exm

Ok, I will stop replying after this one

One note about Ziegfeld (I saw WotW Wednesday night at this theatre): the sounds system is awesome, the theatre itself is beautiful, only due to the layout of the theatre, the screen isn't as big as it should be for such an impressive theatre. Still, it's one of my favorites in Manhattan!

digitalfreaknyc

What a complete and utter waste of 2 hours.

In my mind, Spielberg has completely lost it. I haven't enjoyed any of his movies since 1998 and that was Saving Private Ryan. It's like he's taken the aspects of his older films that people loved and given us the quick and dirty vesions of them. Emotions for Dummies, if you will. Everything is simple and everyONE is a stereotype. Tom is the "bad father." Dakots is the "annoying but loveable daughter." The son is the "rebellious teenager." Tim was the "seemingly-drunk crazy." They're all two-dimensional. Even his beginnings feel like a huge set-up. And my god, how many times do we have to watch EVERY SINGLE PERSON or THING near Tom Cruise get obliterated but Tom Cruise? I know he's Tom Cruise and all and you have to suspend disbelief a bit but this pushes it over the top. Even Dakota, who I ADORE in everything she does, was someone that I just wanted to slap and say "shut up" to. And then ending? What else can be said that hasn't already been said...dumb, overly sentimental and a complete let-down. That and the special effects weren't nearly as well integrated as I expected them to be. I'm trying to find one redeemable moment in the movie and I can't. Just tragic what has happened to Steven. How the mighty have fallen.

D+....at best.

Sessa17

From your explanation it really just sounds like you are being that guy.

These are more of character archetypes than stereotypes, I mean don't people know the type of movies they are going to see before they see them. If Spielberg spent too much time focusing on the characters, & then no much on the aliens everyone would bitch about that. This is War of the Worlds, not Raging Bull, its not going to be a character piece with fresh new character models. And it is also an adaptation, a character like the one Robins plays was Spielberg trying to adapt a character (2 in this case I think) from the book. When I go to see a movie called War of the Worlds, I want to see big ass aliens blow shit up. I mean dear god, some people just love to bitch about anything.

Are you kidding me? It's the F'n "beginning", of COARSE it feels like a huge set-up, that is the point.

You have to just be being that guy. He is the star of the film, of COARSE he isn not going to ge blown up. This doesn't push suspending disbelief over the top, it would be a short film if he just died half way through it. Did you bitch about all the endless danger after danger that happens to Indiana Jones yet never kills him? Or John McLain in Die Hard that yet never kills him, or Luke Skywalker but never kills him. I guess you have never liked any action movie that has ever been made.

Clearly you did not enjoy the book then.

Now I know you are just being that guy b/c the computer effects are simply flawless in this film. Other creators should you this movie as an example of how to use CGI.

Too each their own, but your explanations really just sound like someone hating a film for the sake of hating it b/c it is so popular.

digitalfreaknyc

I hate it because it's popular?

My favorite movies of all time:
1. Star Wars
2. Indiana Jones
3. Godfather
4. Jaws
5. Superman

NOW who's being "that guy?"

And btw...use the grammar and spell check before you try and prove a point.

Mopower

I saw it again last night to catch things I might have missed. There are some little details that make it more like the book than I first thought.

When the first tripod is moving underground the whole area moves in a counter clockwise direction just like somthing unscrewing itself. And in the book the canisters that came down unscrewed open and then the tripods came out.

And in the book it mentions that the aliens never discovered the wheel. In the movie when the aliens are in the basement they knock over a bicycle and one of them turns the wheel like it was something it had never seen before.

I'm sure there are more that I'll think of but little details like that make the film better the second time you see it.

Sessa17

Star Wars, Indy, Superman, & Jaws all do things that you complain about War of the Worlds doing.

And you REALLY need to use a grammar & spell check before telling others to do so. You may want to try another angle to attack someone on.

exm

Sessa17 and digitalfreaknyc: chill! You've both been around long enough on this board to know that a flaming war belongs in 'others'

Having said that, I do agree with Sessa that dfnyc's critic is unfounded: yes, there are a lot of stereotypes in this movie but come 'on: it's a Sci-Fi movie, based on a book! It's no Cinderella Man (which I haven't seen). I absolutely loved the movie for what it is: 2 hours of non-stop entertainment.

But: to each his own!

digitalfreaknyc

All of those movies were 1000 times more well written than this piece of garbage. Look at the screenwriters and there is absolutely no comparison. All are considered classics and to compare them to this latest Spielberg tragedy is ridiculous at best.

And if you have a problem with my grammar or spelling, please feel free to point out your problems. I'd love to see/hear them.

Then good for you. Personally, I expect more from Spielberg than vapid Bruckheimer trash. You can't blame me for having higher expectations.

There are ways of "setting things up" without making it FEEL that way. That was my problem. It all felt like a set-up as opposed to my just being dropped into a world and watching everything unfold. An audience should never be conscious of a set-up or being told information just so they have background info. Spielberg is better than that.

There comes a point where it's just COMPLETELY unrealistic and ridiculous. You can't compare Star Wars because that's an environment that we are neither familiar with nor understand. And there was never the chaos going around Luke that Tom's character found himself in...nor many other characters in action movies of past. But in this movie, not only is the chaos widespread but Spielberg shows these robots as never missing their shot. So everyone around Tom is being zapped up and he's the ONLY one they don't hit. Pointless and stupid. You never have a sense of tension or danger because there just seems to be this heroic bullshit coming out of him that makes him invinceable. No point in having a movie where you know nothing will ever happen to the main character no matter how chaotic or unrealistic the situation.

Clearly I'm not alone in my criticism of the ending. And it has nothing to do with the book. It's spielberg's lead-up to the ending. It's his creation and ultimately, failure for not properly executing it.

In your opinion. You're allowed yours and I'm allowed mine. I found it flawed. Don't dismiss it simply because it doesn't jive with yours.

Again, has NOTHING to do with popularity. The best movie this summer has been Sith and I'm sure that had more to do with my personal attachment to Star Wars than anything else. Batman was very good but could have been better. I disliked this movie because it was boring, uninvolving, two-dimensional and poorly written.

Mr. Cinema

War of the Worlds is the best sci-fi/action movie so far of 2005.

covenant

No, it wasn't his house. Remember when he mentioned the case of Peach schnapps he found there?

Sessa17

I never compared them, all I said was they all contain things that you fault WOTW for having.

I never said I had a problem with your spelling & grammar, only that you should have perfect spelling & grammar if you are going to criticize someone else's. Pointing you mistakes out? Where do I start. How about "Dakots" or " And then ending?"

No, I don't, & there is nobody that bitches about movies more b/c their expectations are higher than I do. But 3 quaters of this movie are amazing, or at the very least decent, & I just find it hard to believe that one could not find one single thing good to say about this movie.

This just doesn't make sense to me, it really just sounds like you are bitching for the sake of bitching. Jaws, a flawless movie IMO, but the beginning is nothing but a standard set-up, same with Close Encounters & countless other classic films. WOTW does just what you say it doesn't, it just starts the viewer right in a standard town, not knowing anything about the characters or situation other than you already know there will be an invasion.

Again, the film is THE STORY OF TOM CRUISE'S CHARACTER, it is the story of a man who survives with his family. Why on earth would he be zapped or killed during an attack, it would make for a very short & dull film if the movie was the story of some lady who got killed during the first invasion. And there are plenty of action movies where there is mass chaos & dying going on where the lead character does not die. How about SPR which you said you loved, hundreds of people dying on the beach, why does not one bullet hit Hanks?

Again, bitching for the sake of bitching. Did you see the same film? B/c the one I saw has other people including a dad carrying their kid run right buy Cruise during the first attack. It shows Cruise with plenty of others running down the street not all getting zapped. It shows the aliense shooting buildings & other things so they may not have been hitting every single target.


What heroic bullshit? The guy was running scared the entire movie? His son had more balls then he did.

Every single action movie there is, 9 times out of 10 you know the star of the film is not going to die. You know Bruce Willis was never going to die in Die Hard, you know Gibson is not going to die in Lethal Weapon, you know Ford is not going to die in Indy. Did you actually think Cruise was going to die in this movie? Do you hate every film ever made when the star of the film lives under extreme circumstances? So it makes to sense to fault this film for doing so.

I'm not dismissing it because it doesn't jive with mine, I'm doing so b/c your reasons make no sense. As I'm sure others agree.

Well you just completey described my opinion of ROTH, a film that conatins every single thing you hate WOTW for having, ESPECIALLY awful special-effects, so I really just have no clue how you cas complain about WOTW the way you do.

caipirina

Same here in Fiji and according to the IMDB it is the same everywhere.

It seems unusual, as we have been conditioned into thinking that the wider a movie, the more important = all sommer blockbusters come in scope. (edit: of course not ALL of them: iirc a lot of the recent comic movies were not scope ... with spider man they witched ratios .. and so on ... but really some film makers chose 1:2.35 to make the movie look more important)

Now, Spielberg decides his aspect ratio depending on what he wants to show. I recall that for Jurassic Park he chose 1.85:1 to better show the tall tall dinosaurs ... and here, we have tall tall tripods.

Yes, I was surprised at first too, but at certain scenes it made total sense.

dvd182

Yes, and we are COMPLETELY familiar and can understand what it would be like if aliens invaded our planet...
I don't know, digital. You'd be pretty hard pressed to find a movie this year that did CGI better than this one. It was very refreshing to see strong CGI mixed in with location shooting, rather than the ROTS green screen fests we seem to get all the time now.

Capo2002

I thought the movie was very good, but the ending was a little abrupt and kind of weak imo. I don't know why anybody is complaining about Dakota Fanning I thought she was one of the best things about this movie, she really gave a convincing performance.

digitalfreaknyc

First point, no but we ARE familliar with our planet. That's a starting point. In Star Wars, there is none. It's completely unfamiliar.

The CGI was the LEAST of my issues. I really didn't get bothered by it, but since I had so many other problems, that was just thrown in for good measure.

digitalfreaknyc

I'm not complaining so much about her as I am the script. None of the characters were even remotely likeable and I was wondering why I should give a shit about two bratty kids and their selfish father. IMHO, she's the most talented thing to come out of Hollywood since River Phoenix.

cdollaz

Loved the ending. For once a big action movie where the main character didn't figure out a way to beat the aliens himself or hop in a jet and blow everything up.

Many moviegoers are so used to I, Robot, Armageddon and that kind of garbage that is it doesn't have a huge, spectacular ending, they are disappointed.

digitalfreaknyc

No. People are just hoping for something logical and not totally out of left field. No one is complaining that it's not a big hollywood-type ending.

cdollaz

I guess your just not getting it as seems pretty logical that what happened could happen. Yeah, it may not have been foreshadowed but since when are surprises a bad thing in movies?

chanster

I think it is hillarious that digitalfreak is moaning about this movie, while he prays to the altar of the Star Wars Gods.

Even though I didn't think WOTW had the best "emotions" I have seen in movies, whathever emotional attachment in this movie is about 1000x better than emotions displayed in the Star Wars movies. And don't get me started on how simple and stereotypical the characters in Star Wars are.

The special effects are 1000x times better than the crapfest Star Wars prequels.

Is it WOTW a perfect movie? Of course not, but at least, for the first time in years, I could sit through a summer movie and not be incredibly bored by the lame plot and run of the mill CGI work.

island007

This may be what bothers so many on the internet, and many people just want any reason to bash a Tom Cruz movie

Anyway, WOTW was a great movie.

Sessa17

All the reasons you pointed out are my exact issues with what digitalfreak posts, & why it comes off like he is just being that guy. The reasons he hates WOTW just have no merit, especially when he says ROTS is the "best" movie of the year. The movies he says he loves contain the exact same things he bashes WOTW for having. And clearly other people have posted agreeing with me. Nobody is saying WOTW is classic, I think the last quater of the film is awful, but even the people that have not liked the movie, aren't going as far as he is going, & his reasoning just makes no sense. I mean, bad CGI, the guy has got to be joking, yet he praises ROTS with it's dreadful use of CGI. He bashes the characters for being stereotypes, yet the films he says he loves have characters that are the EPITOME of stereotypes, and his argument about the "set-up" of the film doesn't even make sense, when again, the films he loves use essentially the exact same means to set the stage for the story & action.

pingie

I’m basically new to this forum. The only few posts I have are in Book Talk I believe. Anyways, there was a special early premiere of War of the Worlds at midnight before its wide release here in New Orleans, so I decided to see it with a couple of friends. I thought it was an okay film, not as great as some people here are saying and certainly not as bad as others here are saying either.

After viewing the film, my friends and I just didn’t think it was worth it to see the special premiere at midnight. It just wasn’t all that. Certain aspects of the film that I didn’t like are mentioned here already, such as the ending with the son, the wife and the rest of the family. I thought it was all too convenient when it comes to what was happening with Cruise’s character and his family...how they have the only working car, how they spent the night at the mother’s house and woke up to find that everything was destroyed outside but the van somehow was still intact without a scratch, how the highways were opened for them to drive through without traffic and such. I’ve been through a hurricane evacuation before and I can tell you that the interstate leading out was not as open as the interstate was in the film. It was all bumper to bumper with no room whatsoever. And this was a hurricane evacuation. Just imagine what it would be like with an alien invasion! I’m sure that all the major interstates would be jammed with no room for a car to pass. The ending was somewhat of a disappointment too. I never read the book but I understood the ending. I just felt like the film was cruising at a good pace and suddenly out of nowhere it comes to an abrupt stop with an explanation of sort by the narrator. Uh…OKAY.

Anyways with those aspects aside, the film was pretty entertaining. Acting, special effects and action sequences were great. I didn’t think the daughter was annoying at all but the son was very annoying at times, especially when he babbled on how his father should let him go to fight and stuff. Overall, a decent film but I had more fun with LAND OF THE DEAD. Oh, the tripods definitely reminded me of HALF LIFE 2 as mentioned by someone here...

chanster

Well I am not going to sit here and argue over details of the movie (as there were problems with that). but he point was that the cars on the highway were not part of the evacuation ... they were just going about their normal business when the EMP type device shut down all the cars.

cortan

This is one of those movies that you HAVE to see in the theater.
Years from now people that missed it in the theater will hope it gets re-released to be able to experience it on the bigscreen (Like I did with the original star wars movies and finally got to see them in the theater for the first time in '97)

The giant screen and maybe THE best sound I've ever heard in a theater MAKE this movie. It becomes more of an experience than just a movie. The last time I remember being wowed by the combination of incredible sound and effects like this in a theater was in '93 with Jurassic Park and its welcoming debut of DTS sound.


Very Highly recommended

My one word review....

INTENSE