Perkinsun Dzees

No, not THAT "War of the Worlds". I'm talking about Timothy Hines' version of WAR OF THE WORLDS which is scheduled for official release on DVD on June 14. Apparently Walmart stores already have this in stock and are selling it. On the Amazon.com website, the DVD has been getting a flood of reviews, almost all of them either overwhelmingly positive or extremely negative. These reviews were so obviously not legit that Amazon went so far as to remove all of them.

Well, a lot of negative reviews have popped up again. Now, someone is claiming that this is a professional, organized effort by the makers of the upcoming WAR OF THE WORLDS (ie. Spielberg and co.) to trash this movie adaptation of the HG Wells novel so that it won't cut into ticket sales for the Tom Cruise version.

Check it out here --
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...v=glance&s=dvd

Would Spielberg and co. stoop so low?

Mr. Salty

One might also point out that Hines and company deliberately held on to their film to release it exactly one week before Spielberg's film in order to ride its coat tails to make a quick buck.

tofu

So that's the kind of work that they make you do if you intern at the movie studios, huh?

Jackskeleton

pretty much. Also get folks coffee.

Superboy

Um....yeah. Remember when Sony got caught making up positive reviews for their own movies? I wouldn't put it past the studio. Anyway, yeah, I think all of those reviews are fake.

The Bus

WARNING -- THE POSITIVE REVIEWS ON THIS ITEM ARE FAKE!, June 10, 2005

then two down...

WARNING - THE NEGATIVE REVIEWS ON THIS ITEM ARE FAKE! June 10, 2005

Jaymole

And Tom Cruise jumpimg on Oprah's couch and blatthering like a lovestruck 13 yr old was the organized effort of Timothy Hines to torpedo Spielberg's version

Y2K Falcon

"2/5" - David Manning, The Ridgefield Press

mifuneral

Eh, that's a pretty standard marketting practice. I wouldn't call that dirty, just practical.

As for this being an organized effort by Spielberg & co., I doubt it. Why would an older adaptation keep people from seeing the new, effects-strewn, Tom-Cruise-lead, Spielberg-helmed sure-to-be-blockbuster?

Groucho

This is a new film, from the UK. Based on the trailers, it looks horrendous.

mifuneral

ahh, ok. Poor assumption on my part I guess. Still, Spielberg's version surely trumps basically everything else in terms of name power.

devilshalo

And make copies.

Y2K Falcon

Does anyone know what the similarly-named-timed-with-official-release porn version will be called???

johnglass

"Whore of the Worlds"?

Giles

or "Whores of the World"

or "Holes of the World"

or

"OOOOOOhhhh's of the World

Samuel

Do movie-goers ever really pass on a movie because of reviews? War of The Worlds is a summer movie event; Speilberg, Tom Cruise, Alien invasion and things going BOOM! Bad reviews aren't going to stop anyone. Look how much money ID4 made.

The reviews on Amazon look to be the work of two sci-fi nerds stuck in a generation gap.

jiggawhat

To me WOTW does not have the WOW factor of ID4.

Groucho

Whoa!

The Antipodean

Here's hoping WOTW doesn't have the SUCK factor of ID4. Man, that was godawful.

jiggawhat

I don't know what movie you saw but it was from far godawful.

joeblow69

If by "SUCK factor" you mean Will Smith, then I think we're safe

Drexl

Considering that I had never heard of Hines' version before seeing this thread today, I'd be more likely to believe this is an effort by the people behind that version. Yeah, I'm really sure that planting some negative customer reviews of an apparently obscure adaptation on a website is going to help your blockbuster do better business. I would think that people who buy Hines' version are probably going to be more likely to see Spielberg's.

Mr. Salty

No, no, I'm going to have to side with Sierra Disc on this one. ID4 was god awful. In fact, I'd go up one notch and say it was god-fucking-awful. And a ripoff of "War of the Worlds" to boot.

jaeufraser

Seriously, I have to agree. This film, which by the way looks awful if you've ever seen the trailer, is no threat whatsoever to Tom Cruise's film. Not only is it quite different, but if these negative reviews are right it's also just flat out awful. Like z grade, badly shot digital garbage of the highest order. I have to believe this is the work of people behind Hine's movie since they're the only ones who will really benefit from this hub bub.

Actually, one other anomaly I have to note is its sales ranking. I've been reading about this movie for awhile. It was near the top one hundred on amazon.com a few days ago. It was at around 290 just last night when I was reading about this film. Now it's down to 593. Seems like someone is placing and cancelling orders to bump that up. And there's no logic behind Paramount doing this. This film is just too cheap and has no real presence to be even the slightest threat to the Spielberg version. Though all this small controversy about the movie surely helps the Hine's version and lets people know it exists.

mdc3000

I doubt Spielberg is really worried about this POS cutting into ticket sales... People aren't hyped about seeing War of the Worlds...they are hyped about seeing Tom Cruise starring in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds... I think the other movie's bad reviews on amazon, fake or not, are probably just normal people lashing out...movie studios etc. have better things to do with their time... Paramount/Dreamworks have nothing to worry about with this one...

MATT