… problem was?… I never actually read the goddam book…

Now, I knew everything about the book…

… and the radio hoax…

… and the movie…

But I never read the actual book itself…

… nor listen to the radio show…

… nor watch the first goddam movie…

Still, HG Wells could kick Jules Verne’s ass any day of the week…

And I’ve been looking forward to Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds for a damn long time now.

I knew everything there was to know about the film…

… and yet still, I was hesitant to actually go to theatres and watch the flick…

I just didn’t want my childhood dreams crushed by shitty ass tripods, that’s all…

…

After seeing it in theatres, the new War of the Worlds definitely ended up as one of the best disaster movies I’ve seen in years.

It follows the alien invasion through the eyes of Ray Ferrier, a quirky deadbeat father who surprisingly acts a little to similar to Tom Cruise for close comfort…

And short story short, I think the action scenes were pretty amazing in this film because of the perspective we were given…

Surprisingly, it was actually anti-climactic to watch bullets and missiles harmlessly bounce off of energy shields, like I had seen so many times from sci-fi movies beforehand… But there was just something so absolutely thrilling, of seeing tanks fire endless rounds into the empty air, or seeing attack choppers unloading entire rounds of hellfire missiles against targets that we couldn’t even see… The imagination filled in the blanks for me during those moments, just like the hoax radio show long time ago did to me…

… or the reports that I read about the hoax radio show, at least…

As a summer blockbuster flick, I think that War of the Worlds definitely takes the cake. A lot of movie-goers may be disappointed in the lack of military action, or even the loss of the cliché "null nuke" scene against the alien invaders… But I for one cherished every single rumour or glimpse of the military battles that we did get to see. Robbie may have been annoying as fuck, but he did bring up a very good point when trying to get on board one of those goddam military jeeps… Getting on that vehicle may have been certain death. But sometimes, we as humans just have to see things with our own eyes… we just have to…

And to be honest? War of the Worlds was a huge improvement over Signs in terms of a survival horror kind of feel… Now, I was never really freaked out by this movie. But even I’ll admit that I jumped from the sound of the mechanical tripods from time to time… The noises they made were simply incredible, blending together the tune of ancient battle horns with the mechanical clanks and ratchets that you’d expect from solely the mind of HG Wells… And yes, I did jump in my seat when that tripod horn blared, right before the civilian airplane was shot down. The atmosphere in scenes like that was simply unparalleled…

I loved the imagination that the writers put into the sci-fi techie aspects of the aliens… The invaders entered our world through billowing "storms", which can easily be interpreted as subspace wormholes. They rode right into the ground through thunder-less lightning, which can easily be a matter transporter in disguise…

Now, sure the aliens’ plan to take over the planet was just plain idiotic in the end, to randomly keep sucking people dry until they produced enough red weed to terraform our planet. And it absolutely makes no sense really, why they’d bury their machines in the ground a "million" years ago, as Tim fucking Robbins liked to say…

But the lack of a real definitive purpose or plan for the aliens, actually wasn’t a bad thing to me in the end. It left it up to my imagination, as to why exactly the aliens were so damn stupid… Were we their crop, I mean? Did they seed life here on earth, just so they could harvest us much later on?… Sure, that would be a dumbass plan, waiting a million years just to walk all over us. But still… War of the Worlds has always been left up to the imagination. And I will definitely give props to Steven Spielberg, for keeping that part of the soul of the original story intact…

I loved the design of the tripods. Some have complained that they look archaic and primitive compared to our technology, but I for one am just glad that Steven Spielberg stayed true to HG Well’s original vision… The tripods were simply massive, towering over everything in the city but skyscrapers. And I just loved how they seamlessly blended together biological technology with mechanical torques and tentacles… Not only did the tripods remind me of plants or Pikmin picked straight from the ground, but they also conjured up great images of Japanese tentacle hentai porn over in Osaka Japan…

Got manga?…

… heh… so that’s how the Japanese took them down…

…

But of course, every movie has its flaws… and War of the Worlds definitely has its fair share of them…

Tom Cruise sucked most of the time… I’m sorry, but the guy must be getting acting lessons from Katie fucking Holmes or something…

… or even from himself…

He was just a whacked out father. I know he was meant to be, but there was just a bit too much of the real Tom Cruise in his character’s self at the beginning… He was almost jumping around on the couches, not knowing how to act around his stupid kids. He asks his daughter to order out food, and then acts all quirky (or proud?) when Rachel orders in vegetarian shit… I may have laughed at the baseball window scene, but how dumbass could Ray really be? I know he was meant to seem awkward around his children, but really… did he really have to seem like a member of the Church of Scientology too?…

A lot of people in my theatre laughed at the peanut butter scene. I didn’t, however… I thought that comic relief was awful, partly because Tom Cruise didn’t realize there was tons of food in the fridge. And partially because of how just dumbass Robbie was throughout the entire goddam film…

I did appreciate however, how much Cruise felt like a real father at the end… The way he protected Rachel from the men trying to steal his van for instance, was exactly how a father should act. And his concern for her, when to came to beating the living hell out of Tim Robbins, wasn’t so bad either… Although I personally wouldn’t have needed an incentive to beat the living shit out of that particular asshole… the actor sucks afterall…

And hell, Cruise even did a decent job of carrying Robbie’s lameass acting performance as well. Which says a hell of a lot, considering how fucking moronic the kid was being during the whole military battle scene… Really, I just wanted to watch the fight. Fucking Robbie and his fucking whining were getting in the fucking way…

Really, I know teen angst is a big thing in almost any teen’s life. But really, what the fuck was wrong with Robbie in the fucking head?… He sees the entire highway behind him fly high in the sky like Hiroshima, yet still acts all pissed off with his father for not telling him where they’re going?… And yeah, I understand why he was willing to leave his sister for the army, considering he didn’t know at the time that the enemy couldn’t be fought. But really, did he really have to whine that damn much about his father’s issues at the same damn time?…

Stupid ass bitch cared more about a busy signal on the phone, than an entire city going up in flames…

And WTF is up with the ending? How the fuck could Robbie survive a fucking wall of fire?… I can forgive the actual scene where he left his father. I hated Robbie and his goddam teen angst anyways, and even I wanted to see what was happening on the other side of the hill… But then he just shows up in a clean and pristine Boston suburb? WTF?… How the fuck did he survive? It wasn’t a happy ending for me at all. I wanted the sorry ass motherfucker to die… How the fuck did he survive?…

And Dakota Fanning wasn’t bad. Sure, she was annoying, saying all those cliché childish things about being scared and all. But her character was endearing at times, so it all balanced out in the end… Her reactions in the van did help to sell the tension of the scene. And she really did seem to care about ol’ crazy Tom Cruise by the time they were sleeping together in the basement, if that sounds good at least…

And yeah, I guess I couldn’t stand how idiotic she was, running out of the house afterwards, right into the school girl raping tentacles outside. But hey, she was a small girl, so her stupidity could be explained… She would constantly get in trouble, then get saved by her father. It was a simple formula, but the young actress helped make it work…

And oh, Tim Robbins sucked ass. Did I mention that?… Goddammit, all would’ve been forgiven, if he just fucking shot those motherfucking aliens with that shotgun of his. But because he didn’t?… God, we were just stuck with some goddam waste of a nutcase in the basement, talking about the occupation of America as if it were Iraq…

And as always, a lot of morons on the internet have compared War of the Worlds to the invasion of fucking Iraq, just like they did with Star Wars E3 and pretty much every other movie released this year (hell, even Sin City was compared… morons)… Sure, there are small references. Robbie was dumb enough to mention terrorists twice, and fucking Europeans once. Tim Robbins was hoping for an underground resistance just like the one in Iraq. And the only way the movie showed humans taking tripods down, was through suicide bomber methods…

… heh… the Japanese sure love going all kamikaze…

… especially if it relates to fucking a massive vagina with a fucking massive explosion…

The thing is… I surprisingly found the enema scene to be rather anti-climactic in the end…

The entire third act of War of the Worlds just felt slow as hell, as if the movie had run into a brick wall as soon as Tim Robbins joined the cast…

Tom Cruise taking down a tripod’s asshole with a suicide bomber sort of run, just seemed pathetic low-key to me. Almost as if some action hero sequence had been tacked onto a movie that really didn’t need it…

For one thing, it made the US military look completely stupid, considering they could’ve easily just used sticky bombs and suicide bombers everywhere to take down tripods from the inside…

And for another thing, there was just no resolution to that scene somehow… The movie just jumped from place to place. First from the basement, then to the vaginal sac, and then suddenly to Boston. As if a dozen scenes in-between had been cut or some crap like that… It was all way too quick.

I know this sounds idiotic for me to say, considering I loved the ending to the original novel when I was a

kid a long time ago…

… but really…

The ending to War of the Worlds sucked.

It fucking sucked ass.

Really.

It really, really, ridiculously sucked…

First, all the crap basement chase scenes just cheapened the whole movie for me. The aliens were fucking embarrassed by a goddam mirror and bicycle tire for Christ’s sakes… Sure, it made a statement, that perhaps only low-tech methods can defeat the aliens. But really… that’s just goddam embarrassing…

I guess the aliens didn’t look nearly as bad as I thought they would, being a cross between the ID4 ones and fucking Carebears. But I personally would’ve preferred if Steven Spielberg had left their looks to our imagination, just like he did with all the spectacular moments before that shit…

Then, we had Tom Cruise taking down the fucking tripod from the inside as if it were Katie fucking Holmes… Sure, it was nice to get some sort of real action into the film. But not only did it ruin the image of having invincible enemies roaming about, but it made every single US soldier look like a pure ass chump, for never really doing the same damn thing… How hard is it to get some goddam grenades and blow yourself up, anyhew?…

And then the actual ending…

Fucking Robbie survives… in a fucking Boston suburb that was barely even hit, by anything but dying tripods and fucking buzzards up above…

And then the aliens just literally rolled over and died… after an anti-climactic, human hit and run attack on a completely defenseless tripod…

Sure, I respect the fact that HG Well’s original ending was kept intact. Afterall, it not only shows the alien’s cockiness, of invading a planet without any real knowledge of the germs or bacteria plaguing our people… But it also shows the audience’s arrogance, as we humans always seem to assume that advanced beings can only be taken down by advanced technology. We’re often too ignorant to realize that something so damn common to us (like bicycle wheels) could be so damn foreign to somebody else…

But the execution of the ending in this film?

It was just awful… completely and utterly awful…

Thanks to a horrible Morgan Freeman voice over, which completely didn’t fit the tone of the film, we were subjected to HG Well’s original words of what happened to the aliens…

But really, considering the average IQ of the North American movie viewer?… Nobody I was with had a fucking clue what had happened or what the fuck was going on…

It was all so sudden. One moment, Tom Cruise was stuck hanging in an alien tripod titty, and the next we had him pecking away at dying tripods with the birds…

There was no real easing into that moment.

One moment, the tripods were invincible…

… the next, they were dead…

Sure, maybe Steven Spielberg was trying to make a statement with that shit. Like saying Americans can be killed by terrorists or guerilla warfare at any random moment, or some shit like that…

But it still made for a shitty ass movie experience.

There was no real feeling of closure to the film.

The aliens just disappeared…

… and fucking Robbie reappeared…

Fuck.

I want my motherfucking money back…

… or a sequel to be made, at least…

…

All complaints aside, I still gotta compliment Spielberg for making yet another classic film.

War of the Worlds was still one of the best disaster movies I can ever remember watching. And there were just so many classic scenes to prove it…

The first encounter with the tripod was amazing. Shooting the car into the air, climbing out of the ground with tentacled, webbed feet, and then chasing all the helpless civilians like a good ol’ Godzilla movie, definitely had me on the edge of my seat…

In the first two acts, there were simply too many memorable scenes to recall… The drained bodies all floating in the river. The sudden flash of the rushing train on fire…. And the ferry scene? Not only did it show the worst aspects of humanity, with everyone rushing to save themselves. But the sight of the tripods rising from the depths of the river, was absolutely one of my favourite movie moments of the entire year so far…

Yes, the third act of the film absolutely sucked.

And yes, the ending of the film made me want to fuck my own fucking asshole… just to get some sort of real satisfaction from this film…

But really, War of the Worlds was still the kind of imaginative tale that will survive the tests of time for perhaps another 100 years to come…

And rest assured, I will keep on reading every single fucking thing I can get my hands on when it comes to HG Wells and the War of the Worlds…

Now, this film was the second collaboration of Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg.   The first film is that science fiction thriller "Minority Report" about pre-cognitives who can foretell crimes.  This time around Cruise plays a dead beat dad named Ray Ferrier.  Now, it must be said that the way Ray, or Cruise portrays Ray, is quite obnoxious almost to the point of real life reality.  It almost seems too close for comfort that Cruise would be acting (or not acting) like such a jackass jerk.  However, it must be said that Dakota Fanning who plays Ray’s daughter Rachel really stretches Cruise’s acting chops to actually become…dare it be said…but somewhat of a decent father by the end.  Besides the aliens getting what’s coming to them, at least it can be said that Cruise/Ray has some shred of dignity of being a loving and caring father. 

The story of "War of the Worlds" is based upon the late 19^th century book by H.G. Wells.  As well, in the 20^th century, Orson Welles did a now infamous radio broadcast of the story in which it became so vividly real sounding that the audience actually though aliens were invading.  Also, there was an alien B-movie done of the story in 1953. 

I must say that the action sequence where Ray and the surrounding crowds in New Jersey are witnessing the strange events for the first time is astonishing brilliant.  The way that the alien tripods erupt from the earth is just bone chillingly awesome.  As well, the prequel to these events where Ray is showing Rachel the lightning outside, and how Ray is proven wrong that lightning does strike twice at least in these circumstances.  

The other action sequence that is worth noting is the crashdown of the alien tripods and the jet airliner as Ray, Robbie (Justin Chatwin), and Rachel are in the basement of Ray’s ex-wife’s house.  The way that the sounds are exploding around them is simply extraordinary. 

However, probably the biggest negatives the movie has going for it is the annoying attitudes of Robbie the teenage son.  This is because he becomes increasingly frustrated with his father and the events, he wants to explore for himself these aliens and do something himself.  Robbie does have a point, but only up to a certain point.   The other negative character to this film is played by Tim Robbins.  He plays a shacked up man, Harlan Ogilvy, who is locked up in his basement in the country.   Harlan becomes convinced he can take the aliens with his rifle, but Ray proves him wrong. 

But the most disturbing and distracting part of this film comes from the aliens, this is because the motives of the aliens are never really made clear except through Harlan’s insistence that they buried themselves "millions" of years ago.   As well, the alien strategy of creating red terraform from their feeding on us humans is also annoying.  Although, the red terraform is quite eye catching and dazzyling to see.  Also, the way that the aliens are easily killed because they can’t breathe Earth’s air because of micro-organisms/bacterium is just so overly bizarre and stupid it’s almost funny to a fault. 

Also, the ending of the film when Ray and Rachel make it back to Boston, where it seems there is destruction but unharmed by aliens just seems to be whacked.  As well, when Ray and Rachel make it to his ex-wife’s parents house and they are waiting there at the door, and Robbie shows up, I just myself just couldn’t help but laugh. 

However, with the huge laughable negativisms of this movie, Steven Spielberg still has captured a film with his uniquely captivating vision.  The film’s scope and beautiful landscape of destruction (catapulted by excellent scenes of action such as in the minivan or on the boat) are some of the best developed scenes in recent action filmdom.  Spielberg truly shows us he is a masterful director, even if the story elements are flawed and downright funny to a fault.

Therefore, I shall give this film a 8/10 and 2.5/4 stars."