War of the Worlds

Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is huge and scary, moving and funny--another capper to a career that seems like an unending succession of captivations.

A gritty, intense and supremely accomplished sci-fier.

The filmmaker who once aimed to enchant his audiences with cheerful stories of beatific visitors from outer space now wants only to scare the hell out of us. E.T., as it turns out, is a mass murderer after all, and we are his Reese's Pieces.

Alas, Robbins is far more interesting than Cruise, and you wonder what the film would have been like if their roles were reversed -- if Robbins were the loser in search of redemption and Cruise the agitated freak in the basement.

Acting is not really the point of this movie, which seems to arise above all from Mr. Spielberg's desire to reaffirm that he is, along with everything else, a master of pure action filmmaking.

It’s the right role for Cruise, but the movie is so devoted to him, so star-driven, that it begins to seem a little demented.

Extravagant in movie terms but stingy in emotional ones, it embodies all of Spielberg's bad impulses and almost none of his good ones: It's a grand display of how well he knows how to work us over, and yet the desperation with which he tries to get to us is repulsive.

Spielberg's somehow turns 180° from making an alien movie with no damage to the world (Close Encounters Of The Third Kind), and then an alien who is lovely (E.T.), then to a robot who got destroyed by human (A.I.), to making a movie about a robot with an alien inside it, completely destroying the world, and it shows all of it from the beginning till the end so crazy, so madness, and that's what War Of The Worlds look like, making it the craziest movie he's ever made.

Loved this movie as a kid and i still think its good but all means but the first half really drags on and it sorta just stumbles to the end

Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning don the well-worn masks of dysfunctional family members who rediscover each other during an apocalyptic, world-shaping event. Oddly, many of the big-time alien invasion's most profound moments take a back seat to constant bickering from the broken family. Even the plot device that ultimately drives the invading forces from the planet's surface is only explained by a tacked-on bit of Morgan Freeman narration, which gives the impression that it's more important to see three random individuals arrive safely in Boston than it is to ensure the survival of the greater human race. Or perhaps the filmmakers just assumed that everyone was already familiar with the developments in the original tale and chose not to overdo it with a straight rehash. Either way, the tighter focus actually manages to produce a greater perspective of the day's events and allow for a quieter, more suspenseful overall vibe. Unfortunately, it also misses badly at conveying a greater arching plot structure. With the benefit of hindsight, many of the film's special effects don't look particularly good, but an impressive display of sound design does go a long way toward redeeming such failings. It's not what the original was, but that isn't what it's trying to be. For better or for worse. Updated thoughts after a 2021 re-watch: Re-visited this one with the family, immediately after reading the H.G. Wells original together, and I was genuinely surprised at just how loyal a modernization it really is. This big-budget adaptation freshens many specific scenes from the book - a crowded mob scene at a highway logjam, a silent argument while hiding with an unstable stranger, a boating encounter with the monstrous alien tripods - in ways that wink at knowledgeable viewers without bucking the lesser-read. Granted, there's nothing in the novel about a sexy single Dad or ancient killing machines buried beneath Brooklyn, but there is plenty about creeping red vegetation, scarcity of information in the midst **** catastrophe and the stripped, panicked essence of human nature. By shifting the setting and tweaking a few details, the film eliminates the less-apt dressings of late Victorian London and adds a little extra Hollywood bombast without losing the greater message. Namely, that people can be pretty terrifying with their backs up against the wall. Our protagonist is no exception, making selfish knee-jerk decisions in the heat of the moment and later regretting those means, if not their ends. Tom Cruise is his usual action movie self, handsome and gritty but also strangely believable as a bedazzled pedestrian, and both the visual and audio effects are ambitiously praise-worthy. It does sometimes edge a little too close to the superficial, and little Dakota Fanning is downright unbearable at points, but when it focuses on the sheer, large-scale spectacle of each moment and thumps the deeper themes, War of the Worlds '05 makes for a pretty good effort.

This site doesn't allow me to write just one word, that for me, best describes this movie, so I'm writing this just to submit that word that best describes the feeling I had watching this at the cinema: Painful.

this movie i must say is very unsuccessful in my eyes for starters not providing an entertaining story i thought was even boring in some parts. the acting from the cast is the only thing that saves it in my opinion