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Dom Robinson reviews
Paramount Home Entertainment
- Cert:
- Cat.no: PHE 8883
- Running time: 112 minutes
- Year: 2005
- Pressing: 2005
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 24 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: 7 languages
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: 2*DVD 9
- Price: £24.99
- Extras:Featurettes: Revisiting the Invasion, The H.G. Wells Legacy, Steven Spielberg and the original War of the Worlds, Characters: The Family Unit,Previsualization, Four Production Diaries, Enemy: Tripods and Aliens, Scoring War of the Worlds,”We Are Not Alone”
- Vote and comment on this film:
Director:
- Steven Spielberg
(1941, Amistad, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial, Hook, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Jaws, Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List)
Producers:
- Kathleen Kennedy and Colin Wilson
Screenplay:
- Josh Friedman and David Koepp
Music :
- John Williams
Cast :
- Ray Ferrier: Tom Cruise
Rachel Ferrier: Dakota Fanning
Mary Ann: Miranda Otto
Robbie: Justin Chatwin
Harlan Ogilvy: Tim Robbins
Vincent: Rick Gonzalez
Tim: David Alan Basche
Grandmother: Ann Robinson
Grandfather: Gene Barry
In this remake of War of the Worlds,Tom Cruise plays duff Dad Ray Ferrier making a living as a docker, living in an unkempt house, but he loves his daughter,Rachel (Dakota Fanning), and son, Robbie (Justin Chatwin), misses his ex-wife, Mary-Ann, and hates her new beau,Tim (David Alan Basche), with whom she’s having a baby.
However, he can make up for all his half-assed parenting when the aliens come to town and short out everything electricalwith a lightning storm to end all lightning storms.
Plot goes out the window here since once the first 12 minutes of introduction are out of the way as it’s just crash/bang/wallopfrom that point on, with outstanding CGI as the aliens with tripods come to wipe out mankind. And, yes, the original is agood film but it’s been over 50 years since that one and it doesn’t hurt to have an updated special effects-laden take on the movie.
And I love the way the CGI blends during scenes, even down to being filmed in a car as the camera tracks around them, and thenpulls in and out of the car as it drives on the road – making it look like there was nothing filming them. It’s very subtleand very clever and such CGI would go missed by a lot of people. Along their journey they come across National Guard memberstrying to stop the aliens and also Tim Robbins as a houseowner who, for some unexplained reason – at first, takes inFerrier and his family to shield them from the enemy. Quite why no-one else picks up on this offer remains a mystery, though.
Overall, this film is a great look at how civilisation breaks down and is returned to its basic insticts when it can’t think of anything elseto do, and it’s surprisingly dark for a 12-certificate but if such a thing were to happen, the effect on how we treat eachother is surprisingly prophetic. Oh, and it was amusing when Rachel tells her Dad he should get a TiVo (a bit like a Sky+, butwith far more functionality and which doesn’t keep crashing and losing all your programmes whenever it feels like).
The only thing the film could do with is a proper ending, since like the way28 Days Laterdidn’t affect anywhere other than the UK, this film doesn’t appear to affect anywhere than the US, so it’s not as if thosestill living are short of somewhere to go. Plus, Spielberg takes a liberty with the fate of one character that reallytakes the biscuit – which you’d often expect from a Hollywood film – but especially here because there’s no explanationfor it, and it’s akin to Robert Shaw turning up at the end ofJawsand saying he wasn’t dead after all.
The picture looks fantastic in its original 1.85:1 anamorphic ratio and the sound is exceptional with so many DTS 5.1 effectsall over the place, as well as the foghorn sounds as the tripods get ready to do their business. It’s a demo disc, for sure!
The extras are basically a large set of featurettes, totalling 164 mins – so almost a full three hours, that tell how thefilm came about in all its different aspects, and to name them would by self-explanatory.
Starting with Revisiting the Invasion (7:40), dealing with the reason for what led to this film being made (cue the9/11 references), for a film that boasts such outstanding effects, as you begin to watch the featurette, it just couldn’tlook any more cheap. For a start it’s filmed in 4:3 and there are cheesy effects as the names appear onscreen as the castand crew chat to camera… or rather just off-camera.
Then we have The H.G. Wells Legacy (6:36), Steven Spielberg and the original War of the Worlds (8:00) – showing whyGene Barry and Ann Robinson do a cameo, Characters: The Family Unit (13:22) and Previsualization (7:43) – which looks at earlystoryboards done by animation whereas Spielberg says he rarely makes preconceptions on films and changes things as he makesthe film.
Next up are four Production Diaries. Two are on set on the East Coast of the USA – Beginning (22:31) and Exile (19:40),and then the West Coast brings Destruction (27:30) and War (22:21). This is where to come to watch the day-to-day filmingof the 90+ day shooting schedule.
In the final list of extras, we have Designing the Enemy: Tripods and Aliens (14:07), Scoring War of the Worlds (11:58),both of which do exactly what they say on the tin, and “We Are Not Alone” (3:15) which speculates on whether aliens arereal or not. Overall in this supplemental material, there’s a lot of information, but it’s a bit dull to listen to thesame old voices rambling on and on and most of what they have to say isn’t in the least bit surprising.
There are 24 chapters to the film which is spot on, the menus have some subtle animation which is good, but is accompaniedby very repetitive music which gets on your wick. And subtitles come in 7 flavours: Arabic, Danish, Dutch, English (and hearingimpaired), Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish. One odd thing is that these have black lines either side of the text, pointing outwhere they are. Erm… I can see them(!)
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.