Enter Steven Spielberg after a couple relatively low-key movies ready to make a blockbuster again during a time when the disaster movie genre was just starting to lose relevancy. War of the Worlds was his second alien invasion story, but while he approached Close Encounters with the desire to overturn the traditional invasion narrative, here he decided to just go with it. And thus it represents a disenchantment of sorts in his worldview as it illustrates a fight for survival against seemingly insurmountable odds.
And it’s told from the point-of-view of an asshole longshoreman, Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise) tasked with looking after his estranged children while his ex-wife (Miranda Otto) is visiting Boston. But strange weather patterns begin to take shape and before anyone knows it, buried alien Tripods are rising out of the ground and decimating people. Looking after his daughter Rachel (Dakota Fanning) and son Robbie (Justin Chatwin), Ray tries to get them to their mother and survive if possible the cataclysmic invasion.
War of the Worlds is Spielberg’s second film in a row dealing with the fallout from 9/11. Only where The Terminal tried to find hope and healing, this movie’s all about the anger and fear. The sequence of the Martian attack, seen entirely from ground level and fixed on the main character evokes ground footage of the attack on the World Trade Centre. Similar is Robbie’s determination to join the military in an apparently vain attempt to fight back, mirroring the anger and anxiousness of the post 9/11 climate. The movie is dotted with this kind of shorthand; the Martian invasion, which in other versions of the story has been completely alien and unrelatable in nature, here bears all the iconography of a terrorist attack. It’s also worth noting the lack of any empathy for or attempt to understand the invaders. Unlike any aliens appearing in a Spielberg movie before, the Martians are not friendly or misunderstood or harmless. They’re just monsters looking to destroy our way of life, as was and is commonly viewed of certain terrorist groups coming from a certain part of the world (terrorist groups in our part of the world, not so much). There’s confusion, paranoia, and a lot of panic in the air with people acting rashly and impulsively. But while War of the Worlds mirrors this context, it’s not saying anything particularly insightful about it, eliciting rather the standard optimism that we (or America specifically) can overcome it and survive. It’s Spielberg grappling with a situation by replicating its look, but not necessarily extracting meaning; his commentary as unsure as he is and his optimism expressed through humanity managing to stave off the invasion by their own actions. The story is made more triumphant, though far less original, by the humans defeating the Martians with our own weapons where the novel had them killed off by mere chance of the pathogens in Earth’s atmosphere being incompatible with their biology. This explanation is given in the closing narration of the film (provided by Morgan Freeman because it was 2005), though it has little relevance to how the film itself dealt with them. The novel was uncertain in its ending, foreboding even as it reflected the mystery and ambiguity of the universe, where this movie needed to be optimistic, ending on a traditionally happier note.
I understand why Spielberg went in this direction, though it wasn’t the best choice to make the movie stand out more. Instead it just feels all the more like any number of disaster flicks where the major Earth-threatening crisis is averted in the end and everything will probably go back to normal. Of course the restricted focus of this movie keeps the audience from seeing the greater repercussions and worldwide effect of the invasion. It’s a further attempt at a unique take, and while it has its advantages (keeping the story grounded, maintaining the mystique of the aliens, allowing the film to be character-driven), there are disadvantages too (the invasion lacking a certain weight, little diversity in perspective and actions, the Godzilla effect).
One of the things that doesn’t come across as well as Spielberg would like are the characters beginning with Ray. Tom Cruise’s generic performance in Minority Report is comparatively amazing, given how brash and unlikeable his character is here. Obviously his arc is the same as Alan Grant’s, to grow and come to care for his kids, but he still starts from a place where you don’t connect to him, an absentee father with self-serving tendencies who insults his kids when looking after them. When Rachel cries in fear over the chaos happening around them, rather than console her Ray fumes at her. You don’t care for the guy and therefore are at most modestly invested in his safety. And that modest investment only comes from the kids. Dakota Fanning is very good as usual, while Justin Chatwin overdoes it a little on the resentment and aggression, but is otherwise fine. They’re a very dysfunctional family unit, once again a broken family with another estranged patriarch. It’s curious to note in contrast to Close Encounters where the father abandoned his family during an alien invasion, this father chooses to protect his children yet is little more relatable than Roy Neary. Because even once he starts acting more responsibly (though still choosing to let his son go off to certain death), he’s not a very compelling character. No, he doesn’t have any added depth after killing Tim Robbins’ paranoid farmer. She’s in it for only a tragically few minutes, but Miranda Otto’s Mary Ann is the most stable member of the family, and as a fan of Otto’s I would have much preferred she be the character we followed through the carnage.
The look of War of the Worlds continues Spielberg’s trend of sapping colour, but there are some great visual elements. One scene while driving down the highway is shot in a 360 rotation from the exterior of the car, perhaps predicting the similar, much more perfected sequence in Children of Men. The Hudson River scene includes a shot that seems to be an homage to Jaws and the Martian probe, as well as the Martians themselves, are nicely designed. They’re not as otherworldly or creative as in the book, but they’re a definite step up from the Simon Says toys from the ’53 movie. And the harvesting is genuinely disturbing. The whole idea that the Martians set this in motion millennia ago and what it says about humanity’s purpose is pretty creative. Despite being very pro-America and playing ever so slightly into Bush-era fearmongering, the film doesn’t hesitate in showing American civility and society completely breaking down under pressure. The attack on Ray’s car is the perfect example of this desperation driving people to resort to obscene violence merely for a functioning vehicle.
Spielberg’s version of War of the Worlds was never going to be a classic; not coming out in the age that it did as a major Hollywood blockbuster with a certain criteria to perform to. It’s presented in the disaster movie mould (presumably the studio and producers were hoping given the subject matter for a repeat of Independence Day) with the focus on survival that comes with that kind of story. But War of the Worlds has much more to it than that. And though Spielberg’s attempts to bring something new through a complete change in perspective and post-9/11 America metaphors is interesting, it doesn’t actually amount to anything. Still, War of the Worlds is worth looking at as a time capsule perhaps. In more than a few ways it captures exactly what America was like in 2005 and what they were going through.
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