Review of War of the Worlds (2005) by Byron — 05 Dec 2005

Steven Spielberg, once one of the film industry's best directors, turned out a real stinker (his second-worst, after AI) with this remake of H.G. Wells' classic Martian invasion tale. Tom Cruise is an unpleasant everyman who does little but to run, run, run from the bad aliens with his even more annoying daughter, who does little but scream, scream, scream.

Even more irritating are the dozens of inconsistencies and gaffs that indicate that Spielberg was focused on grand special effects to the exclusion of simple subtleties that make good movies great (or, in this case, makes an awful movie tolerable).

Cruise's car, for instance, survives being crashed into by a commercial jet, then he drives away through a nice, neat path in the wreckage. A 300-foot alien ship pops up out of a New York street and starts blasting everything in sight, yet a few blocks away no one knows anything is going on.

Later, in the midst of worldwide destruction, Cruise turns on his radio and gets the "test of the emergency broadcast system" message, as if there wasn't an "actual emergency." And so it goes, to a reunion scene at the end that is laughably inane.