War of the Worlds (M, 117mins) Directed by Steven Spielberg ***½
Herbert George Wells has a lot to answer for. For more than a century, his seminal science-fiction story has provided the basis for others to scare audiences senseless on radio, on vinyl and on the big screen.
While official War of the Worlds movies have been few and far between (only a 1953 version, inspired more by Orson Welles’ famous Halloween radio broadcast existed before two recent direct-to-video duds), everything from Independence Day and Alien to Signs and Species have drawn inspiration from the former draper’s apprentice’s tale of Martians invading Earth.
Resetting the Victorian England source novel in contemporary America, Steven Spielberg’s 2005 vision of Welles’ War focuses on New York port worker Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise). Unreliable, unsanitary and uncouth, Ferrier is estranged from his wife and barely civil to his two children Robbie (Justin Chatwin) and Rachel (Dakota Fanning) on their irregular visits to his bachelor pad.
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Their latest weekend of terse conversations and takeaway food is interrupted by a freak electrical storm. Lightning strikes not once, but 26 times in the same place, stopping dead all electrical equipment and cars. But much worse is to follow. The ground subsides and up rises a giant metallic tripod which begins incinerating the locals at will.
Right from Morgan Freeman’s opening voiceover, paraphrasing the opening lines of Wells’ book, writers Josh Friedman (Chain Reaction) and David Koepp (Spider-Man) display a strong intention to stick to the 1898 template. All the touchstones are there – the ship, the coal cellar and the red weed – with the major addition of the main protagonist having a couple of children tagging along. While some changes don’t make sense (especially the aliens’ pre-planning for the attack), Koepp and Friedman’s script certainly keeps the action coming and the human drama to the fore. They also manage to cleverly capture America’s post-9/11 paranoia. “Is it terrorists?” asks Robbie.
“No, it’s something else,” replies Ray.
“You mean like Europe?”
Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds is a dark, gritty and absorbing disaster movie.
Returning to the alien-visitation genre which has served him so well (Close Encounters, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial), director Spielberg turns his usual visions of benign other-worldly tourists on their head.
These aliens ain’t here to play an intergalactic version of the 1970s electronic game Simon – or to eat our lollies. Using hand-held cameras and natural light wherever possible, and aided by Janusz Kaminski’s (Catch Me If You Can) superb cinematography, Spielberg’s War is a dark, gritty and absorbing disaster movie.
The clever use of reflections and screens adds to the film’s edge, while the sparing use of John Williams’ foreboding score allows the rising tension to engulf the audience organically.
And yet, while it’s light years ahead of the 1953 version and the appalling 2002 remake of Welles’ other classic, The Time Machine, there’s something lacking.
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Dakota Fanning and Tom Cruise play daughter and father in War of the Worlds.
The party-piece pyrotechnics and visions Welles’ fans have dreamed of are all there, a pre-Katiegate Cruise is in fine dramatic form and Spielberg’s journey to the dark side is superbly realised. But there’s just a tinge of déjà vu about proceedings.
Spielberg originally planned to make this much earlier, but the arrival of 1996’s Independence Day made him scupper those plans.
Unfortunately, the spectre of that film’s breathtaking opening hour, M Night Shyamalan’s Signs, The Matrix, and even Spielberg’s own war movies, Saving Private Ryan and Empire of the Sun, cast a shadow over what is otherwise a rare piece of lovingly crafted, intelligent, adult science fiction.
War of the Worlds will screen on TVNZ 2 at 8.30pm tonight, Sunday, July 24, before becoming available on TVNZ+. It is also available to stream on Prime Video.
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