew out of the center of town" scene, so we're good, right?
Understand that, overall, I think they did a really nice job of updating the story, making it contemporary and relevant without losing any of the major beats of Well's original. The aliens and their machines evoke Well's story while not feeling out of place in our era, the human drama is foremost and, as it's told exclusively from Ray's (Tom Cruise's character's) point of view, immediate and often chilling. But I just can't get past the set-up to this great big bug-eyed monster from outer space extravaganza.
The aliens are first revealed as one of their war machines corkscrews out of the earth, underneath a main intersection in Ray's neighborhood. He watches, stunned, as the ground begins to rotate, shearing off the fronts of buildings and collapsing structures as the ground falls into the center of the hole that's being created. The alien machine rises to tower over everything, then opens fire, disintegrating people right and left, turning them into so many clouds of ash. I watched that scene, wondering what the hell they're doing coming up from underground. After all, this is War of the Worlds, not Attack of the Mole Men.
Later, Ray watches a video showing how the aliens were inserted into their war machines via the intense lightning storm that presaged the attack. And we're told that they must have been planning this attack for millions of years… that they "planted" their machines here, just waiting for their chance to invade.
And at that point, I'm out. I've gone "huh" to "what the fuck?" I mean, we've now got aliens that knew, millions of years ago that they were going to invade earth. This, of course, begs the question of why they didn't just invade then, rather than plant their war machines and wait. (Maybe dinosaur blood won't work for them.) Then we've got to accept the idea that they were prescient enough to know where to plant their war machines so they'd be conveniently located near 21st century population centers (taking into account, of course, continental drift and the vagaries of plate tectonics). And finally, there's the end of the damn movie which, while it follows Well's ending, IS kind of hard to swallow today. But if they've been planning this invasion for millions of years and didn't know to protect themselves from alien microbes, well, now we've got some incredibly stupid aliens on our hands.
What cinched it all for me was when I checked out the DVD extras a while back, hoping I'd find out why they made this bonehead decision in the first place. Amazingly, I actually got an answer, as they discussed it in their "Designing the Enemy" feature. Turns out Spielberg wanted to "do something different" since aliens are always coming from space. So they thought it would be cool to have them invade from underground. Never mind the fact that, almost by definition, aliens would HAVE to invade from space and, lest we forget the lightning bolts, they're STILL coming from space. But hey, we got that whole cool "corkscrew out of the center of town" scene, so we're good, right?
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