Tag: War of the Worlds

Close Encounters of the Worst Kind.

“Across the gulf of space…intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.” Hey, don’t say L. Ron Hubbard didn’t try to warn us. At any rate, Spielberg’s take on War of the Worlds is a gritty, eye-popping ride at first, but ultimately ends up being a disappointing affair. In short, it too often abandons the eponymous conflict for pained bouts of family melodrama and lots of Signs-like crashing about in a basement.

I’m aggravated by this film more than most, because from the lightning storm in the first fifteen minutes to the incident at the Hudson River ferry about halfway in, War showed flashes of amazing promise at times. With their introduction from below and their commence-the-killing foghorns, the tripods were spindly alien nightmares, just as they should be. Some of the humanity adrift sequences didn’t make much sense (Why do the news crew cannibalizing the downed plane act starved 12 hours into Day 1 of the attack? How could everything else be picked over by then?), but I particularly liked the swarm of panic and rage surrounding the sight of the Cruise family’s working van. And, while using blatant and Dubyaesque terror, terror, terror, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 imagery seems like something of an easy shortcut (and how was that “missing persons” board near the ferry created so quickly, in such a random place?), it still helped augment the apocalyptic gloom that an adapation of War of the Worlds needs front-and-center.

But, alas, amidst all this armageddon, we’re forced to take multiple timeouts so that Tom Cruise and his kids can work out their unresolved family issues. You have to expect some of this in a Spielberg movie, sure, but it still seems like filler, pretty much every time. And it seriously detracts from the terror War is trying to invoke when one starts counting the character beats until the unavoidable group hug. Moreover, when we get to the interminable basement of Crazy-Eyez Robbins, the film just stops dead. (I know there was a similar sequence in the 1953 George Pal film, but frankly I don’t remember enough to compare the two.) After all the rabid, contagious fear of teeming, ant-like humanity that permeates the first hour, why would we want to watch Cruise, Robbins, and Fanning play hide-and-seek for twenty minutes with that Abyss-like tentacle? (Particularly given that we saw Cruise already do this with the ID spiders in Minority Report.) As a result, by the time Team Cruise gets to (a surprisingly undamaged) Boston for the cathartic group hug, I’d pretty much checked out. Unfortunately, despite a captivating first hour, War of the Worlds eventually bogs down into quagmire.

On War, Violence, and other Grimm Matters.

In this weekend’s movie bin, yet another new look at Stephen Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and a higher quality version of the trailer for David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence that premiered at Cannes last week. And, further into the future, the one-sheet for Terry Gilliam’s return, The Brothers Grimm, makes it online. Along with Heath Ledger, Matt Damon, and the lovely Monica Bellucci, Grimm also includes Peter Stormare and Jonathan Pryce. Seeing Sam Lowry back in the Gilliam-verse should be worth the price of admission by itself.

Four, War, and a Bore.

Big-time summer trailers piggybacking off of Sith this week include the final trailer for Fantastic Four (I actually liked the Magic Johnson NBA spot, but this is looking lame again) and a new War of the Worlds trailer, with our first brief look at the invaders. Also, Top Guns Jamie Foxx, Jessica Biel, and Josh Lucas go up against a renegade Skynet-like fighter in the new trailer for Stealth. Oof, Sam Shepard and Joe Morton must have some bills to pay.

Apes, Aslan, & Aliens.

Courtesy of Coming Soon, Adrien and Naomi brave Skull Island in this new still from PJ’s King Kong, WETA Workshop shows off its Narnia designs in this catalog of sculpture, and Steven Spielberg unleashes the GOP’s worst nightmare — an ornery Tim Robbins brandishing a shotgun — in some recently-released images from War of the Worlds.

Fanboy Cornucopia.

Thanks to ShoWest and otherwise, there’s been quite a bit of fanboy news to come down the pike in the past few days…

  • In the casting department, Parker Posey joined the legion of Superman as “Kitty Koslowski,” one of Lex Luthor’s minions. Hopefully, it’s a better villainess turn than in Blade: Trinity.

  • Not to be outdone by the son of Krypton, a spiffy new Batman Begins poster premieres online.

  • Rounding out the DC trifecta, Buffy mastermind Joss Whedon is signed to write and direct Wonder Woman.

  • On the Marvel end, AICN uncovers the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters’ new additions for X3…this time around will include Beast, Gambit, and a female Angel.

  • In the midst of the press junket for Woody Allen’s Melinda & Melinda, Chloe Sevigny inadvertently lets on that the Black Cat will likely complicate Peter Parker’s life in the next Spiderman.

  • Looking for direction (and cash flow) in the upcoming post-prequel era, George Lucas announces he’ll be re-releasing the OT in Cameron-style 3-D.

  • Ang Lee prepares to go back to the well with a prequel to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (I’ll take it over another Hulk.)

  • Among the recent new trailers is our first look at Michael Bay’s The Island, with Ewan MacGregor, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Buscemi, and Michael Clarke Duncan. I generally can’t stand Michael Bay films, but it is sci-fi and the cast isn’t bad.

  • The new Hitchhiker’s Guide site goes live, which includes this splendid shot of Arthur and Marvin enjoying (as much possible, given the terrible pain in all his diodes down his left side) an intergalactic sunset.

  • Finally, the very Independence Day-ish full trailer for War of the Worlds is out-and-about, which involves a lot of Tom Cruise running, Dakota Fanning crying, and random things detonating. Is Spielberg trying to out-Bay Bay?

    • Pats and Bats.

    Well, there may have been no nipple sightings during this year’s somewhat sloppy Superbowl (McCartney, you tease) — nor, as Seth Stevenson points out, were there much in the way of memorable ads — but we did get another look at Batman Begins, which included what appears to be our first glimpse of The Scarecrow, as well as a disaster-movie moment from War of the Worlds. I was hoping for more, but ah well.

    Samurai Bat.

    The holiday trailer season continues today, with the first look at Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and, if you’re fast, this early copy of the spiffy new Batman Begins trailer. (If that doesn’t work, there are a number of screencaps here.)

    Gertie 2.0.

    Uh-oh. Dakota Fanning is cast as the daughter of Tom Cruise (soon to reunite with Michael Mann for a Battle of Britain film) in the upcoming War of the Worlds remake. It’s nothing against Fanning — she actually seems like a relatively talented child actress. But the combination of cute kids and Spielberg have been a recipe for real schmaltzy trouble in the past.