[Previous entry: "Cisco tries to hush up vulnerability"] [Main Index] [Next entry: ""Anti-terror" measures in the UK"]

07/28/2005 Archived Entry: "Gordon P. reviews "War of the Worlds""

Gordon P. reviews Spielberg's new movie "War of the Worlds"...[Click on 'more' for review.]

Gordon writes, Saw Spielberg's _War of the Worlds_ tonight with a couple friends; our unanimous consensus was that it makes our short lists for "Worst Film Ever Made."

Nothing about this film made any sense at all --- including why Spielberg even made it, since in interviews he complained that its entire thesis goes against everything that he personally believes in regarding the zillions of good, kind, altruist space aliens that he's morally certain run the galaxy... %-/ The plot (insofar as there _is_ one) is riddled with inconsistencies. _None_ of the characters are the least bit likable or empathy-evoking, and almost nothing that any of them does makes any sense. This is particularly true of Spielberg's aliens, whose strategy, tactics, behavior, weapons, and technologies are all totally irrational. (I don't buy the argument that aliens "can't be understood" because they necessarily have "alien" motivations. Logic is logic, and these aliens simply behave _stupidly_ and _irrationally_ --- they act like they can't make up their minds whether they want to efficient exterminate all humans as "mere vermin" as rapidly as possible, or to use them as fodder and/or chemical feedstock a la _The Matrix_, or merely be sadistic, psychotic monsters who want to inflict random carnage while maximizing the pain, terror, and "yuck factor" experienced by their victims. Even the aliens of _Mars Attacks!_ and _Independence Day_ or the "N-D's" of _Invasion: Earth_ behaved more rationally and understandably than Spielberg's aliens!)

If there is any attempt at a "message" in this movie, it is that humans are just "nasty, brutish apes" who don't deserve to live, and only survive due to sheer, dumb, blind, unmerited luck.

The _only_ redeeming feature to this film (aside from the two homages to George Pal's 1953 version of _The War of The Worlds_) is that once again, Dakota Fanning proves that despite only being 11 years old, she is a better actress than most actors three times her age --- which perhaps explains why she has managed in only four years to exceed the _total lifetime box-office gross_ of the nominal "four most powerful women in Hollywood:" Her films have raked in more cash than either Julia Roberts or Nicole Kidman, and more than Reese Witherspoon and Sandra Bullock _combined_!!! 8-o

But overall, my recommendation is still, "Give this film a miss"...